Fundació Jaume BofillUniversitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)

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We are celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Debats d’Educació by giving the educational community the opportunity to air its views

Dolors Reig
Dolors Reig
A social psychologist and expert in social media, she directs the daily online publication and virtual training academy “El caparazón”.

The three things I’ve learned

The best teachers are also the best learners
1

Learning to Learn throughout your life

If there is one skill that stands out above all the others in the information and learning societies in which we live, it is learning to learn. Thanks to the ease with which knowledge is generated and shared, especially in the context of technological tools, social networks, etc., we live in a permanent beta state of almost automatic and subconscious learning at every moment of our lives.

Learning to learn is not only advice for pupils. The best teachers are also the best learners. It is not so much a matter of qualifications or rigorous standards or educational policies... It is about the need to teach teachers to be learners; learners who have the capacity to adapt to tomorrow’s scenarios, technologies and languages, to guide pupils in their enthusiasm to grow, and to grow alongside them.

This must be the nucleus of educational systems: the teacher and his or her desire to continue learning. This focus can be supported by communities, appropriate human resource policies, awareness-raising campaigns to improve the general public’s evaluation of teachers, teacher training itself and the culture of Continuous learning.

I would add an idea inspired by a conversation with a scientist aged over 80 who was still working: you only get old when you are no longer in touch with the world of today and when you lose the desire to learn.

2

Augmented learning

Today’s learning is also augmented learning, which shuns certainties that are excessively permanent and revels in the infinite nuances of a more transparent, distributed and diverse society.
We are experiencing changes in the social, cognitive and creative sphere, as we evolve from ICT (information and communication technologies) towards LKT (learning and knowledge technologies) and EPT (empowerment and participation technologies).

The process by which education adapts to the infinite new possibilities is what we may term "augmented learning"; originating in the change of focus from education to autonomous learning referred to in my first point, augmented learning allows advantage to be taken of Internet’s power as an ecosystem of learning (LKT) and participation (EPT).

 

3

Honest learning

Finally, this type of learning is humble and honest; it does not reach a point where it exhausts itself, for it is able to convert the learner into an active generator of new ideas.

In my second point, I underlined the potential of the whole gamut of technologies to create an individual who is much better prepared and of greater importance for the development of the society in which he or she lives. With regard to the possible appropriation of technology, be this positive or negative, reference is now made to the new “young people with superpowers”: citizens of today now have many extremely powerful arms at their disposal.

In this respect, all technology depends on how it is appropriated, and in turn this appropriation depends on the values of the user, so teaching values becomes increasingly important.

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