Teaching in the Knowledge Society: New Skills and Instruments for Teachers

Citation

du Preez, M. (2006), "Teaching in the Knowledge Society: New Skills and Instruments for Teachers", Online Information Review, Vol. 30 No. 6, pp. 756-757. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520610716315

Several new publications are currently focusing on the role information communication technologies (ICTs) have and could have in enhancing teaching and learning experiences of especially distance learning students. One such book is Teaching in the Knowledge Society: New Skills and Instruments for Teachers. This extensive volume was compiled by Antonio Cartelli. It consists of 29 chapters, divided into six sections, and is written by teachers and researchers who specialise in didactics, pedagogy, e‐learning, ICT literacy and distance learning. It adopts special perspectives for the analysis of how ICT influences education to better describe the context to all role players in the teaching‐learning process.

Section 1 analyses the changes induced by ICTs on the ways of knowing and learning. The five chapters in this section discuss the different points of views regarding the subject, the community/organisation and the society. It also proposes the need for answering to new individual or social needs in changing environments.

An analysis of the environments where teachers and professors are involved in is discussed in Section 2. Two main themes emerge from this debate:

1. 1.

   teaching style as the main way for teacher/student interaction; and

2. 2.

   learning environment and the teacher's role and function within this environment.

Carmen de Pablos Heredero differentiates among three different teaching styles in Chapter 7: the traditional one where teachers and students are present in a classroom; the distance teaching style where the personal interaction between student and teacher is based on different materials; and, the virtual style in which a permanent relation between students and lectures is established via a network.

Section 3 focuses on students' success in e‐learning and distance education courses as well as the use of ICT for improving teaching‐learning success. It discusses why students' drop out of e‐learning and analyses some variables marking the phenomenon. It describes the influence of individuals' learning styles on students' performances in e‐learning courses as this emerges from literature and personal experience. This is followed by analyses of the systematic use of ICT for letting people access teaching‐learning phenomenon/evolution in real time and a proposal for the paradigmatic change for didactics and education administration.

The two main fields of interest that arise from Section 4 are collaborative and cooperative learning and the strategies to obtain the best results from them and the use of simulation as systematic teaching strategy. ICT solutions for the use of special virtual environments devoted to teaching‐learning such as e‐learning scenarios, virtual reality environment, and instrument for the use of knowledge management in e‐learning receive attention in section five.

Finally, the web and its transformation in the semantic web and media selection for better results in teaching are discussed as two different kinds of resources teachers should include in their pedagogy.

Teaching in the Knowledge Society is a great new resource for teachers wishing to learn more about the new skills and instruments that have become available to enrich their pedagogy and enhance the learning experiences of their students through the use of ICT. References appear at the end of each chapter as well as endnotes where applicable.