Classroom Atmosphere

Many aspects contribute to a good classroom and learning space; amongst others, a good teacher, sufficient resources, and interested students. One aspect that I haven't thought about all too much is the atmosphere you create in your classroom.

This aspect may often be overlooked but in order to make learners feel comfortable, calm, and ready to learn, it is vital to remember. From the article (http://www.edutopia.org//blog/applying-mindfulness-mundane-classroom-tasks-abby-wills), you can see that creating this atmosphere requires exactly that, creativity! It cannot be created by just speaking it into being, or by putting up classroom posters outlining the rules and attitudes expected in your classroom. Thought and time must be spent on this, and the students will most definitely benefit from it.

Think about it, would you be in the mood to learn and discover new information when all everyone is talking about is the games that were played on the break field? On the other extreme, would you want to concentrate when it is the last period of the day and all you can think about is going home? This can all be made worse by a teacher who appears to be oblivious to this all. I guess empathy and compassion comes into the discussion round about now. 

In amongst all the lesson plans, the textbooks, the setting of tests and exams, and the desperate attempt to reach the feared outcomes, one can forget this most important part of lesson preparation.

As teachers we are to cultivate a love for learning and this can only be achieved if the space where learning is to take place is adequate, or better still, exceptional. 

In the context of South Africa, we have extremes in terms of classroom atmosphere. How can we expect learners to concentrate when they are starving or freezing or worrying about ailing parents at home? For teachers in these schools, extreme care must be taken to not overlook these issues. On the other hand, some learners might not have any out-of-school worries. Thus it is important for all teachers (and aspiring teachers) to be aware of the impact that classroom atmosphere can have on the effectiveness of a lesson.

A look at the Independent Project

I've watched the Independent Project before. At the time I was either in High School or just into University. I remember feeling conflicted after watching the clip. Self teaching sounds fantastic, but how do you monitor it? How do you ensure that the learners pass and that by giving them independence in learning, you aren't robbing them of access to higher education?

I remember being one of those kids who 'hated' school. Thinking back, I would rephrase that to say I disliked school...a lot. One of the reasons for that being that I felt like I was learning useless information. I was learning information that didn't interest me. Thankfully some of my teachers fostered in me an inquisitive mind and a search for knowledge in their specific subjects, but I know that wasn't the case for everyone. Often in the subjects I disliked the most, I would learn what I knew I had to in order to pass (and do well) and there I would stop. The thought of learning and discovering more on my own seemed useless to me. I was not going to spend extra time on a subject that I already disliked, especially if the extra effort was not going to result in extra marks.

This is where the Independent project is so fantastic! All school subjects are covered, yet each individual has the opportunity to learn about what fascinates them. This teaches them that when they are curious about something, they have the potential in them to figure it out or learn about it themselves. It reminded me that a teacher should simply be the facilitator of learning and not the sole source of all knowledge. Having the students teach their classmates under no pressure is also a really effective method of teaching. You always learn more when you teach someone else, and since each learner chooses a topic they are interested in, you are left with knowledgeable and enthusiastic teacher-students.

The questions I raised in the first paragraph, however, still remain. How do you monitor independent teaching and learning? I think perhaps the most effective way of monitoring, would be to assess the effort put in by the students. Learning should remain independent, the level of learning or mastery should not be measured, but I do think it is important to monitor effort. By monitoring this aspect of independent learning, I think that it can be effectively implemented in schools as a 'subject'. By adding it as an extra in addition to the existing school curriculum, there is no fear of students missing out on vital information, and by monitoring one aspect, you ensure that the children have reason to be invested in the subject and reason to make an effort to explore knowledge.  

Social media in the South African classroom

Using social media in the classroom (and outside the classroom) is a fantastic idea that creates room for engaging, relevant and culturally diverse discussions and learning. It opens up a whole other world where learning can take place. It facilitates the idea of pedagogy that is not just learning and teaching in a confined time and space, but creating a journey of learning, and an awe and desire for constant discovery and education. With social media, students can mould and shape their learning to their own interests. By this I mean that a child could share their own personal, day-to-day experiences that are related to the topics being taught in school. This develops the concept that learning does not stop at 2:30 on a weekday but that it should permeate into all aspects of life. 

Twitter and Instagram are platforms for sharing thoughts, ideas and photos. These can all be filtered through hashtags, allowing people to catagorise their posts that they see and share. This allows for an easy way to separate private posts and school related posts.

YouTube is a great way for students to find out more by themselves or to even share their own knowledge through videos.

Blogging facilitates the interaction and conversation between students and other students’ ideas through comments. Comments allow for an immediate response a possible resulting discussion about the subject matter.

I think school has become a bland, deadline-based, raw content method of educating. I understand why this has become ‘necessary’ to an extent, and for some students, this works for them. Social media and this digitised teaching allows for an extra level or add-on to learning that was not possible before. We should embrace this opportunity and try to utilise it as effectively as possible in our classrooms. Care must be taken, however that by using technology in schools, we do not exclude some pupils. I think this is a very important ‘warning’ especially in South Africa.

Last Friday I got internet in my flat for the first time this year, and what a relief it was! Having cut out all the ‘non-essential’ internet drainers (such as Facebook and Instagram), I was still left with the problem of accessing varsity work. Thankfully, Stellenbosch University provides computer areas and free internet access to school work on campus. This allowed me to access all I needed, but only on campus. What an inconvenience! Making my way onto campus at night to post blogs before the deadline and missing out on emails that I could only access when I got to class was not fun. It is possible to survive in a world without internet at home (and many people do), but it made me think about the thousands and thousands of South Africans who have absolutely no access to internet, and who do not have a University a couple hundred meters away where they can access internet. For them it is not simply an inconvenience, it is an impossibility.

I am beginning to warm up to this idea of digital pedagogy and technology in the classroom but extreme care must be taken to not exclude students in our classes. Currently in South Africa, I do not think it is possible to make the large shift to everything being digitalised. I do think however, possible social media aspects can be made voluntary in schools. Extra enhancers and add-ons can be implemented in classrooms, but to rely on the internet to communicate important information and changes to students is a mistake. Unknowingly, you could be excluding a student from participating and learning, purely because they do not have access to internet or even a computer. 

Understanding Digital Pedagogy

Teaching is not synonymous with pedagogy. Not all teachers are pedagogues. Thinking back to my days at school, I can remember clearly the teachers I came into contact with who were pedagogues. They are the teachers who instilled a desire to know more, and to understand the subject they were teaching and not to just accept and memorise the facts. While it may not always be necessary that teachers be pedagogues, I think that it is necessary for children to come into contact with at least one in their schooling career.

Having hated English at school, it is rather bizarre that Decoding Digital Pedagogy parts 1 and 2 have inspired me to write a poem. I think it is the metaphorical language and imagery that is used in part 2 that triggered a long lost ‘creative’ spark, dare I call it that. What follows may end up being true to the name of this blog; a bit of waffle and a whole lot of cheesiness, but nonetheless here it is.

Digital pedagogy is not a dancing monkey

Nor a path through woods and trees

Its deeper still than students learning

And teachers teaching abc’s

Digital pedagogy is,

A compass set to help and guide

Not pulling written work like teeth

It does a learning space provide

Digital pedagogy is,

Not purely virtual teachers teaching

It is not just online smart professors

Performing virtual classroom preaching

Digital pedagogy is,

A fumbled, wonder, failing child

And teacher with them striving, yearning

For questions; answers not be found

In order to effectively use technology as a tool in education, we must understand that it is not just a method with which we can ‘outsource’ teaching. Videoing lessons and uploading them to the internet will certainly decrease the workload of a teacher, but it does not effectively use the tool of the internet to enhance learning. In fact, I would argue that a lesson presented in such a way is actually less effective in imparting knowledge.

On teaching 'naked', Pride and Prejudice and unplugged digital pedagogy

In Paul Fyfe’s article Digital Pedagogy Unplugged he states “Debates about what defines and qualifies digital humanism periodically flare” and then proceeds to deliver such a debate. He poses many a question that compels one to think about their understanding of technology and digital humanism. What does it even mean to be digital?

One of the most striking points Fyfe makes is “technology cannot change the classroom without first changing the pedagogy”.  After reading the article, I would restate the sentence as “technology should not change the classroom without first changing the pedagogy”. What this means is that in order to fully benefit from technology in the classroom, one should not merely use the technology to achieve the same tasks that were previously achieved manually, but to rather find ways of adapting the teaching methods in order to fully realise the potential that the technology can offer. Using a data projector and a computer instead of an overhead projector merely changes the media used in order to achieve the same effect. Technology should be used to modify, morph and improve how teaching takes place. Understanding the technologies used in the classroom could allow for interactive maths lessons for instance, where children can actually visualise the geometry they are learning, or science lessons that provide digital versions of experiments that may not be safe in a school environment. We cannot simply redistribute the work from one form of technology to the other, rather we have to adapt teaching methods and practices and evolve teaching and learning along with technology.

In his article, Fyfe speaks about teaching naked. He clarifies this by explaining that all he means by this is that “instructional technology is not banished but instead moved to the pedagogical periphery”. Another phrase to describe this situation is the notion of the ‘flipped classroom’; students engage electronically with material outside the physical and time barriers of the classroom, which then allows for more in depth and engaging discussion within the walls of the classroom. This ‘flipped classroom’ idea effectively uses technology in a new way in order to free up interactive time with students. Here the teacher is ‘teaching naked’ without the use of technology in the actual class, but technology is still very much a part of the class.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is used to demonstrate different types of reading. A story is told where a teacher goes home and highlights all the instances where the words “pride” and “prejudice” appear. This is obviously a taxing task and a contrast is drawn to how easily this task would have been accomplished with a computer instead. This brings up the concepts of linear and extensive (or distant) reading. A question can be posed: will both these types of reading be achieved if the teacher were to use a computer search function instead? One must always consider both the positive and negative effects of technology on pedagogy and the outcomes of teaching.

I think the most notable and striking concept to take away from the article is that much care must be taken to use “technology effectively” and to “subordin[ate] it to the pedagogical goals of the class”. By doing this, teachers will fully reap the rewards and draw out the potential of the technology they are busy working with.

Note: All quotations are taken from Digital Pedagogy Unplugged by Paul Fyfe. Found at http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/3/000106/000106.html