Clearing the confusion…

In my first blog I vaguely mentioned that technology is taking over education and we should stick to the more conventional ways of teaching as I clearly showcased my distaste of digital pedagogy in the classroom; let’s just say that I was a bit of an “old horse”. Without knowing what digital pedagogy entails and the important fact that it isn’t just a tool used to make lessons more interesting or to replace teachers but it is a scholarship itself (as mentioned in DECODING DIGITAL PEDAGOGY, PT. 1: BEYOND THE LMS). 

Preparing for glaskas brought a new perspective of using digital pedagogy to improve my lessons, having an introduction using a short video clip or having a quiz to test the learner’s prior knowledge is so much more useful than written tests. I mentioned in my previous blog that you memory improves when you write, but that does not relate to testing prior knowledge, which is a crucial part of a well-planned lesson.

I agree that the LMS is simply premature, but like anything new, it must get accustomed to. While it will encourage easy teaching and learning at home, the interaction between teacher and learner will be lost, which also plays an important role in dynamic teaching and learning.

In DECODING DIGITAL PEDAGOGY, PT. 1: BEYOND THE LMS, it is mentioned that for the digital pedagogue, teaching begins with inquiry, that is such an important statement that shouldn’t only be applied to the digital pedagogues, but for all teachers in general. To improve a learner’s knowledge, you must first know what his pre-knowledge of the certain subject entails.

Reading DECODING DIGITAL PEDAGOGY, PT. 2: (UN)MAPPING THE TERRAIN, it becomes more clear to me that digital pedagogy is not a robot that would take over the teacher’s place in the classroom, but we should rather see it as a tool to improve the quality of work the teacher delivers, to expand the attention span of the learner and to all in all engage the teacher and learner in critical and analytic discussions in a creative and innovative way using the “electronic elements” that are available.

Thus, humbled by these two articles, I must contradict my previous blog post, and say, digital pedagogy is the way of the future. We as educators should use all tools and elements available to us, to enrich the minds of our learners, to improve the quality of education and teach our learners to not jump to conclusions (like I did) when you have minimum knowledge of the subject (again, I’m sorry). 

Our learners are our future and digital pedagogy is paving the path to the future. It’s time to jump on the bandwagon and be on our merry way to a better and more sustainable education system.