Emma Butler

100608776
Teaching in the Digital Age
Assessment 1: Soundcloud

What skills will I need as a teacher in order to teach effectively in the Digital Age?
Thanks for tuning into my speech on the skills that I, as a teacher, will need in order to teach effectively in
the Digital Age.
The mind map that I created focused on the characteristics of the digital age and gave me an insight into
what students are working with and how I as a new teacher, will need to think about my practice in terms
of this. I have determined that the most important skills I will need as a teacher in order to teach
effectively in the Digital Age are: adaptability, communication skills, comprehension skills and digital
fluency.
In creating my mind map and looking back at Week 1 materials, I realized how different the Digital Age is
even from my own experience and at 28, I considered myself to be fairly adept at utilizing and consuming
media. Exploring this subject around the Digital Age I have quickly realized that I am definitely not as
adept as I thought I was. Having adaptability as a skill means that I would be able to recognize and model
my teaching around new developments. As new forms of communication, technology and content become
available, I think it is important to be able to adapt and adopt these new forms into teaching content to
remain relevant to students.
It also allows teachers to be adaptable to educational transformations, for example, in our video from
week 1 regarding Digital Fluency, we learnt about Denmark allowing students computers with Facebook
in tests or American students being able to create their own learning timetables online. It is important to
be adaptable regarding the transformations in how we educate students to ensure that the content we
deliver is relevant and helpful.
The second skill that I believe is required to teach effectively in the digital age is that of communication.
Bridgestock states that there is a need to recognize that there are new modes of communication that have
emerged with advances in digital technology (2014) These advances may mean that we might not be
familiar with the new technologies. For example, this assessment encourages us to use various modes of
technology to communicate our ideas. Some of these; like the Weebly and the blog are familiar and it is
much easier to use written modes of communication. Others, such as the mind map were new to me, yet
are excellent new ways of communicating content to students and others. I needed to make myself
familiar with these new tools and in doing so I improved my communication skills.
Communication is no longer just verbal but is now mixed in with text and visual communication, which
then impacts on the ways that learning can be delivered. The increasing amount of technology and ways
in which this impacts communication reminds us that we need to ensure that our communication skills
keep pace with our students.
The third skill that I believe is vital for teaching effectively in the Digital Age is that of comprehension, in
particular, a thorough understanding of the Australian Curriculum. As I detailed in my mind map, one of
the characteristics of the Digital Age is that it is not so much focused on accumulation of the content
knowledge but on learning to adapt the content for oneself. So a teacher requires an understanding of the
curriculum in order to adapt the content for themselves and their classes to create the best possible
learning experience. ACARA (2011) gives teachers the general capabilities that need to be taught across
the Curriculum and teachers should have a good comprehension of these capabilities, as well as the way
that they can be incorporated into different subject areas.
The US Department of Education states that this skill is vital for teachers as having a solid understanding
of the content they are teaching allows them to frame and shape content into modes that are the most
appropriate to their context (2002). The comprehension skills form the foundation from which teachers
can add other skills in order to teach effectively in the Digital Age. I think if a teacher has a sound

comprehension of general capabilities and the content descriptor of Year 3 science for example, then they
are able to bring in Digital Age specific skills such as digital fluency, communication skills and
adaptability.
The last skill that I believe is needed to teach effectively in the digital age is that of digital fluency. As
discussed above, the Digital Age consists not only of new technology, but also of using technology to
change the way we think and learn, as stated by Aikat (2011). To become adaptable to these new changes
in the Digital Age, we must also have some proficiency in digital fluency.
Aikat adds that students are not born digitally native (2011). This has also been discussed in our weekly
reading from week 2, highlighting that while students are not born digitally native; they are born into a
world with rapid and widespread consumption of media. Existing within this context allows students to
become digitally fluent rapidly and I believe that teachers must also have a degree of digital fluency in
order to recognize and adapt our teaching in the Digital Age. As mentioned in my mind map, this age
consists of so much information and knowledge being available to students. Digital fluency is a vital skill
for teachers, as once we have understood what we need to teach, we need to understand how we can
communicate this information to our audience. One of the major characteristics I discussed in my mind
map was that of the Digital Age not being primarily about the content itself, but in knowing how to adapt
this content. The skill of digital fluency allows us to adapt our content and technology in the way that is
best suited to our context and allows us to teach in the most effective way.
These are the skills that I believe I will need in order to teach effectively in the Digital Age and as I
progress through this course, I hope to gain these skills and graduate able to communicate effectively with
my students. Thank you very much for listening.

Reference List:
Aikat, D. 2011 Effective Strategies For Teaching In The Digital Age AEJMC, University of North
Carolina, St Louis, pp. 35-39.
Bridgestock, R. 2014, Educating for digital futures: what the learning strategies of digital media
professionals can teach higher education Innovations In Education & Teaching International, September,
pp. 2-10
US Department of Education. 2002, Partnership for 21 st Century Skills United States Department of
Education, http://www.ed.gov accessed July 21st 2015.