Digital Pedagogy, Digital Pedagogy, What Are't Thou, Oh Digital Pedagogy?

“When you hear the signal, it will be 17 hours and zero minutes, exactly.” Thus I have exactly 1 hour to write and post my blog: Oh dear! My excuse for leaving it late: at least I have my first “glaskas” evaluation under my belt after this morning’s session. It’s been a long day, VERY long, and my body’s natural inclination to shut down into sleep mode has been kept at bay (with varying success) by the taking onboard of gallons of coffee. So let’s see if I can make the final sprint for the ticker tape either before the hourglass runs empty or the rush of my last coffee wanes out!

Digital pedagogy, digital pedagogy, what are’t thou oh digital pedagogy? After reading this week’s two articles, it seems that my problem grasping the full extent and meaning of the concept is not so unique. It seems like the definition tends to morph itself just as one might think you have figured it out. The following quote from Stommel’s article vindicates my notion: “Because it’s responsive by nature, pedagogy can’t be pinned down in a stable definition.”

Morris makes an important distinction between online teaching and digital pedagogy. That helped to clear up the erroneous assumption also in my mind that any teaching/learning material used on the internet equates digital pedagogy. Not so! What I gleaned from the articles is that pedagogy is a study of learning and that adding the digital element to it, it becomes the way one makes enquiry and satisfies one's inquisitivity for new learning by making use of digital elements as the tools for this endeavour. To me, this speaks of a lifelong culture of learning, of being inquisitive and constantly being made excited by the notion of learning something new.

I am by nature very inquisitive about new concepts and words and make extensive use of Wikipedia and the Oxford Online Dictionary websites to satisfy my appetite for knowing more on an unfamiliar subject or new word. And a new world opened up to me when someone once illuminated me with the notion that one can type any question into the Google surf engine and will mostly get a few credible answers. And YouTube is wonderful for visual instructions. We used it just recently to show our six year old daughter how to execute a competition dive for swimming gala’s. And did this visual lecture help her? Well, she won her freestyle event… And dad was VERY proud!

17h48! Just as I was starting to have fun… I’ll try to give myself some more time with next week’s blog. Till next week!

My 2 cents on Mr Fyfe's article "Digital Pedagogy Unplugged"

My first ever Blog-post! Life is full of surprises.

First a bit of housekeeping. Although my home language is Afrikaans, I will do my PGCE blogposts in English to enable all my colleagues access to it. My writing style will be informal and as authentic and real as possible. I will not even attempt to impress anyone with fancy vocabulary or lofty academic terminology.

The article by Paul Fyfe as required reading was a massive challenge for me. I got the impression that Mr Fyfe was out to impress his peers or other mere mortals with his flashy academic vocabulary with words such as “felicitous”, “deleterious”, “dialectical”, “bailiwick” and “inchoate”. I came close to almost single handedly overloading the Oxford Online Dictionary website. I am also not sure if I really got the essence of what he tried to convey with the article. The following quote by Albert Einstein soothed me while licking my wounds: “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” That made me feel a bit less sheepish about not really getting the gist of the article. After all, if Mr Fyfe could explain it better, I would understand it better. I felt vindicated (sort of)…

But seriously (reminds me of the 1989 Phil Collins album…), what did I learn or get out of the article? There must have been SOMETHING! Firstly, the following combination of words hit the bull’s eye and made a deep impression: “… by those PowerPoint lectures that rain down boredom in a hail of bullet points”. Eureka! Some of my best lecturers in my PGCE classes hardly make use of multimedia, but BOY OF BOY, do they engage! Professor Waghid’s lecture during the past week on what it takes to be a critical teacher comes to mind. He basically typed a few words on a white blank slide while engaging with us, but did he grab our attention? For sure! How? By hailing down provocative questions on us innocent hearers. He made us think. And think again. I like that. I like it a lot.

Secondly (the plot thickens), relating to UNPLUGGED digital pedagogy, the class exercise that Dr. Joorst did with us this week comes to mind. He divided the class in 3 groups and then gave every group a scenario on which its members had to write a synonymous blog post on a piece of paper. We then had to swop papers with the other groups and then members could read out the blog posts on the papers that they received. This simple exercise got the whole class involved and engaged and gave everyone, especially the ones not at liberty to verbally voice their opinions in class, the chance to speak out and find their voice. I thought it was a stroke of brilliance! And an example of unplugged digital pedagogy (if I’m not mistaken)…

My word counter says 482 words and counting… I suddenly feel the urge to conclude this matter with a friendly: “Goodbye! Totsiens! Sawubona!” Till next week.