Exploring what Formal Learning Involves in the Digital Era

Abstract

Children need to learn at school the things that matter in the 21st century. What does really matter though and what does 21st century’s primary school learning involve? Assessing the impact of technology use in education is a complex topic with many factors and variables involved (such as social, cultural, economic and political). At the same time, it is important to develop technologies to assess what matters, rather than what is easy to assess. This paper seeks to explore what this involves and the role that educational technology plays particularly in primary school mathematics. Nowadays children learn through connections and collaborations facilitated by technology that could then lead to knowledge creation. Nevertheless, there is no technology that has an impact on learning on its own. This depends on how it used. In order to address this further we present, in the second part of the paper, a set of recommendations that could be relevant to educators, researchers, policymakers and the industry.