Decoding digital pedagogy

Blog posts here and here.

So, it seems that digital pedagogy has made us all worse teachers. Finally, something to blame. The blame bubble is quite big, since people still can't arrive at a consensus on what digital pedagogy actually is, but the blame bubble is there and I'm not in it. So all's well.

Actually, that's not true. According to the blog posts, bad/non-existing digital pedagogy makes us worse teachers. Not so cool anymore, since the blame bubble is shrinking, and it seems to be shrinking in on me.

What's the problem? Well, it seems that, on the one hand, we forget that there is a difference between being a teacher and being a pedagogue. Pedagogy is a skill (albeit a skill which can become very meta if you think about it too much). And it is a skill that one developes over many years of constant questioning, examining, experimentation, and some more questioning.

Blame bubble shifting somewhere else. Good news.

On the other hand, teachers (and pedagogues)... well, they become lazy. They throw everything at the digital wall and see what sticks and then they don't have to work or worry about it ever again. They give up, because the work has been done and the powers that be are happy. And in the context of online learning, they don't have the human interaction with the students anymore, so that motivation - and guilt - is taken out of the equation as well. The essence of what makes a good pedagogue, the ability to reflect, be critical about a lesson and try something new if it didn't work, evaporates.

Fly, blame bubble, fly!

It's not all doom and gloom, though. The blog posts suggest that a lot of the problem is trying to unlearn pedagogy that isn't useful in a digital sense, and replacing it with pedagogy that is (or spending time trying to create pedagogy that is). And when it comes to digital pedagogy, I'm a tabula rasa, a clean slate. So half the battle is won, right?

I think what it boils down to is playing with your toys and breaking them and then putting them together in new ways. Mindful ways that will enrich your teaching, not detract from it. Just because PowerPoint has some really sexy bullet points, doesn't mean you have to use them. For example, I once observed a microteaching lesson by a Korean elementary school English teacher. She made a picture dictionary. PowerPoint. Nothing new there. Until we came to the word comb (v). Now, how do you explain that verb? How do you explain it with a picture? She used an animated GIF. (Yes, PowerPoint is great for viewing those.) Magic! The motion is there, students instantly know what is happening, the teacher doesn't have to stand in front of class and pull her fingers through her hair. The teacher took an old and busted toy and gave it new hotness, which ended up enriching her teaching.
(Yeah, probably not the best example, but it is Monday, so be kind.)

I guess there's no need for a blame bubble, because there is no excuse. The most important things about creating an effective digital pedagogy are tinkering with toys, bucking conventional wisdom, and realising that if you don't need it, don't use it. But if you do use it, don't be lazy about it. Be critical. And have fun.

Digital pedagogy and teaching naked

(First things first: this will be an English blog post by a very Afrikaans guy about things digital and analogue. I'm sure that Afrikaans has by now caught up with all the jargon of the digital age, but I haven't. So broken English will have to suffice. And the blog has English spell check. Love me some spell check.)

The reading for this week poses a lot of questions. Have we become too obsessed with using technology for the sake of technology in the classrooms? What happens if ESKOM fails us and we can't use all the tech toys we wanted to? Can we use the digital tools of this day and age without wires and electrons and 1's and 0's?

However, it also got me thinking; how can I use these tools, whether ESKOM dependent or not, in my science classroom? And, more importantly, how can I use it in such a way that it helps the learners engage with the content, rather than it just being a case of me making a couple of random PowerPoint slides and patting myself on the back for a job well done?

(Oh, PowerPoint, the opium of the modern teacher!)

Not all of these questions are easy to answer. The reading makes a good argument for not just blindly waiting for a deus ex machina to arise from our dull, badly designed PowerPoint presentations and save our subjects. It cautions that, while the tools are there, the pedagogy doesn't always work with them.

Surely, though, it isn't all bad. And it's not. There are a number of things we can take from the electronic world and hack so that it allows us to cut the chord, and engage with our subject matter in a way that brings new meaning to what it is we are discussing in the classroom. A great example from the reading is the one about text mining. One of my favourite shortcuts is Ctrl-F (Or whatever the equivalent is for Apple fanboys. You know who you are.). Who needs to waste precious seconds skimming through random text? Ctrl-F, baby! The words are even highlighted for you. Yet, I think that's the point of the text mining example. Ctrl-F disconnects you from the text. With a little more effort, you can easily do the same with a highlighter and a book. (Or a book book, as IKEA calls it.) The advantage of the second method is that you are bound to bump into context at some point in the exercise. Even if you don't, it is much easier to go back in the book, look for the words you have highlighted, and read the whole paragraph.

So yes, we can use our electronic tools for good, and we can adapt some of them in case of load shedding. But now, what about in my own science classroom?

This is a little more difficult to answer, and it is something I'll have to really think about. What do we use electronics for in the classroom? PowerPoint and YouTube, PowerPoint and YouTube. Wash, rinse, repeat. I don't know. Maybe I can have learners write their prac reports on blogs and read and comment on others. Maybe they can make vlogs documenting the progress of their research projects.

Maybe I'll learn something clever from the comments.