Education in the digital era: challenges, opportunities and lessons for EU policy design
Top three extracts
- Digital technologies can facilitate access to knowledge and learning and their use enables all training facilities at various levels to be easily accessible and inclusive
- Open data and collaborative digital technology tools and methods can enable innovation in education
- The progressive digitalisation of work will result in the disappearance of many professions and an increase in unemployment; whereas the new professions that will emerge with digitalisation may compensate for some of the jobs lost
More extacts
It is estimated that approximately half of the current jobs worldwide – and 30 % in the European Union – will disappear over the next 25 years, with the emergence of new professions requiring advanced digital skills
It is essential that educational institutions prepare pupils and students to confront the social and economic challenges brought about by rapid technological and social developments, by equipping them with the appropriate skills to adapt to the challenges of the digital world
Digital technologies should be an integral part of a learner-focused, age appropriate approach to education and can offer new and innovative approaches to teaching and learning
Technologies should be better used to support new pedagogies that focus on learners as active participants with tools for inquiry-based learning and collaborative workspaces
Quality, innovative digital learning can be captivating and interactive, thus complementing lecture-style teaching methods and providing platforms for collaboration and knowledge creation
We are seeing the growing commercial use of education by large digital companies, which are trying to influence teaching practices by introducing equipment, software and educational resources or providing training for teachers
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The potential of digital technologies to support a shift towards more learner centered pedagogical approaches if incorporated into the learning process in a planned and purposeful way; learners need to be guided towards innovative, bottom-up practices of knowledge creation for genuine educational transformation to occur
A transformation of the educational and training systems at all levels is necessary to make full use of the opportunities offered by information and communication technologies and the media and to develop the skills and competences required to meet the demands of the society and labour market of the future; such a transformation must continue to guarantee the right to personal fulfilment, strike the right balance between the relevant digital skills and life skills, and support individual resilience, critical thinking and innovation potential
Education and training institutions require assistance from the Union and Member States, as well as close cooperation between all stakeholders, industry, local and regional authorities, communities and civil society, to develop their ICT and media education in accordance with their specific pedagogical approach and to make the difficult transition to a more digitalised learning environment; underlines, in this regard, the need for a whole-school and interdisciplinary approach towards digital change in education
Teachers and trainers should be at the core of the digital transformation and therefore require adequate initial preparation and continuous training, which must include modules on age- and development-oriented teaching practices; This training requires time and should not come as an extra task on top of their daily activities; Even more than the teaching of other basic skills, such as numeracy and literacy, digital skills teaching requires teachers to update their knowledge and skills on a continuous basis; therefore, teachers need suitable, flexible and high-quality continuous professional development that corresponds to their needs; in this regard, it is recommmended using European online platforms to increase professional development opportunities and to encourage the exchange of best practices
The establishment of strategic partnerships between academic and research institutions and public and private partners as part of Key Action 2 of the Erasmus+ programme is welcomed, with a view to setting up ICT centres of excellence and fostering the development of technological start-ups
Proper assessment and monitoring of digital skills is essential to achieve progress; the development of EU-level tools for organisations (e.g. the Digital Competences Framework and the Reference Framework on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning) and for individuals (e.g. SELFIE) is welcomed; however, effective digital skills assessment methods must be dynamic, flexible, constantly updated and tailored to learners’ needs, and must also achieve much broader uptake across the Union at national, regional and local levels
The Union’s increased policy focus on digital skills and education is welcomed, as evidenced notably by the Digital Education Action Plan, which builds on a number of successful small-scale policy initiatives, such as EU Code Week, the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition, and the Sofia Call for Action on Digital Skills and Education; the teaching of programming should be part of a broader educational approach to information technology and critical and computational thinking
There is a need for the Union to develop capabilities in areas such as artificial intelligence, big data, software engineering, quantum computing and web design; welcomes, in this context, the digital skills component of the Digital Europe programme
Member States re encouraged to share lessons and best practices, in particular in the area of educational innovation
The Digital Education Action Plan is viewed as the first step towards a fully-fledged EU strategy on digital education and skills based on a lifelong learning approach, which can provide both a more coordinated policy framework and simultaneously be adaptable to changing realities; enhancing digital skills through collaborations with non-formal education providers and in the harder-to-reach adult population is currently a glaring gap in the Action Plan
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