ABSTRACT
One consequence of the COVID- 19 pandemic has been the increased use of digital technology in our lives. For adolescents, technology is being used in an increasingly wide range of contexts: for learning, to remain connected with each other and to have fun. This increase has, however, raised concerns about the impact technology may have on overall wellbeing. As we face ongoing disruption, we need to focus on how we can better support adolescents to navigate an increasingly digital world. We need to better understand their experiences and how engagement in this digital world can affect feelings of wellbeing. To aid comprehension of these experiences, this chapter draws on three scenarios to illustrate typical experiences of adolescents engaging with digital technology in their home and school life. These scenarios help to unpack different dilemmas faced by adolescents and give life to the real issues and benefits of technology. Drawing on Dodge's concept of wellbeing, we explore the points where challenges are countered by resources and benefits to balance the impact of technology in adolescents' lives. Our understanding is based on the view that use of digital technologies is shaped by sociocultural context and plays a fundamental role in education and general wellbeing. Whilst the chapter speaks from an Aotearoa New Zealand context, these are global issues faced by adolescents everywhere. © 2023 Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers.
ABSTRACT
This article is a collective response to the 2020 iteration of The Manifesto for Teaching Online. Originally published in 2011 as 20 simple but provocative statements, the aim was, and continues to be, to critically challenge the normalization of education as techno-corporate enterprise and the failure to properly account for digital methods in teaching in Higher Education. The 2020 Manifesto continues in the same critically provocative fashion, and, as the response collected here demonstrates, its publication could not be timelier. Though the Manifesto was written before the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the responses gathered here inevitably reflect on the experiences of moving to digital, distant, online teaching under unprecedented conditions. As these contributions reveal, the challenges were many and varied, ranging from the positive, breakthrough opportunities that digital learning offered to many students, including the disabled, to the problematic, such as poor digital networks and access, and simple digital poverty. Regardless of the nature of each response, taken together, what they show is that The Manifesto for Teaching Online offers welcome insights into and practical advice on how to teach online, and creatively confront the supremacy of face-to-face teaching. © 2021, The Author(s).