Leveraging Students’ Digital Savvy for Artful Teaching

The bell rings. The din of friendly chatter fades and students bustle to their classes. One group enters a classroom, sits in assigned seats and opens to page 14 of the textbook, waiting for the teacher to begin.

In another classroom, the teacher asks students to break into small groups, discuss the class novel for ten minutes, and then return to their desks for the day’s lesson.

Different classrooms, same result: teachers lead, students follow. Both are prevalent models of instruction in schools today. But is either the model of teaching and learning that will sustain our nation into the 21st century?

Chris Faltis thinks not. Faltis, who holds the Dolly and David Fiddyment Chair in Teacher Education and directs teacher education at UC Davis, believes educators are primed to break away from the teacher-centered format that has dominated classroom discourse for several hundred years, if for no other reason than they must.

“In such changing and difficult times, we have to ask how we can reinvent ourselves in ways that make sense to students and faculty,” said Faltis. “We have to be prepared for a whole new set of skills and experiences in our students who were born into a digital world.” In this environment, students enter the classroom expecting and prepared to explore questions of interest to them and, in many instances, are more experienced than their teachers in collaborating online to find answers. In this new model, where virtual worlds exist and burgeon exponentially, students are no longer content to be consumers of information, so teachers have to find new and better ways to work with their students to take part in the creation of knowledge. Faltis sees this as a basically artistic endeavor.

“Artists are constantly seeking to improve, wondering: ‘if I combine these colors, what happens? If I use these brushes, what effect do I achieve?’” said Faltis, who is also an oil painter. “Teachers ask similar questions: ‘if students engage in these kinds of experiences, what will kids learn?’ Every teacher is on a lifelong journey of discovery, and their students are their collaborators.”

Faltis, who joined the School of Education in January, believes one of the School’s missions is to provide its budding classroom artists with a few powerful tools for creative and effective teaching and learning. In addition to providing instruction in curriculum development, content standards and solid pedagogical practices, the School’s teacher education program prepares student teachers to “try things out, ask good questions, and find out how kids feel about their instruction.”

“Our whole program encourages inquiry into practice and empathy with students,” said Faltis. “In this way, we are preparing masterful teachers who can craft their lessons and interactions with students in ways that make learning joyous.”

According to Faltis, joyous learning occurs only in an environment where teacher and students are actively engaged in discussing and inquiring deeply about topics that matter to society and students, and in ways that are meaningful and relevant to students. Most notably, the digital savvy of students presents a challenge not only to teachers in the classroom but also to the School of Education in its approach to preparing those teachers.

“With the advent of Web 2.0 and true social interaction online, students have much more agency over creating their worlds,” said Faltis.

Students across the social spectrum have access to the Web outside of school, so they bring to their K-12 classrooms a need for accessing information and creating knowledge that is often not supported by the standard classroom format. Ironically, many students have much less access to technology in school than out.

At the same time, though, Faltis points out that teachers can use technology to interact with students beyond the classroom. This is especially true for our ability to serve student teachers in the School of Education.

“The amount of interaction we can foster on the Web is amazing, “ said Faltis. “For instance, we have the opportunity to model for teachers how they can go beyond lectures and reading materials to embellish content and to take advantage of the collaborative and image-based nature of the Web.”

In his own classes, Faltis is developing the use of wikis, digital-based white boards, where students post documents, comments, and research that other students can access and respond to.

“They will actually be creating their own knowledge base by doing this,” said Faltis. “In the past, students might photocopy their papers and share them with their peers, but only the writer was privy to a peer’s comments. With wikis, everyone is in on the conversation, and the learning grows exponentially.”

For Faltis, the best teacher views teaching through an aesthetic lens and is a lifelong learner, who guides and is guided by new understandings. Technology merely provides a new set of tools teachers can use to set their students on their multiple quests for understanding.

“Good teachers encourage their students to gather information, share it and show evidence that they understand what they have learned,” said Faltis. “The Web is just one more tool empowering us to treat our students as knowledge seekers, who have control over their own learning.”