When I read the articles for the first
time, I thought to myself, “This buddy has some strong opinions for and against
digital pedagogy. Soooo, which side is he really on? I don’t understand what
he’s getting at.” I even wrote the words “Narrow minded!” over one of the
paragraphs… Although, I have to add, I fell asleep, face planted on the carpet
in my room, not 5 min later. Needless to say, I had to give these two pieces
another read before really responding to them.
As I was reading through these articles, I
realized that one could not simply define pedagogy as “involve[ing] the method
and practice of teaching. Especially in an academic subject or theoretical
concept” as I did in my previous post.
In fact, nothing about the concept pedagogy is simple. There is no finite, conclusive definition that truly encapsulates the essence of pedagogy. No WikiHow on How to Pedagogue or Pedagogy for Dummies that would transform you from a teacher to a pedagogue overnight (I checked).
What I do understand from the texts, is the
heart of the matter. Pedagogy is essentially doing whatever it takes to get the
most out of your learners. Trying weird and wonderful approaches to get the
learners intrigued, puzzled, excited and ultimately, involved in the material
that you are covering. It’s exploring, improvising, “screwing around”,
“unlearning, play and rediscovery”, as mentioned in the articles. I guess you could say that pedagogy aims to
put the fun back into learning.
I am reminded of a quote on a poster that
was stuck on the wall of one of my high school classes. “You are only a leader
if someone is following you, or else you’re just taking a walk.” The same can
be said for teaching. You are only a teacher if learning is taking place, or else
you’re just wasting your breath. Likewise, you cannot be a pedagogue if no
learning is taking place. If that is the case, you’re not doing it right.
By the end of
the readings, I realized that I was blessed with a true pedagogue (as per my current
understanding of the term) in high school. My Life Science teacher was given
the challenge of making our “problem class” fall in love with her subject. And
she did! It seems like yesterday that we were discussing internal organs in
class, when she whipped out an animal heart and a set of lungs that she had
gotten from a slaughter house. Of course, she warned us before taking it out,
and allowed the learners who did not want to see it to sit in the back of the
class and continue with a handout. But the rest of us were allowed to poke the
organs, inspect the different chambers of the heart and stick your finger into
the Aorta if you wished to do so. She also gave us drinking straws that we
could use to stick into the exposed tubules of the lungs and watch it inflate
when you blow into the straw. It was great fun and provided an exciting
learning experience to even the most uninvolved pupil in the class.
She would always
provide physical examples where she could, tell funny stories and connect them
to our work content, draw pictures on the board, show us videos and make up
puzzles or songs in addition to explaining the work from 20 different angles,
if needed. And with freight load of enthusiasm and patience, too, just to make
sure that everyone understood.
To me, she is
the perfect example of what the articles meant when describing what a pedagogue
should be like. The challenge raised in the Pt.1 article, though, is to take
that kind of passion, creativity and commitment to learning and translate it to
an online or digital platform. That is what, according to Sean in Pt.1, the
world is not ready for when stating: “We are not ready to teach online.”
For those interested in reading the above mentioned articles, here are the links:
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