Role of Media and Technology in the Digital Era of 21st Century Education

The world is changing very rapidly. Digital media technology has innovative web-based services. Our global future is developing through communication, collaboration, and innovation- all of which are dependent on technology. The Internet is now a global marketplace, a global workspace, and a global meeting place that provides a vast array of opportunities to not only learn about the world but interact with the world. Digital media in a global era offers more than using technology to do the things that were done by hand before- such as data or word processing, retrieving information, presenting knowledge, and one-to-one communication- it now allows easy participation in the sophisticated global experiences and networks that our wired world affords. Much has been learned in the past about the potential of a technology-rich approach to education. This paper reviews the generations of learners that teachers are having today and how these generations impacted the transformation of education in the digital era. This paper also presents some of the emerging technologies and discusses the need for pedagogical transformation to invent new forms of teaching and learning as well as the importance of redesigning and rethinking education in the digital era.