I don't need to be here. Or do I?

In my opinion this notion of teachers being bankers who deposit their knowledge into the heads of the pupils is very outdated.

In the current day and age we live in it is possible for people to learn without always physically being in a classroom. Technology has progressed to such a point to where it makes learning away from the classroom a real and sensible possibility. Tech-mediated self-directed distance learning makes sense if you think about in the present time. There are a lot of people who are very keen on studying while they have a job but it becomes difficult when they work or live in a place far away from a learning institution like universities. Technology allows these people to do so. With the use of technology students can get the required study texts they need to learn the material on their own without having to be in a classroom. The use of technology can also enable the students to communicate with the rest of the learning community all around the world. Technology can also change the way we learn by allowing the communication and that can lead to experiments and research from different environments around the world so that different people can compare their findings in their space to those of the other people also carrying out the same experiment.

I think that the potential for such a learning experience is way more than we currently realise. The ability to share your learning and experience through the use of technology can make it possible for people from anywhere to work together on projects without ever meeting in real life.

Social media in the classroom. Are you serious?

As a teacher in training I think social media within the context of the classroom is definitely an option. I'm aware of the pitfalls of making use of social media in the classroom, but if it is managed correctly and used properly, it could be a powerful tool to make use of. Through the ages people have learned by socially interacting with one another, now we are doing it using mobile devices and suddenly it is not right to do so?

Personally I have learnt so much by just casually using social media. Twitter for example, Twitter is instantaneous. As soon as something happens all the way across the world, someone is bound to tweet about it. Currently on twitter you can become a expert on the US Presidential race or find out more about what is happening on the ground with the student protests all around South African universities. Point is, it is fast and easy to use.

If I had to take accounting for instance and we take Twitter as an example. I would have all the kids create a Twitter account and make them follow me and some business accounts like Bloomberg, Forbes, Fin24 to name a few. This will encourage them to read up more on financial happenings locally as well as abroad, this all on a platform where the kids are more comfortable and easy to work with than the traditional news articles. I could use Twitter to make a list of my children where I can give advice as well as send reminders on work we are currently going through. It can be used as the classroom outside of the classroom after school when there are kids who have questions we can answer them quickly and conveniently. This will help them to learn how to formulate questions of their own and become more knowledgeable about the subjects.

Now I know children can get distracted easily through using social media, but if it is managed correctly and is only used in the classroom for the classroom it will enrich the learning experience so much more.

Children love videos, pictures and info-graphics. All of these can be used on social platforms to keep the kids intrigued and curious about learning more.

If not why not??

Do you even pedagogy?

I am still trying to figure out what pedagogy is and what exactly it means to be a pedagogue. All these terms are floating by on a daily basis, some of us nod and some of us (me) just sit there wondering about what exactly this means.

At first I thought of it as the method of teaching used by educators, that made most sense, but now I am not entirely sure. As I see it now, pedagogy to me is the way the tools of teaching and learning are used by educators to help the learner in the learning process. Not all teachers are pedagogues, some give learners work to do and they do it for the sake of doing it and they do not learning a whole lot in that process because as soon as the test/assessment is done they have forgotten the work because it is no longer needed.

The tools used to teach should always be new and innovative even if the content being taught stays the same over some time. Take the instance of the LMS, it was to be something advanced, but it turned out to be something that limits the users and make the "learning" nothing new, just the same information on a new platform.

We have to innovate to continue learning and not get comfortable when things start working out, these boundaries need to be pushed so that we can continue to find new ways to learn.

So to even be considered as a digital pedagogue we should consider the students as active learners who are part of the process of teaching. We have to use the tools available to us to do something new and to get the students learning through new ways of teaching and discovery.

Digital pedagogy does not have a specific definition, it is merely they way that we as teachers continue to work and innovate to do new things with the content that needs to be presented.

Digital pedagogy

The whole idea around digital pedagogy is the integration of technology in the classroom/learning environment.

We live in a world where technology is moving at such a fast rate it is impossible to ignore. As much as people claim to not want to use their smartphones and tablets, they do. My mother is 60 years old and she knows how to work her iPhone better than some of the students in my class. The fact is that technology has a place in our everyday lives. Companies use technology daily to do whatever it is they do. Imagine a life without traffic lights think of the chaos it will cause.

I think it is good to have a balance, children should be exposed to the educational uses of technology such as iPads and Kindles but they also need to be aware that they do not have to depend on these devices to gain knowledge. Nowadays kids we google everything, I remember asking someone else who might know the answer and having that interaction with another person. Interacting with people and books is just as important as attaining the answer.

Children should be able to get books from the library rather than just download it or go look for a summary on spark notes. Nothing replaces the smell of a book while reading it or the feeling ] physically turning the page rather than just swiping next op a tablet. Learning to take notes in class rather than just recording everything. What if one day the power goes out and all we have are people who don't know how to work a pen and paper?

We need to create a balance between using technology all the time and learning to use the "old way" of doing things. Just like people preserve their culture and traditions, we need to preserve the basic tools used to educate. Learning will always be of relevance to us.