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.