Source for photo: A rare 1000 year old viking toolbox.
This site offers a set of tools to enable post-secondary education students to become their own tech coach. Toolkits have different uses but they all are similar in one way; they help make our lives easier and do things more easily than if we did not have one. But only if we practice using them and can choose the right one for the job. Developing as an online learner is no different to other activities – practice makes perfect.
Learning technology users, both students and educators, are often called upon to use advanced digital capabilities without a basic toolset or toolkit to do the job well. In this context the toolkit gives users the ability to select, navigate, and utilise technology to enhance learning in a self-directed manner; the types of tools needed to develop as a digital learner.
The Learn Tech Toolkit is a growing repository which contains basic tools to enable students to grow in their ability use computers for learning. This is not about buzz words or normative rule making about how students must use computers to find work. There are many ethical issues around the digital transformation of education narrative. Here we offer tools for everyday use, but also for critically evaluating the demands made on students in the name of the digital society. Students no longer have to just think critically about technology use, but also about technology creation and the implied ethical implications. We focus on 6 areas to support students to develop as digital learners: digital use, digital productivity, information literacy, data literacy, media literacy, and digital wellbeing. These areas are a well researched ‘kind of industry standard’ categories which were developed by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK.
If you are ready to start practising, press the button below (well, click on it) now!
