Social & emotional skills through the digital age, what's at stake ?!

Source

Children are using digital technologies and media at increasingly younger ages and for longer periods of time.

Taking into account all the kinds of screens their exposed to, many children spend as much time or more time in front of a technological device than with their parents or in school. As a global development matter, we have to think it through - as parents, educators and education stakeholders. Knowing this, how are schools facing this period of time where digital skills are a priority to think, anticipate and frame from now and for the next decades ?

Every school has its own unique culture. It is made up of all the ways in which students relate to one another and their teachers. Digital impacts today pedagogical relations based on knowledge. Teachers might feel useless sometimes. Children might feel disconnected and stuck between two worlds. It's a complexe transition time we can overcome. We need to educate people in digital skills and at the same time how to not suffer from tech devices and the issues in human relationships that they can create.

Digital skills are not about techniques but about citizenship and relationships between one another, the human values at the core of our societies and for our kids to be masters of tech devices and not mastered by them. Machines are outperforming us already on knowledge-based capacities, but soft skills like teamwork, empathy, openmindness constitute our deepen humanity. Communication, arts, creativity are our strongest parts and education systems have to look towards those skills now to ensure citizens to build and frame societies at their image.

Digital citizenship is not about operating the devices but about people using technology in a thoughtful, positive way that shows they are aware of its impact on others.

Knowledge instruction seems obsolete but skills education open thousands of doors towards what to learn and how to learn, together, collaboratively, as a learning community, as learning societies. Mentorship, peer-to-peer and learning by doing expose us to much more complex cognitive processes and collective intelligence development.

by Capucine Huet

Sources:

Muriel Pénicaud lance la concertation sur la transformation de l’apprentissage

Digital Citizenship and Social-Emotional Skills Are Inseparable

8 digital skills we must teach our children