Teaching and Digital Technologies Big Issues and Critical Questions

Introduction

The central question of this book is: What critical issues do teachers need to know in order to help them make better decisions in the classroom? Specifically, in helping develop answers to this question, this chapter focuses on creativity, visualisation, collaboration and communication and will encourage readers to understand the opportunities they present. While this chapter also refers to the Australian Curriculum, readers are encouraged to transfer the key messages to their own contextual settings, wherever they might be preparing to become teachers or are already practising teachers. This is important to understand because curriculum differences are likely. Therefore, the examples used in this chapter are not prescribed examples, but used for illustrative purposes to glean deeper understandings in response to the chapter’s intent.

The key knowledge and skills in using digital technologies are now often integral to contemporary educational policies and curriculums, such as in the Australian Curriculum. To illustrate, the Australian Curriculum’s technologies learning area ‘encourages students to apply their knowledge and practical skills and processes when using technologies and other resources to create innovative solutions, independently and collaboratively, that meet current and future needs’ (ACARA, 2014a, p. 1). In addition, information and communication technology (ICT) capability is one of the general capabilities of the Australian Curriculum, which ‘encompass the knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that, together with curriculum content in each learning area and the cross-curriculum priorities, will assist students to live and work successfully in the twenty-first century’ (ACARA, 2013, p. 1).