Contemporary Literacy in Contemporary Kids

Learning, Teaching and Training Activity 1

We gathered in Lordelo with 15 students and 12 teachers to get to know each other properly, educate ourselves on the possibilities of ICT in modern education and industry, and to develop their intercultural communication skills.

Realising that the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘when’ students learn has changed a great, we asked some important questions. Is it about Generation Z? Is it about the world around us?  Are we, the teachers, to blame?

Although the new approach of learning and teaching is considered superior to the traditional one, we still strongly believe that learning means observing, processing, recording, recalling and reconstructing. Whether these processes happen via new or traditional pedagogies, via online or offline activities, plays a secondary role.

And yet, living in the 21st century means we should care about digital and technology literacy a great deal. To start with, students need the skills to learn in relevant, modern real-world contexts. They should also personalise their learning experience in order to get ready for the highly competitive job market, where the digitally and technologically illiterate have little say.

Teachers, on the other hand, will have to update their ICT skills to bridge the gap between themselves and their students, not necessarily because of the new pedagogies, but in spite of them.

What did we do?

How did it go?