Chapter 9: Emerging technologies

Key Takeaways

• learners now have powerful tools through social media for creating their own learning materials or for demonstrating their knowledge;
• students can now use social media to create their own online personal learning environments;
• teacher presence and guidance is still likely to be necessary to ensure high quality learning via social media;
• teachers need to find the middle ground between complete learner freedom and over-direction to enable learners to use social media to develop the key skills needed in a digital age.
• simulations, serious games, and augmented/virtual reality can improve student motivation and teach tasks that would be difficult otherwise;
• serious games, AR and VR, and AI have substantial costs involved in creating new applications, but have great potential as open educational resources;
• AI’s value as a medium for learning has been limited to date and there are serious ethical, privacy and transparency issues in the application of AI to teaching and learning that still need to be addressed;
• AI may have more potential for disruption outside the formal education system. If successful, commercial use of AI for teaching and learning could provide an existential challenge to public education