Digital Learning Day is on its way on Thurs. Feb. 28, highlighting education via electronic methods. With recent changes to education through the shift from physical to digital, comes the question: Which is more effective?
Cécile Thompson is a retired French and History teacher that has 32 years of teaching experience in Canada, Rwanda, and Japan. Retired since 1991, she knows the ins and outs of teaching and learning before the digital era.
“Basically, it was all on the teacher,” she says. “And I think the personality of the teacher had a lot to do with it too, because you had to motivate the kids to listen to you and they had to find it interesting. You were almost like a clown sometimes in front of the classroom, acting out things.”
She was also teaching when digital technology began to enter the classroom. “But most of the teachers were not computer-literate. And in those days, most school boards could only afford a few computers per school anyway,” she says.
Thompson describes her experience with these rare computers. “I remember in my class, I’d have maybe one computer in my classroom for one week out of three,” she says. “Since I couldn’t teach with it, I would use one of the kids who had a computer at home and who obviously was conversant with it to teach his classmates. They had a ball, but I couldn’t help.”
With such drastic changes to education over time, Thompson compares and contrasts the classroom experience.
With possible variance in teaching styles, she sees the increase in digital learning as mostly beneficial. “Not all teachers were able or willing to reach every student where he or she was at,” she says. “This way, it’s not so dependent on the teacher.”
