Rethinking the classroom upon the digital literacy perspective

Abstract

The presence of technology in the classroom has been clearly evident. Therefore, it is necessary to rethink about the process of teacher education (MORAN, 2007; VALENTE, 2003). Traditional teaching methods, which use only the voice of the teacher, blackboard, chalk and textbooks, no longer meet the interests and expectations of the students because they have been inserted and connected to the virtual world, which offers them a range of possibilities for communication and interaction with people around the world. So rethinking teaching practices in the current teaching and learning contexts requires new teacher attitudes towards the virtual world. Thus, it is necessary for teachers to become digitally literate. Besides knowing a number of teaching possibilities, these teachers need to know how to use them efficiently in order to accomplish their purposes, not only reproducing old teaching/learning paradigms. However, for any teacher to be able to operate the machine in their favor, they need to be exposed to continuing education. With this in mind, the objective of this paper is to point out theoretical and practical perspectives on instrumental teaching, which will contribute to the teacher education, as required by the current classroom. Therefore, data provided by a group of teachers who work in public schools in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, will be analyzed.