Pedagogy Like a Baby

"The best digital tools inspire us, often to use them in ways the designer couldn’t anticipate. The worst digital tools attempt to dictate our pedagogies, determining what we can do with them and for whom. The digital pedagogue teaches her tools, doesn’t let them teach her." - Jesse Stommel.

 

 

The most important fact that stood out to me while reading these two articles,

Decoding Digital Pedagogy, pt. 2: (Un)Mapping the Terrain and Decoding Digital Pedagogy, pt. 1: Beyond the LMS, were the fact that digital pedagogy is a lot like a young child growing up.

 

Let me explain.

Children are confusing things. They are not orderly or in any way neat and organized at all. That is how their brain works. It is all-over-the-place and the best thing about this is they, all of us, were born this way. We learned how to speak by blabbing different sounds and we learned how to walk by crawling and falling all over first. The schooling system wants us to become organized, stand in straight lines and sit in neat little rows exactly like the person in front of you and worst of all, to me, it wants you to write in a straight line (I could never understand why). This is scary because it stops the flow of creativity.

Here is a story first.

When I was in grade six or seven it was time to start learning different facts. I tried to learn them the way I was taught at school (writing them down in an orderly fashion) but that did not work. Then one day my mother gave me a little book about mind mapping (luckily my mom understand the important things in life) and in this book it explained to me that our brains work best if they are “deurmekaar” (for the lack of a better English word) so I started mind mapping the work I had to learn and – boom – all of a sudden I got A’s here and A’s there.

What I’m saying is that what I read from these articles made me excited to become a pedagogue, because it unlocks mystery, creativity and curiosity in learners and that to me is THE best way of learning and when a teacher gets that, he or she will be successful.

 

Like Jesse Stommel said: "It looks like failure. And wonder."

The New Pen an Paper

Growing up in school I constantly heard "No phones in class" or "Put that thing away or I'll take it away." Especially in South Africa where we are technologically a bit behind the rest of the world. Then I got to university and some lecturers are still like that but others encourage technology in classes. Confusing right.

I could not help to notice a strong tension between technology in a learning environment or no technology. This is a very prominent debate in the 21 century. This tension is also visible in the article about Digital Pedagogy.

Let's break it down... Digital, in it's simplest form, means to use your hands. In the earlier years like when our parent were growing up their digital pedagogy was a pen and paper and now we find ourselves in a transition period to where digital pedagogy is electronically. In my opinion there is no need for this above mentioned tension because a computer, tablet or cellphone is exactly the same as a pen and paper. It is the new pen and paper.

Hit by a Tsunami...What?

I graduated with a BA Drama and Theatre Studies degree in 2015 at the University of Stellenbosch. You would think that I'm used to studies and a lot of work by now. I certainly thought so but then... I started my PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate of Education) year.


The first week was fine. The workload I could handle and I thought "Oh, this isn't so bad" But. . .
Slap! Bang! Fall-on-my-face. PGCE was like "Aaw look at this girl walking in here like she's gonna be a teacher. Let me hit her in the face with reality!"


And that is how I was hit by a PGCE tsunami workload.


The End