Digital Pedagogy or a slave to it?

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. “A quote by Albert Einstein. As we all know we learn when we are interested in something and we want to know more about it. Now the question is how do we use the digital pedagogy in the classroom to ensure optimal success for our students? The article points to it by saying that the student should be central to our teaching and not technology. How can technology serve the student in facilitating learning and peek his interest in a subject. Now that we have powerful search engines such as google much of the authoritative power, where knowledge is concerned, is taken away from the teacher. Knowledge is a click of a button away.

We should do away with an old system that no longer serves the greater good for young minds in this day and age. It might have worked well before but, today we see that change everywhere is more apparent life has become more risky and uncertain. Giving standardised tests and hoping as a student that your teacher has prepared you well enough so that there is no surprises but, life is full of surprises. How does this prepare our students for life? Failure has gotten such a bad reputation in our society, it is like one of the most feared words in our dictionary. What if students stop trying? Should we not encourage kids when they fall down to get back up instead? “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. “Thomas Edison the inventor of the light bulb.

A students mind is like sponge but, we have to keep that spark alive in him to want to know more. How do we do this? Engage with your students, let them participate, question them and let them find the answer. You as a teacher merely serves as a guide, guiding the students through you questioning them. Let the students collaborate with each other and use technology to find the answer. A student far better retains the knowledge he discovered for himself than that what was given to him. This was not the way I was taught at school but, seeing how the lectures in this classroom has become such an effective engagement in learning, I am left to question most of the way I was taught. A quote from the movie called The Matrix, “Trinity: Neo… nobody has ever done this before. Neo: I know. That is why it’s going to work. “

Digital pedagogy unplugged

What are the reasons for digital pedagogy to become unplugged? Some of the main points that stand out for me from this article is that classrooms have become bogged down by using electronic equipment in uncreative ways, it in other words it has become more digital than pedagogical. Also another point to be made is that students seem to learn best when Q&A happens and person to person discussions occur. The article uses the term Edu-hacking and describes that is when unfamiliar and alien perspectives are introduced on representations of educational protocols. This article seems aimed in terms of Edu-hacking so that we view digital pedagogy in a whole new light.

It gives several examples of how digital pedagogy can become unplugged but still remain in the digital age. Some of the examples are by doing labor intensive work in order to understand how digital and analogue matching might work if you were to use a search engine.  Another example is the term “Teaching Naked”, whereby the author does not mean literally to teach naked but to see how can we not bore our class to death by showing them lots of power point slides and they just have to take it all in but, to actually involve the class through Q&A and person to person discussions. In another section the lecturer does not entirely separate the digital from non-digital in the course but, instead devotes a day to lecturing where the students all see the text they are working with for the first time. This brings about that haptic engagement with the subject that he argues is critical to learning.

I there a place for digital pedagogy? Of course by moving the digital of pedagogy to the periphery of the classroom namely the students using it together amongst students in creative ways to interact with the subject matter but, leaving the classroom unplugged one can than indeed see the place for digital pedagogy in today’s age.