This past week has been one of discovery. About myself, about the lecturers and their teaching styles and the modules and what they entail. One question stood out and it's a very important one at that - "what kind of teacher would you like to be?" Part of my answer is that I'd like to be a pedagogue.
That may sound a bit corny considering last week I was blogging about how I'd just discovered the word. But the concept of being a pedagogue is intriguing to say the least. Sean Michael Morris writes in Decoding Digital Pedagogy that pedagogy experiments relentlessly and encourages lifelong learning. As students we most times don't consider whether we've learnt anything, or whether we take something from the class that will impact us for a long time. Being a future teacher is even more nerve wrecking, as we now have to be the ones encouraging learning from in front of the class. And by future I mean tomorrow - "Glaskas" here we go!
That is only one aspect of pedagogy. Being so broadly defined, digital pedagogy is all about change. It's about not falling into habits and pushing the boundaries of education. It's about innovation and interaction and a word I quite liked from the article - Community. Community from my perspective implies learning both ways (between teacher and student and vise versa), an interaction beyond just names and student numbers and a relationship built on the foundation of learning.
Community also spans beyond just the traditional classroom. In order for us to be effective pedagogues online, we need to develop online communities which promote learning through interaction and discussion. This is why some online courses come under bad light for the lack of lifelong learning they cultivate.
While innovation and change can be wonderful, the teaching and learning interaction is still the most important. I spoke a lot about teachers using their tools effectively in my previous blog (so I wont get into that now) except to comment on the following quote by Jesse Stommel: "None of these tools have what we value most about education coded into them in advance. The best digital tools inspire us, often to use them in ways the designer couldn’t anticipate'." After reading it, I found myself excited to take the challenge of being an innovative teacher. One who is not afraid of trying new things for the benefit of learning.
Tuesday, 23 February 2016
Wednesday, 17 February 2016
Teaching and it's tools
It is amazing how much I've learnt about teaching in my first two weeks of doing PGCE. The meaning of pedagogy is one of those things. Used in every lecture (more than once) it involves both the practice and theory of teaching. Fyfe states that "Digital pedagogy is often presumed to be just something that uses electronic tools or computers. This is unsatisfying as it often limits the teaching to the extent of its tools" That statement is what I believe relates the essence of teaching to us - the relationship and interaction between the student and teacher.
It's all well and good to have exciting tools to work with, but the effectiveness of teaching is minimized when they are not used effectively. I can remember listening to a teacher of mine and thinking "I can read off slides too, teaching is easy". But in order to become a dynamic teacher, engagement is the key, regardless of the resources available in the school.
With the progress of technology and its use in education, the tools we use can easily become a crutch when the essence of teaching is forgotten. Digital pedagogy is supposed to assist in teaching, not take the place of it. While digital may not only refer to electronic devices, books and notes and also be highly ineffective when the teaching element is removed. "If you try to cut a steak with a spoon you're going to have a very hard time". Its all about how you use your tools.
Another thing technology does is feed on our need for instant gratification. We want what we want, without having to wait or work too hard for it. This may be destructive to learning in a sense that learning requires us to engage and grapple with the content, not just instantly discover the answer. This is reiterated in Fyfe (2011), which speaks of how easy it is to search of needed terms while reading, without understanding the context thereof.
This blog shouldn't scare us away from technology in the classroom, but rather make us think about the most effective ways of using it. Let us not forget the ultimate goal of teaching is learning, both for teachers and students.
It's all well and good to have exciting tools to work with, but the effectiveness of teaching is minimized when they are not used effectively. I can remember listening to a teacher of mine and thinking "I can read off slides too, teaching is easy". But in order to become a dynamic teacher, engagement is the key, regardless of the resources available in the school.
With the progress of technology and its use in education, the tools we use can easily become a crutch when the essence of teaching is forgotten. Digital pedagogy is supposed to assist in teaching, not take the place of it. While digital may not only refer to electronic devices, books and notes and also be highly ineffective when the teaching element is removed. "If you try to cut a steak with a spoon you're going to have a very hard time". Its all about how you use your tools.
Another thing technology does is feed on our need for instant gratification. We want what we want, without having to wait or work too hard for it. This may be destructive to learning in a sense that learning requires us to engage and grapple with the content, not just instantly discover the answer. This is reiterated in Fyfe (2011), which speaks of how easy it is to search of needed terms while reading, without understanding the context thereof.
This blog shouldn't scare us away from technology in the classroom, but rather make us think about the most effective ways of using it. Let us not forget the ultimate goal of teaching is learning, both for teachers and students.
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