Being a Digital Learner
Digital Learners
As your child embarks on a digital learning adventure, we feel that there are some things you need to know as parents to help create a positive digital experience while maintaining balance in other parts of their lives. It's very important to know some of the more common characteristics observed in students who learn through a digital platform. Digital learners...
...crave feedback from their learning community. They are often impatient when waiting on feedback.
...expect learning resources to be intuitive. They often ignore instructions and appear to have restless engagement.
...use construction and deconstruction of information to build a functional understanding of facts and skills.
...prefer learning through activity and experience rather than hard-wiring their knowledge from rote involvement.
What does this mean for you as a parent? Your role in your child's digital learning is vital to their success, health and safety. These are some things we recommend to help establish good digital learning environment for your child.
Set a schedule for technology usage during learning times. Make sure the schedule is equitable to the needs of all technology users in the home. Ensure that the scheduled is balanced with other healthy activities.
Make sure that accessibility and environment is conducive to learning. Having a dedicated learning area and accessibility to all the virtual tools your student might need is important. Boundaries are also important but should not get in the way of the students ability to learn.
Encourage and endorse digital citizenship skills. We will be implementing regular technology lessons with all students to help promote responsible, safe and secure computing behaviors. Be a partner to your child while they participate in these lessons.
Encourage students to not over-curate their work. Help digital learners to have goals of quality work while not sacrificing attention to other projects or home and family occasions.
ISTE identified computational thinking as a trait of digital learners. Help your child understand that healthy digital learning also includes opportunities to develop their social and emotional skills.