Universidad Católica Argentina

“Santa María de los Buenos Aires”

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

DEPARTAMENTO de LENGUAS

CARRERA: Profesorado de Inglés

CURSO LECTIVO: 2022

CÁTEDRA: Ateneos 1

Docente: Lic. Laura De Ángelis

Alumna: Delia Marone

Teaching with technologies: the

challenge of changing teaching
practices
Contents
1. Introduction...............................................................................................................3
2. Who are the students we have in front of us? Are they the same we had twenty
years ago?.......................................................................................................................4
Students don’t read; they don’t understand. Don’t they?.............................................5
3. How knowledge is built today?.................................................................................5
4. How is technology related with deep learning goals?..............................................8
5. Can technology accelerate and deepen the quality of learning?...........................10
6. How to give a good use of technologies without getting too complicated?............11
7. How do we assess quality when using new technologies?....................................13
8. What is the impact of technology-mediated learning?............................................14
9. How do we know what’s being learnt when we use new technologies?................16
10. What are the conditions under which these thing can actually flourish?............17
11. Three possible challenges to review today's school...........................................17
12. Three valuable, relevant ideas for understanding knowledge today..................18
13. Three purposes to introduce collaborative work in the classroom......................20
14. Conclusion..........................................................................................................20
15. References.........................................................................................................22
16. Apendix 1: Core Behavioral Aspects (CBA).......................................................25

Illustrations
Figure 1: Traditional pedagogical approach vs. Makerspace pedagogical approach.....6
Figure 2: Four key criteria that define and describe deep learning and help to determine
whether a teacher is a deep learning teacher.................................................................8
Figure 3 How the New Pedagogies are Different..........................................................10
Figure 4: CBA evaluation in the “general availability” category.....................................13
Figure 5: Expectations and Self-Esteem.......................................................................16

2
 1. Introduction
The educational system permanently states that it seeks to generate reflexive and
critical thinking, but it is posed as a declared principle and rarely generates a proposal
to understand its implications. For this reason, there is a need to generate powerful,
mobilizing proposals that truly promote reflective and critical thinking. And in order to
do that, technologies can be great allies.

Bruner argued that technologies are support tools that enhance the ability to think; they
are like “prosthetic devices” of the mind that extend some of its functions. However, we
should remember that technologies understood as cultural products are not neutral.
These technologies have the capacity to produce transformations in mental functioning
and to actively modify external stimuli. They are instruments that produce changes in
the person who uses them as mediators, and therefore modify their relationship with
the environment. They modify the way of representing a problem and consequently
restructure human action.

The Argentine educational system has traditionally been based on individualism,

competitiveness, accreditation and uniformity. The need for change is obvious. All
innovations introduce changes, whether drastic or progressive, change always
improves what has been changed, that is to say, innovation serves to improve specific
aspects of the teaching-learning process. The spirit is: change to improve, to adapt to
the present in order to achieve better learning quality standards and improve teaching
practices.

The aim of my assignment is to answer some of the questions that immediately arise,
such as:

 Who are the students we have in front of us? Are they the same we had
twenty years ago?
 How knowledge is built today? Do we need new pedagogical
approaches?
 How is technology related with deep learning goals?
 Can technology accelerate and deepen the quality of learning?
 How to give a good use of technologies without getting too complicated?
 How do we assess quality when using new technologies?
 How do we know what’s being learnt when we use new technologies?
 What are the conditions under which these thing can actually flourish?

3
4
 2. Who are the students we have in front of us? Are they the
same we had twenty years ago?
Some of the features that characterize the students we have in front of us today are:
immediacy, curiosity, different ways of approaching technologies and knowledge
construction; different information search, low tolerance to frustration. They are curious
and innovative for some things; maybe not for others. They learn differently; they read
differently; they construct knowledge in different ways and all this challenges and
questions us. They (obviously) like to feel recognized, valued, respected.

The multiplicity of stimuli and sources to search for information result in the need of
new processes for knowledge construction. Finding what motivates, seduces, worries
and moves them so as to understand them is a good starting point to talk about
teaching with technologies.

Baricco (2019) mentions that technologies simplify the cognitive mediations. We are
just a click/touch away from access almost anything and this obscures the cognitive
mediation that is required for transforming information into knowledge. Digital natives
have little (or no) resistance to innovation, which does not indicate that they know how
to handle or maximize their possible applications. Another interesting viewpoint is
offered by Michel Serres (2013), French philosopher, who had a privileged viewpoint
for observing the digital revolution in its making while teaching in the United States, in
particular at Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley. The outcome of his
reflections was a brilliant book entitled Petite Poucette, translated to English with the
title “Thumbelina”. He looks at the digital revolution from the teenager’s viewpoint. He
explains, “when Thumbelina uses her computer or smart phone, these devices both
require the body of a driver, alert and active, and not that of a passenger, relaxed and
passive”. More often than not, the space of the classroom can be likened to the inside
of a vehicle, where passenger, seated in rows, allow themselves to be driven by the
person piloting them to knowledge.

Unlike other generations, they are no longer so willing to read a book from chapter one
to the end: they jump. They have been learning in networks and collaboratively before
we even considered the concept. Technologies configure what is called the digital
culture in contemporary scenarios and imply new forms knowledge organization and
processing. Everything is more flexible, interactive and that demands, in turn, new
teaching and pedagogical models (Burbules & Callister, in Lion 2017). This leads us to

5
investigate in search of pedagogical frameworks and teaching resources that allow us
to have a better understanding with our students.

Students don’t read; they don’t understand. Don’t they?

As Serres (Op. Cit) suggests reading has to do with what he calls supply and demand.
“Knowledge is stocked in the pages of books: thus spoke the Teacher-Voice, who read
the books, then delivered and demonstrated the knowledge. Listen to me first, then you
can read, if you want. In any case, keep quiet. Twice, the supplier said: Be quiet!”
Given the increasing supply of knowledge from an immense depository—everywhere
and always accessible— a one-time and singular supply becomes absurd. The
problem is even worse when to obtain this rare and secret knowledge, students have to
travel long distances [sic].

What are we asking for in our reading instructions? Anijovich (2017) points out that
aspects such as the context in which the reading instruction is inserted must be
considered; the connection with the contents that are being learned; the activities that
the student has to carry out; their margin of freedom to choose; the organization of
time; the pattern of interaction (individual, in pairs, groups, collective) and the criteria
with which the work will be evaluated. If what is mentioned is exposed in the reading
instruction, the student can understand, analyze and decide and possibly we can even
motivate him or her.

Do they feel considered, heard, in our reading instructions? We should reconsider the
metacognitive and motivational factors, try to work with diversity, propose options,
allow different pathways, contemplate learning styles and interests, while giving the
possibility of broadening and deepening contents: diversifying content, the process and
the product in what is called the mixed-ability classroom (Tomlinson, 1999).

3. How knowledge is built today?

Under the principles of constructivism, knowledge is not given, but rather constructed by
learners in their consciousness and through social interaction. However, the traditional
educational system focuses predominantly on the development of individual knowledge
and thinking abilities, and gives limited credit to the social aspect of knowledge
construction. It is necessary to change the teaching practices and break with the classical
didactics (Maggio, 2019) focused on explanation and transmission. It is the great moment

6
to expand dialogue, collaboration and expand the possibilities to create original
knowledge.

Figure 1: Traditional pedagogical approach vs. Makerspace

pedagogical approach

Traditional education, follows a relatively standardized sequence of activities, both for

the presentation of a theme in a given subject, and the curricula’s sequence of classes
for different areas of knowledge, as illustrated in Figure 1. This same sequence
characterizes curricula in different areas of knowledge. Initially, the students are
exposed to classes, with basic concepts and theories. Gradually, more practical
subjects are introduced, and, finally, the student must develop a final project (Valente,
2019).

However, learning outside of this academic context is different. The things we learn in
life do not take place by first learning a concept, then its application in practical
situations: learning first takes place with an action. Based on the obtained results, the
learner can reflect on what took place and try to understand understanding. Finally, the
last action is conceptualized understanding, as proposed by Piaget (1976, 1978). As
Dewey said: "You can't understand something if you don't experience it." Information
will be transformed into knowledge through empowerment and participation. This
strategy is connected to Bruner's concept of externalization (Educación, puerta de la
cultura: 1997), which is directly linked to Ignace Meyerson's idea that the role of all
collective cultural activity is to produce «works» -oeuvres- that they come to an
existence of their own and that let the identity of those who participate in it shine
through.

7
Benefits of “externalization”:

 produces and sustains group solidarity,

 promotes the idea of division of labor,
 create shared and negotiated ways of thinking (mentalités),
 produces a record of our mental efforts: rescues cognitive activity (gives
us indicators),
 makes reflection and metacognition more accessible.

In line with Piaget and Vygotsky’s ideas, makerspaces take into account the need for
teachers or more experienced persons to act as mediators, challenging students,
creating conditions that promote interaction with objects being produced, and helping
students understand the concepts and strategies used.

Knowledge is largely constructed through dialogue, with other subjects of knowledge.

There is an important turning point in the transition from individual knowledge to
shared knowledge not only in epistemology but also in education.

The reinvention of education in a sense according to this time requires that the entire
educational community be connected given that the construction industry of knowledge
long ago ceased to take place exclusively in the physical realm of reality. Keeping our
proposals only on that plane is educating for a reality that no longer exists (Maggio,
2021). This brings us to the concept of digital inclusion, the lack of which has a
profound impact in our region, especially, on the most vulnerable sectors and in rural
areas, but which also revealed its complexity during the pandemic in ways that had not
been anticipated. Teachers and students at all levels need a device connected to the
Internet to be able to fully access learning and also, as we have known for a long time,
to access to different forms of social participation and the cultural goods that are
created in virtuality: media, art, science, entertainment, health, recreation and
everything you may want or need —that is our right.

As Alessandro Baricco (2019) indicates, it is not possible to continue educating without

considering the reality we live is guided by a double driving force —physical and virtual
— and so the identities of the subjects today are built simultaneously in those two
spheres. From this perspective, digital inclusion is transformed into a universal right
and becomes an essential requirement for any change that enables to merge the
current cultural trends with teaching, build experimental proposals and, at the same
time, educate to develop a critical view of the new forms of power and control emerging
from that technologies. This forces us, in a group that grows day by day, to recognize

8
which experiences are today crucial, significant, vital from an educational, social, and
cultural point of view. How we articulate the analog with the digital, the school with the
outside, families with school, content with real problems, teachers with students.

When as teachers we strategically use new technologies, we promote the development

of skills that transform the way in which our students begin to transform surrounding
information into knowledge. By providing them with the cognitive, social and digital
tools necessary to validate, check and select information, we pave the way towards
empowerment and participation, towards effective appropriation. It is there when the
use of technology becomes possible to influence, influence and create trends in
different areas (social, cultural, etc.).

4. How is technology related with deep learning goals?

Deep learning develops the learning, creating and ‘doing’ dispositions that learners
need to thrive now and in their futures. In Michael Fullan words: deep learning consists
of creating and using new knowledge in the world. Technology has unleashed learning,
and the potential for students to apply knowledge in the world outside of school.

Figure 2: Four key criteria that define and describe deep learning and help to
determine whether a teacher is a deep learning teacher

9
Research by Professor R. Keith Sawyer, a leading scientific expert on creativity and
learning, emphasises the power of technology to influence and enhance academia by
providing experiences that lead to deep learning. These include allowing students to
learn collaboratively, test out and redesign models, and articulate their knowledge both
visually and verbally.

Imagine a classroom infrastructure that includes wireless technologies, remotely

accessible switches and routers, and collaboration tools to create an “intelligent”
environment for the invention of real-world Internet of Things (IoT) products, services,
and experiences by students. Creation takes place in different venues, for example, in
the classroom during project-based learning or alongside passionate technology peers
via hackathons1. Students model the networks they create in a simulator and prototype
with cloud-based technology at home. Instructors are empowered with a customisable
learning management platform while collaborating with peer instructors across the
world.

Learning science’s interdisciplinary insights are uncovering new approaches to

education. For example, the power of technology to influence and enhance academia.
By applying learning science insights to IT education, we can create a dynamic, digital,
and hands-on learning experience that is tailored, flexible, and relevant, developing the
talent needed to power the digital economy.

At the same time, it is important to recognise the role that a human teacher will always
play in the classroom. They have a unique and personal insight into each learner’s
progress, serving as a role model and local expert, and providing inspiration in a way
technology itself cannot.

Another interesting view is the one Michael Fullan presents in A Rich Seam; this report
is about a radical change in the relationships between all the key players in learning:
students, teachers, technologies, school cultures, curricula and assessments. The
report is also about how and why change is occurring more organically than ever
before. When conditions are so delicately balanced, the discovery of rich seams (what
Kalantzis, Mary & Cope, William call “affordances”) can quickly uncover massive latent
resources.

1
A hackathon is a gathering where programmers collaboratively code in an extreme
manner over a short period of time.

10
In the old pedagogies, a teacher’s quality was assessed primarily in terms of their
ability to deliver content in their area of specialisation. By contrast, in the new
pedagogies model, the foundation of teacher quality is a teacher’s pedagogical
capacity – their repertoire of teaching strategies and their ability to form partnerships
with students in mastering the process of learning. Technology in the new model is
inescapable and it is used to discover and master content knowledge and to enable the
deep learning goals of creating and using new knowledge in the world.

Figure 3 How the New Pedagogies are Different

(From A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning, by Michael Fullan and Maria Langworthy)

The dawning digital era changes fundamental aspects of education. It changes the
traditional roles of teachers and textbooks as the primary sources of content
knowledge. It changes what it is possible for students to do, as technology enables
them to discover, create and use knowledge in the real world faster, more cheaply and
with authentic audiences.

5. Can technology accelerate and deepen the quality of

learning?
The ‘new pedagogies’ are not just instructional strategies. They are powerful models of
teaching and learning, enabled and accelerated by increasingly pervasive digital tools

11
and resources, taking hold within learning environments that measure and support
deep learning at all levels of the education system (Fullan, 2014).

Although the use of education technology will need to vary by context, after COVID-19,
one thing is certain: School systems that are best prepared to use education
technology effectively will be better positioned to continue offering quality education in
the face of school closures. However, focusing solely on distributing hardware and
expecting to see improved student learning is not recommended. Instead, the evidence
reviewed suggests that decision makers should focus on four potential uses of
technology that play to its comparative advantages and complement the work of
teachers to accelerate student learning2:

1. Scaling up quality instruction, such as through prerecorded quality lessons;

2. Facilitating differentiated instruction, through, for example, computer adaptive
learning and live one-on-one tutoring;
3. Expanding opportunities to practice; and
4. Increasing student engagement, through videos and games.

The person-technology collaboration deepens the executive functions related to

decision-making in highly complex situations. This accounts for a selection of cognitive,
knowledge, representation, recovery and construction resources. Likewise, the effects
of technology arise: subsequent changes in the domain of knowledge, skill or depth of
understanding, new skills and abilities transferable to other situations. This is where it
can be seen that the new information and communication technologies act as
facilitators of the construction of knowledge through the cognitive residue they
generate.

6. How to give a good use of technologies without getting

too complicated?
A common misperception is that one must possess Herculean computer skills to get to
apply technologies in the classroom. These days you don’t need to be a lighthouse
teacher with extra resources to be innovative – you just need to allow and intelligently
foster what is already emerging. Increasingly, digital access is freeing teaching and
learning from the constraints of prescribed curricular content. These forces drive
changes in the roles and relationships of students and teachers, among teachers, and

2
Based on REALIZING THE PROMISE: How can education technology improve learning for
all?

12
within organisational systems. The once far-fetched notion of ‘twice the learning for half
the price’ is becoming more possible by the minute.

Some useful tips to get started:

1. Take advantage of the ready-to-use content available. There is so much ready-

to-use content on the web that teachers should not feel pressure to produce videos.
Instead, we may use ready-to-use media.

You may use different website full of great resources for media ranging from
documentaries, interviews, demonstrations, tutorials, primary/secondary sources,
articles, biographies, photography, graphs, artwork, etc. You just need to share a link.

2. Don’t just show them. Make them do something with that information that requires
higher- order thinking. This way students must think critically about the content, engage
with their peers, and produce something (an argument, a clear analytical explanation,
formulate questions, synthesize information from multiple sources, etc.).

3. Use the flipped model to create a student-centered classroom. Focus class time
on getting students practicing where there is a subject area expert in the room. Get
students actively engaging in the learning process. Do more:

 labs, experiments, and fieldwork

 creative writing assignments
 collaborative research projects
 acting, dramatic readings, tableaus
 project based learning
 art work
 reenactments
 debates
 model construction

The class period has the potential to shift from a space where students are passive
observers and consumers in the learning process to a space where they are actively
engaged in a dynamic learning community.

Yet achieving real gains in deep learning is not easy. Again, the challenge is not
technological is pedagogical. Professional teaching capacity must be built for the new

13
pedagogies to be effective. At the heart of these developments is the need for teachers
and students to become excellent life-long learners, individually and collectively.
Helping students to master the learning process; bringing greater visibility to that
process; leveraging the power of peer teaching; connecting the learning to students’
interests and aspirations; and continuously analysing and evaluating learning progress
and choosing learning strategies based on that analysis – all of this must become part
of the core repertoire of our teachers’ expertise as they learn from each other, and with
and from students (Fullan, 2014).

7. How do we assess quality when using new technologies?

Two systems to assess quality emerge when considering the quality assessment
systems used in blended learning modalities, on the one hand, measuring systems
based on data mining techniques and, on the other hand, systems with Likert
questionnaires. Nonetheless, both types face a variety of limitations, though.

Using an instrument with behavioral scales can help overcome many of the limitations
which affect such systems. Behavioral scales allow students to depict their view of the
teacher’s effort, simultaneously reducing the halo effect, leniency error, and even the
influence of biasing variables (Matosas-López et al., 2019). The utilization of behavioral
scales additionally enables the teacher to obtain clear and unambiguous feedback.

Figure 4: CBA evaluation in the “general availability”

category
Adapted from Constructing an Instrument with Behavioral Scales to Assess Teaching
Quality in Blended Learning Modalities

The CBA (Core Behavioral Aspects) (Apendix 1, pág. 27) instrument presents a
detailed inventory of behavioral episodes which help assess teaching quality in blended
learning modalities unambiguously. Following along the lines of previous studies, the

14
behavioral episodes recorded in the final corroborate the outstanding importance of
certain aspects inherent to blended learning models, namely: teacher-student
communication; learning resources; course design; and the teacher’s technical
competencies.

8. What is the impact of technology-mediated learning?

In the first place, I consider that one cannot speak of technology-mediated learning
without first underlining that digital inclusion must be understood as a right connected
to the right to education, as Maggio among other authors points out.

Then, yes, I think it is necessary to be more aware of the fact that technologies are not
neutral. Learn to hack them with relevant pedagogical approaches. The revolution must
be pedagogical.

Bruner (1986) argued that technologies are tools that enhance the ability to think; they
are like “prosthetics” of the mind that extend some of its functions. However, we must
remember that technologies understood as cultural products are not neutral. These
technologies have the capacity to produce transformations in mental functioning and to
actively modify external stimuli. They are instruments that produce changes in the
person who uses them as mediators, and therefore modify their relationship with the
environment. They modify the way of representing a problem and consequently
restructure human action. Technologies give us the opportunity of actively constructing
knowledge in particular symbolic forms (word, graph, picture), and structured in
particular organizational ways (databases, hypermedia), available for exploration and
manipulation (Salomon, 1998). In my view, that is the reason why we should learn to
hack them with relevant pedagogical approaches, neutralizing them with a reflexive
pedagogy.

This scenario forces us (or at least, it should…) to look for pedagogical alternatives and
break with the classical pedagogy. We know that the objectives of learning are different
in an age where we have ubiquitous devices, these cognitive prostheses, and social
media. Learners are different, they construct knowledge in a different way. We know
the patterns of interaction have changed. And we also know technologies do not
produce the change; they only offer affordances (let’s be careful not to use them as a
medium for traditional pedagogy). This is when Reflexive pedagogy emerges in front of
us. It includes elements of constructivist and connectivist pedagogy, and while doing
so, it extends them in five ways (Kalantzis, Mary & Cope, William, 2020):

15
  Social Scaffolds: it important not to reduce learning to a relationship between
an individual and their screen. Today, we have the possibility of creating
learning environments that democratize knowledge using social media. Social
interaction should be formally part of the learning.
 Ergative (from Ancient Greek ἐργᾰ́της “labourer, worker”): Reflexive pedagogy
is oriented to knowledge artifacts and the work required to produce those
artifacts (these may be texts, infographics, videos,simulations, datasets, 3D
objects, and such like). Tests, oriented as they are just to cognition, are
strange things indeed, measuring a limited range of thinking capacities,
principally memory and the correct application of procedure.
 Recursive Co-Design: learning is recursively co-designed. Learners interact
with learning designers. Learners contribute content. Instead of knowledge
spectators, students become knowledge co-creators.
 Productive Diversity: it is an orientation to learner differences where those
differences are explicitly validated and leveraged as a resource. When
learners chose their topics for peer reviewed projects the diversity of empirical
realizations of a particular subject domain becomes valuable. When a learner
receives two or more criterion-referenced peer reviews, the diversity of
interpretations becomes more valuable than just a teacher’s single, often
cursory judgment.
 Transferrable Epistemic Depth: Reflexive pedagogy recommends a
repertoire of instructional practices. This is the basis for what we call “complex
epistemic performance,” or learning that goes beyond factual answer and
correct application of procedures —creative thinking, critical thinking, and
design thinking for instance.

Constructivism — even social constructivist views— focus on the principality of the

individual in learning. These theories do not address learning that occurs outside of
people (i.e. learning that is stored and manipulated by technology) (Kalantzis, Mary &
Cope, William, 2020). As an alternative to the individual, Connectivism proposes the
network as the basis for a theory of learning in the digital age (Siemens, 2005, in
Kalantzis, Mary & Cope, William, 2020).

In terms of learner dispositions, Reflexive pedagogy requires of learners: participation

in horizontal knowledge communities, making of authentic knowledge artifacts, co-
design, the ability to put diversity to work for mutual benefit and the ability to transfer

16
knowledge in a dialectic way putting in action their higher order thinking without losing
sight of grounded realities.

9. How do we know what’s being learnt when we use new

technologies?
Effective teaching and learning requires clear learning goals. It exposes the
fundamental weaknesses of traditional tests and poses puzzling questions about new
assessments. While this can be cast as a problem, in truth it creates new opportunities
to focus on what can be learned and measured in the new era and on how addressing
this issue can reverberate back and help us better define the new pedagogies. So, now
we have learning partnerships, deep learning and accelerated digital innovations in the
equation. How do we assess this pot-pourri of opportunity?

Figure 5: Expectations and Self-Esteem

The new pedagogies must develop new measures that assess new learning outcomes
as well as the practices that lead to such outcomes. Attempts to assess so-called 21st
century learning skills that are detached from actual teaching and learning practices will
be of limited use. Assessment is the weakest part of the new pedagogies model.

Technology in classrooms should be used in an active and transparent way, so that it

enables teachers and pupils to become familiar with technology and using it becomes a
natural part of the teaching process. So, it is not a questions of what is being learnt
when using technology but just how do we know what is being learnt?

All in all, while a few new directions are beginning to gain traction, holistic systems of
new measures are badly needed. The bottom line is that the issue of new assessments
is at the very early stage of development, and represents a major challenge in the

17
immediate future. In this sense it will be easier to generate instances of new
pedagogies than it will be to figure out how to assess them. These two domains—
pedagogical innovation and assessment of learning must go hand in hand. Thus, the
next phase must be marked by identifying and developing measures of the deep
learning outcomes and the pedagogies that produce them.

10. What are the conditions under which these thing can
actually flourish?
If school could become an institution of
engaging the world with the natural idea of
understanding it, deep learning would
flourish. Masses of students would learn
more and develop an active penchant for
improving things.

(Fullan, 2019)

Engage the World, Change the World

This is Dewey, Freire 2.0. Deep learning can only occur if the learner is examining the
world they live in and having an eye to improving it. It is not so much that this

represents a good thing to do, but rather it is the only way to live—the only way to
learn in complex society. You can’t learn if you don’t engage the world, big or small.
And you can’t learn if you are not intimately linking your learning to how to improve the
situation.

Students love to understand and do something about things in the world that need
attention—whether it is addressing homelessness, protecting the garden from
predatory birds, learning how to address inequity, dealing with severe living conditions,
or examining the future of jobs. The best way to learn anything worthwhile is to engage
the world with the idea of understanding it with an eye to changing it for the better.

If school could become an institution of engaging the world with the natural idea of
understanding it, deep learning would flourish. Masses of students would learn more
and develop an active penchant for improving things.

18
 11. Three possible challenges to review today's school

The first great challenge as educators that arises is to develop an information

competence approached transversally in all subjects and in conjunction with the
development of digital competences. Promote skills associated with the search,
selection, evaluation and management of information (in a multiplicity of digital and
non-digital formats and in different textual and discursive typologies), which will affect
the development of autonomous and permanent learning.

The development of information competence is linked to the need to foster ethical

attitudes. Make visible the knowledge and attitudes that we put into action when we are
"prosumers" of information: for example, recognizing the authorship of a source and
the fight against plagiarism.

The second great challenge involves getting out of individualism (in which the school
as an institution has been submerged for a long time). Go in pursuit of the construction
of the collective intellect of which Lévy speaks. Experience this enriched knowledge —
approached from collaborative work— making visible the fact that the information is
distributed.

The school must become a promoter of awareness of communal mental activity, train
boys and girls to be aware of the opportunities of "mutual learning cultures."

The third challenge invites us to connect the outside and inside of the classroom,
extended and open classrooms, materialize learning through networks, understanding
that the latter are possible engines of innovation and change.

The appropriation of technologies can help us to recover the polyphony of voices

typical of a democratic citizenry. A porous classroom (Lion, 2020) can help us connect
the school and its context, informal and formal learning.

The challenge is to create bridges with creative and powerful proposals that promote
the construction of knowledge and the resolution of problems.

12. Three valuable, relevant ideas for understanding

knowledge today

19
1. Bruner argued that technologies are support tools that enhance the
ability to think; they are like “prosthetics” of the mind that extend some
of its functions. However, we must remember that technologies
understood as cultural products are not neutral. These technologies
have the capacity to produce transformations in mental functioning and
to actively modify external stimuli. They are instruments that produce
changes in the person who uses them as mediators, and therefore
modify their relationship with the environment. They modify the way of
representing a problem and consequently restructure human action.

2. One of the most consistent cores of research in technology and

education has been the impact of technology on the minds of subjects
(Salomon, Perkins and Globerson, 1992). The question that immediately
arose was this: can technology make us cognitively more powerful? The
effects produced with technologies can redefine and improve student
performance since they take over part of the cognitive process that
would otherwise be carried out by the person. These benefits arise by
being cultivated through the appropriate design of technologies and their
cultural environments.

3. Playful learning helps us break the ties of the linear, progressive

sequence of a classical didactics focused on explanation-verification
and application. Games develop cognitive plasticity, allows us to work
from subjectivities. These "simulacra" that games give us help the
person learn to know herself/himself. They allow us to create risk
experiences, hypothesize and build interpretive worlds, pose powerful
challenges. Gamifying stimulates the four main neurotransmitters:
dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. We play in "first
person", it gives us pleasure and desire to continue playing to improve
ourselves. It allows us to work from the error, de-dramatize: learn by
recognizing the error as a transferable learning strategy to other
situations and circumstances. And while gamification is just one more
strategy, its versatility and power deserve special consideration.

20
21
 13. Three purposes to introduce collaborative work in
the classroom

1. Encourage learning to learn. Provide a space where students can

build their own knowledge through interaction with their peers and
achieve meaningful learning.

2. Generate positive interdependence. Promote a common goal in which

everyone depends on everyone, which leads them to support each other
and value the work of others.

3. Strengthen individual autonomy. Each student is responsible for a

task and contributes with it to achieve a common goal.

14. Conclusion
The need to generate powerful, mobilizing proposals that truly promote reflective and
critical thinking has emphatically been stated form the beginning. And it has been
demonstrated that technologies can be great allies to achieve this goal. However, in
our region, we face the lack of digital inclusion which has had a profound impact,
especially, on the most vulnerable sectors during the pandemic.

Teachers and students at all levels need a device connected to the Internet to be able
to fully access learning and also to access to different forms of social participation and
the cultural goods that are created in virtuality. From this perspective, digital inclusion is
transformed into a universal right and becomes an essential requirement for any
change that enables to merge the current cultural trends with teaching, build
experimental proposals and, at the same time, educate to develop a critical view of the
new forms of power and control emerging from that technologies.

Technology in the new model is inescapable and it is used to discover and master
content knowledge and to enable the deep learning goals of creating and using new
knowledge in the world. Technology has unleashed learning, and the potential for
students to apply knowledge in the world outside of school.

22
Teaching with technologies involves the challenge of changing teaching practices. The
foundation of teacher quality is not merely based on the teacher’s technical abilities but
mostly in understanding the new ways of knowledge construction and changing the
classical pedagogy focused on explanation and transmission. We, as teachers, should
embraced this opportunity and —as Michael Fullan claims— engage the world, change
the world.

23
 15. References
Anijovich, R. y Cappelletti, G. (2017). La evaluación como oportunidad. Buenos Aires,
Paidós.
Baricco, A. (2019). The game. Buenos Aires: Anagrama

Bruner, Jerome . (1986). Actual Minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. Página 15.
https://archive.org/details/actualmindspossi00brun/page/n7/mode/2up

Fullan, Michael and Langworthy, Maria (2014) A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies
Find Deep Learning. London: Pearson
Fullan, Michael (2019) Our Increasingly Troubled World Creates an Engaging
Opportunity for Students. Education Week (opinion blog) https://bit.ly/3MXU8TN
Gavriel Salomon, David N. Perkins & Tamar Globerson (1992) Coparticipando en el
conocimiento: la ampliación de la inteligencia humana con las tecnologías
inteligentes. Comunicación, Lenguaje y Educación, 4:13, 6-
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Galindo González, Leticia (2015) el aprendizaje colaborativo en ambientes virtuales.

Editorial Centro de estudios e investigaciones para el desarrollo docente. Cenid
AC México. Recuperado en julio de 2021 de:
https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/libro/652184.pdf

Ganimian, Alejandro J.& Vegas, Emiliana & Hess, Frederick M. (2020) REALIZING
THE PROMISE: How can education technology improve learning for all? The
Brookings Institution
Gros Salvat, Begoña. Herramientas culturales y transformaciones mentales:
La construcción del conocimiento en la red: límites y posibilidades. Universidad
de Barcelona.
https://campus.usal.es/~teoriaeducacion/rev_numero_05/n5_art_gros.htm

Kalantzis, Mary & Cope, William. (2020). The Digital Learner - Towards a Reflexive
Pedagogy.

Lion, Carina. Desafiar la enseñanza a través de la gamificación

http://www.americalearningmedia.com/edicion-061/683-entrevistas/8727-
desafiar-la-ensenanza-a-traves-de-la-gamificacion

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Lion, C. (2012). Pensar en red: metáforas y escenarios. En M. Narodowski, & A.
Scialabba, ¿Cómo serán? El futuro de la escuela y las nuevas tecnologías
(págs. 29-45). Buenos Aires: Prometeo.

Lion, C.. (2017). Las tecnologías y las marcas en el desarrollo de la profesión e

identidad docente: parches, enmiendas y nuevos tejidos. En Revista
Entramados - Educación y Sociedad, Año 4, No. 4, noviembre 2017 Pp. 33 - 42
https://fh.mdp.edu.ar/revistas/index.php/entramados/article/download/
2072/2498

Lion, C. (2020) Pensar en red. Recuperado el 25 de junio de 2021 de

https://youtu.be/ZRQraWbVnVo

Lion, C. (2020) Network thinking. Retrieved June 25, 2021 from

https://youtu.be/ZRQraWbVnVo

Lion, C. (2021). Seminario Virtual: Tecnología y Educación. Módulo 3. Pensar en red.

Maggio, Mariana (2012) Enriquecer la enseñanza: los ambientes con alta disposición
tecnológica como oportunidad. 1era Ed. Buenos Aires. Paidos.

Matosas-López, Luis & Aguado, Juan Carlos & Gómez Galán, José. (2019).
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in Blended Learning Modalities. Journal of New Approaches in Educational
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Rodríguez Arocho, Wanda C. (2018) Las tecnologías de la información y la

comunicación en perspectiva histórico-cultural. Este número se publica el 1
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the web. https://tecnologiaeducativa.artes.unc.edu.ar/2017/10/30/lecturas-de-
las-aulas-virtuales-a-los-entornos-de-aprendizaje-en-la-web/

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Blog Entries
Bullmaster-Day, Marcella L., EdD (2021) Formative Assessment Using
Technology https://www.hmhco.com/blog/formative-assessment-using-
technology#:~:text=Dynamic%20formative%20assessment%20allows
%20teachers,what%20they're%20working%20on.
Frezzo, Dennis (2017) Consulting Engineer, Cisco. The role of technology in the
education of the future https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/science-of-
learning/
Seif, Elliott (2018) What is Deep Learning? Who are the Deep Learning Teachers?
https://www.ascd.org/blogs/what-is-deep-learning-who-are-the-deep-learning-
teachers
Tucker, Catlin (2012) Flipped Classroom: Beyond the Videos
https://catlintucker.com/2012/04/flipped-classroom-beyond-the-videos/

26
 16. Apendix 1: Core Behavioral Aspects (CBA)

Category Course introduction

CBA1 Teacher makes an introductory videoconference in the first two weeks of the
course, and posts his/her CV and photo in the LMS
CBA2 Teacher, posts a course presentation in the LMS, outlining the course
objectives and the subject importance
CBA3 Teacher schedules all course activities, topics, and sections/modules on the
LMS calendar
CBA4 Teacher posts in the LMS both the teaching guide and the study guide for
following the course
Categories Evaluation system description
CBA1 Teacher draws up an evaluation guide and posts it in the LMS from the
beginning of the course
CBA2 Teacher identifies in detail which evaluation activities will take place online
and which ones will be face-to-face
CBA3 Teacher uses a variety of evaluation tools within the LMS (peer assessment,
rubrics, quizzes, assignments, etc.)
CBA4 Teacher posts an organized summary of all evaluation activities in the
assessment tab within the LMS
Category Time management
CBA1 Teacher begins video lectures at the time indicated, or posts them on
schedule
CBA2 Teacher maximizes video lecture time by minimizing potential interruptions
from the students
CBA3 Teacher notifies in advance whenever there is a change in the date or time of
video lectures
CBA4 Teacher makes the best use of time during online office hours
Category General availability
CBA1 Teacher defines days and times for online office hours to meet with students
via videoconferencing
CBA2 Teacher schedules at least one session of online office hours per week
CBA3 Teacher responds to the student by email, chat, or even videoconference if
the inquiry requires it
CBA4 Teacher responds to inquiries within 24-48 hours

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Category Organizational consistency
CBA1 Teacher sticks with the days and times of online office hours throughout the
course
CBA2 Teacher holds at least one video lecture per month, following what was
indicated at the beginning of the course
CBA3 Teacher keeps all required resources for the course properly organized within
the LMS (teaching material, evaluation activities, study guide, evaluation
guide, etc.)
CBA4 Teacher follows the scheduled program of activities, topics, sections/modules
throughout the course
Category Evaluation system implementation
CBA1 Teacher maintains grading method described in the course evaluation guide
CBA2 Teacher holds evaluation activities on the dates scheduled according to the
official academic calendar
CBA3 Teacher carries out the same evaluation activities that were stated in the
course evaluation guide
CBA4 Teacher offers students the chance to review evaluation activities online using
LMS resources (email, chat, videoconference)
Category Dealing with doubts
CBA1 Teacher creates and maintains an atmosphere in the LMS forum that
encourages students to express their doubts
CBA2 Teacher schedules individual or group videoconferences when questions
cannot be resolved through email, chat, or the course forum
CBA3 Teacher responds to questions expressed in email, chat, or the course forum
with specific messages containing clear, relevant information
CBA4 Teacher answers students’ questions using examples from practical
experiences
Category Explicative capacity
CBA1 Teacher uses video lectures every month to explain first-hand the most
important concepts of the course
CBA2 Teacher, in addition to traditional presentations, also uses multimedia
resources such as interactive presentations (Sway, Prezi, etc.) or podcasts
CBA3 Teacher summarizes critical content through concept maps
CBA4 Teacher combines theoretical with practical activities during the course
Category Follow-up easiness

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CBA1 Teacher uses the LMS forum to give weekly/monthly reminders of aspects that
are of interest to the course

29