“DIGITISATION AND SCHOOL. WHY THE TOPIC IS MUCH MORE THAN ‘ONLY’ DIGITAL MEDIA” - A SEMINAR FOR TEACHING STUDENTS

What are the impacts of the digitisation for schools? Taking a closer look at this question one will find that it is much more than using digital media in class. Since winter semester 2016/2017 there has been established a seminar for teaching students to learn about this topic. As future teachers they will have the duty to support pupils to get ready for a self-determined life[1] in a world that is increasingly influenced by digitisation and related processes.

Teaching students with different professional backgrounds (in Saxony teaching students need to choose two or more school subjects) which study to work at different school levels can attend the seminar “Digitisation and School. Why the topic is much more than ‘only’ digital media”[2]. The idea behind this seminar is to give the students a much wider and deeper understanding of how digitisation is influencing multiple topics which are related to school. At the start they learn about pilot projects like for example School in the Cloud[3] to get an idea how differently a school can work with nowadays’ possibilities and which opportunities this offers. On the other hand they are confronted with the challenges of digitisation, which have or probably will have an impact on our society and with that on school, like artificial intelligence and big data. Afterwards they learn more about different concepts how to use digital tools in class, how the life of pupils is changed by digitisation, about data protection, about the education policy related to digitisation and other topics. The goal of the seminar is that the participants are enabled to thoroughly discuss the negative and positive sides of the different topics. In the seminar students have the chance to experience different digital tools and to test some of their own ideas.

The seminar is part of the subproject “Connecting teacher training in schools and universities” (located at the Faculty of Computer Science) which belongs to the project “TUD-Sylber”. “TUD-Sylber” is funded by the German federal government and the states by resources of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

References:
[1] Educational mandate in the updated school law of the Federal State of Saxony, https://www.revosax.sachsen.de/vorschrift/17232-Gesetz-zur-Weiterentwicklung-des-Schulwesens-im-Freistaat-Sachsen#a1, last access: 2017-07-13.
[2] Original title: „Digitalisierung und Schule. Warum es um viel mehr als ‚nur‘ digitale Medien geht“.
[3] Website School in the Cloud, https://www.theschoolinthecloud.org/, last access: 2017-07-13.