Is my iPad in my backpack?

By Maria Timmermann

Abstract

With the arrival of digital culture, how to learn and know the world has changed for children and young students. Let’s take a look into their backpacks and compare them with ten years ago. Then, maybe some of them brought video games to the school, but now is easy to find more and more gadgets and devices, competing for space and motivation against books and traditional print-based world of school materials, with two dimensional print and images.

New generations are connected before they born. But how much are the teachers and schools administrators aware of this? New media offer a completely different way to see the world. It can be used as learning tools inside and outside the classroom. Wikis and blogs, as well as computer programs are some examples of how web based applications technology bring alternatives to teach in the way students live and learn today: they´re more social than ever.

However, it is important to analyse how the construction of knowledge evolves in educational system and to discuss about the possibilities of alienation in the digital culture.

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