Digital Pedagogy: Yay or Nay?

Like me, the word digital pedagogy probably threw you a bit off. No worries, I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible and by the end we will all hopefully have a better understanding of what digital pedagogy is. Pedagogy is the process of teaching and learning and digital pedagogy is there for the process of teaching and learning with digital aids.

This piece is being posted in relation to the article,  Digital pedagogy unplugged by Fyfe. The question is whether we need digital pedagogy in the classroom and whether it has a positive or negative impact on the way we teach? We have to consider that everything has a positive and negative impact and that we should therefor weigh both the positive and negative up against each other, in order to determine which is greater. The writer of this article clearly thinks that unplugging the classroom is the way to go forward and that digital pedagogy is putting a strain on the way we teach.

I do agree with this view to some extent. Teaching has become detached in the sense that teachers are just feeding learners with information without really educating them. This is being aided by PowerPoint presentations that over-saturated are and teachers that neglect to communicate personally with their learners. Large amounts of information are being fed to learners and they are becoming more and more detached with regard to posing questions and engaging in class activities. However, digital pedagogy is not all bad and it mostly depends on the way we use it.

I’m personally not a big fan of technology because it always seems to fail me but I also can’t imagine my life without it. My first class on digital pedagogy really took me out of my comfort zone and it also opened my eyes to the value and world of possibilities that technology brings with it. We live in a world that is constantly changing and we as teachers have the responsibility to keep up with the world and our learners. Most learners probably know more about technology than you and by teaching them in ways that they understand and in an environment that they are familiar with, will definitely make them more acceptable to your subject.

I therefor believe the best solution is a digital classroom that is being used in a way that benefits everyone and that does not constrain teaching and learning but rather enhances it.