Online Continued Learning for All Educators: Transforming Their TPACK

Introduction

What does the future hold for online education as more and more digital technologies (hereafter referred to as technologies) are infused in programs that must transform higher education faculty’s understanding for guiding future teachers in teaching with technologies through online professional development? At the turn of the century, schools engaged in rewiring projects for supporting the increasing acceptance of the Internet. By 2005, Smartboards replaced chalkboards and overhead projectors were used for displaying computer output. In 2010, mobile technologies, such as iPads, were identified as having potential as learning tools – tools that students would use as much as or even in place of their textbooks. By 2012, some schools were distributing iPads rather than textbooks to each student for use throughout the school year, both at school and home. In 2016, while iPads continued to be used by students, more and different mobile technologies emerged as preferred learning tools, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones. What will happen in the future years? Will Google Classrooms streamline the process of sharing files between teachers and students? Certainly, the cloud with its anywhere access will continue to play an important role for information storage and easy access for students to work at school and home as well as for their parents and teachers to communicate. Some may even wonder if online education will replace classroom face-to-face instruction.

While the technologies that students depend on will continue to evolve, the future of educational technologies is actually more about the teaching and learning in which the students are and will be engaged. As urged in the Partnership for 21^st Century Learning (2015) and the Thoughtful Learning Organization (2016), basic 21^st century literacy now highlights the 4C’s as learning and innovation skills for successful citizenship in a global society, acknowledging the importance of critical thinking, creative thinking, communication and collaboration. Will this direction be revised by 2020 to include more and perhaps different high-level expectations? Some scholars now hypothesize education in 2028. Will schools as we know them in 2019 be the same in 2028? Will students attend online classes more than the face-to-face classes? Just how will education change by then and how will technology form that change? And, how will teachers’ knowledge need to change to adapt to the changes in order to adequately guide student learning?

Some people think that as technology evolves and expands, teaching will increasingly be done by and with the technology rather than teachers. Actually, teachers are and will continue to be crucial players in the design and implementation of the educational experiences. Their knowledge and skills will be influential in designing appropriate instructional strategies and learning environments for facilitating students in learning and applying skills such as the 4C’s as they develop subject matter competence. Such changes will be ones with which teachers (1) are likely unfamiliar, (2) have not experienced in their own learning, or (3) have received little, if any, guidance in thinking about teaching and learning. In essence, these redesign challenges will continue to extend the need for teachers to think outside their traditional views of how their subject matter content is learned, communicated, and taught. And as noted by Joel Gardner (https://elearningindustry.com/inspirational-elearning-quotes-for-elearning-professionals, n.d.), as professionals they will need to continue improving their knowledge for teaching with technologies and this challenge brings the need for continuing professional development of some nature.