I recently attended an interactive presentation for parents by Nina Jackson of Independent Thinking Ltd (UK). Nina had spent the day with secondary school children exploring critical thinking and how they bring it to their learning. She then engaged us in a thought-provoking journey concerning the merging of our thinking brains with the digital world. This is the journey our children, and many adults are beginning to make, but how do we as parents consciously continue to share the experience with them?

Our Thinking Brains are what make us human. It is the ability to connect to other people, to recognize and have emotions and to solve problems whilst doing all these. The digital world is our current reality in which we are using digital devices for learning each day. Our children who have grown up in this world are already taking advantage of these opportunities and it is important as parents that we don’t get left behind. Nina spoke of the benefits that this kind of ‘blended learning’ brings to now and the future. She encouraged us to explore the digital world with our children. Get them to show us and share what they are doing and most importantly to ‘play’ and have a go ourselves!

Some parents voiced their concerns about helping their children stay safe in this digital era. Nina stressed the importance of discussing this with our children, make them aware of their ‘digital footprint’, perhaps for added security getting them to turn off their ‘location setting’ when at home (turning it back on outside the home) and explore ‘parental settings’ but remember that older children may share or use devices without settings outside the home.

In the future employers will be looking to find people who can successfully merge the thinking brain with the digital brain. In conclusion the digital learning environment is the future and we need to embrace it with our children now.

Nina’s enthusiastic discussion left parents with plenty to think about and an itching to try out as many apps as possible before they had to finally hand back the learning device to their kids!

 

 

Lynn Frank is a coordinator for Passage, the Parent Support Group for the English-speaking community in Luxembourg. If you would like to know more about our work contact us at passage.parents@gmail.com