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!