Turn Up The Sass

Interactive Whiteboards have recently been taking over the classroom and upping the sass.

The first question is, however, what on earth is this thing??

Interactive Whiteboards are an instructional tool which displays computer images onto a board through a digital projector. The teacher has the ability to manipulate these elements by using her finger as a mouse directly on the screen.

As Douglas Cruickshank notes in A Clean Slate: Interactive Whiteboard Makes Lessons Snazzy, the list of possibilities with this tool is endless. Some of the features and uses include:

- Digital storytelling.

- Creating, viewing, and annotating student PowerPoint and multimedia presentations in real time.

- Showing streamed or downloaded videos.

- Using online map and satelite imagery to teach geography.

- Displaying artwork or online museum presentations.

- Teaching students how to conduct research on the internet.

- Working collaboratively on writing and editing exercises, math lessons, and science experiments.

By considering these various possibilities, it is clear to see what a powerful this "clean slate" is as it adds interactivity and colaboration to the classroom as well as allowing integration of media content into the class and supporting collaborative learning.

This tool is also an important pedagogical tool as it promotes creative teaching and motivates students into absorbing information. Teaching with this tool allows educators to accommodate all different learning styles as tactile learners get to touch and move things around and the board and can make notes and highlight elements. The visually inclined learners benefit form a clear view of what is happening on the board and audio learners can participate in class discussion. These notes and presentations can then be saved and printed out for the whole class to further enable collabaritive learning and note-making.

Any further questions? A sassy thing, this interactive whiteboard.

The Balancing Act

We have all heard that being a teacher is not just being someone who educates learners, but is rather also a mother/father, a psychologist, a paramedic, an entertainer - a superhero.. basically.

As an educator there are so many aspects to take into consideration apart from just the content of your lesson. You are busy working with a blank canvas, with every lesson being a stroke of paint, which in the end will hopefully develop into a beautiful and completed painting to be exposed to the public. But how does one balance being EVERYTHING that a teacher is (or should be), and still manage to actually TEACH?

Foley, in the video Effective Pedagogy: Teaching a whole child, mentions key aspects needed to teach a whole child.

Shannon refers to pastoral care, effective teaching practices in the class environment and the necessary resources needed.

Pastoral care, to me, forms the basis of all the above. To encourage and develop positive attitudes and relationships as well as focusing on the well-being of both the teacher and the learner, the school and its body is bound to flourish. Of course effective teaching practices are also of great need as well as the necessary resources to ensure effectiveness - as can be seen in Abby Wills' classroom.

By making a very simple yet creative change within the classroom, she found a way to engage the learners. Through this engagement she did not only experience better participation, but also a new type of relationship developed within this environment. The children were not only willing, but eager to form part of the creativity and fun and through this an environment of positive attitudes and excitement grew.

By taking the above into consideration, I thus agree with Shannon Foley in terms of the necessary aspects needed to teach a whole child. It is not just about standing in front of a class and pouring knowledge into them - it really is all about the holistic approach of a role model, a psychologist, a paramedic, an entertainer, and finally an educator. It's about the balancing act.

Vice Versa: Teacher-Students & Student-Teachers

In his article, The Standards of Critical Digital Pedagogy, Sam Hamilton explains how conventional educational standards are limiting potential learning environments.

He raises an interesting point when referring to Paulo Freire:

 As Paulo Freire writes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction” (72). Freire then unsettles the teacher/student binary, casting classroom occupants as teacher-students and student-teachers. This recasting of students’ and teachers’ subject positions does more than merely suggest teachers have plenty to learn and students have plenty to teach; it’s an early step in moving both students and teachers toward a critical consciousness of their position and possibilities in an oppressive system of education; both teachers and students are confined by their defined roles, limited to be either bankers making knowledge deposits or empty bank vaults passively receiving those deposits. It effectively explodes the most immediate and oppressive power dynamic with which students and teachers are aware: namely, the dynamic between teachers and students as teachers and students.

This argument takes me back to a previous blog post in which I argued that learning in a 21st century cannot be successful with a system that dates back to when this technologically-driven generation's parents were in school. The idea then to create a new balance of student-teachers and teacher-students and disrupting the age-old, standardised power balance within the classroom makes perfect sense.

Allowing learning to take place within a technologically mediated self-directed distance allows for new ways as well as unique ways of learning. These ways of learning of course not only referring to textbooks and teachers, but media and technologically related materials as well as peers and social influences. This way of learning allows the flow of ideas and practices to be shared, experienced, tried and tested. Throughout my own school years I have come across many individuals who are not able to take in and understand information through the specific way it is presented - a common problem in the standard schooling system. This new suggested way of schooling is the perfect way to solve this specific problem and is clear in the workings of The Independent Project.

As argued before, I believe it is of utmost importance to allow a new generation to learn through the media that is already so deeply integrated within their daily lives. Now, why not allow them to teach the old, standard education system a thing or two?

Is Tech-Savvy even a thing?

When mentioning 'social media' and 'the classroom' in one sentence - it is as if the whole world has stopped and together took a moment to *gasp*.

Vicki Davis mentions in her blog, Edutopia: A Guidebook for Social Media in the Classroom: 

 The myth about social media in the classroom is that if you use it, kids will be Tweeting, Facebooking and Snapchatting while you're trying to teach. We still have to focus on the task at hand. Don't mistake social media for socializing. They're different -- just as kids talking as they work in groups or talking while hanging out are different.

This is a concept soon to be understood (hopefully) by many teachers within the current technologically-driven era. In order to understand and engage the learners of this generation, it is essential for educators to not have the learners adapt to the school environment, but rather themselves adapt to the environment of what is becoming the norm - the technological environment. Because of this new and exciting environment, being 'tech-savvy' is not a thing (so 2002 *rolls eyes*).

For instance, by allowing tablets and smartphones in the classroom, Twitter can be used in Life Orientation to create a safe environment. A specific hashtag can be created together with pseudo accounts - of which only the teacher knows the identities - and questions can be asked through this medium which might not necessarily be comfortable to ask in front of a whole class.

English can become a fun environment where, also on Twitter, the word of the day should be used to comment on a trending topic.

The point is that social media has a place, and should have a place, within the modern classroom. In fact, writing a letter really is not that much of a thing compared to the formalities or informalities of an e-mail. How we communicate and portray ourselves online has become crucial in terms of job opportunities and references. Why are we so hesitant to teach these necessary life skills? It's an uncomfortable comfort-zone thing.

Prematurely Screwing Around

It seems as if every week I have to quickly remind myself what pedagogy is. If you were wondering:

ped·a·go·gy

ˈpedəˌɡäjē/

noun

noun: pedagogy; plural noun: pedagogies

the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept

How does one, within a generation that was not allowed to have their phone on during class - or dared to bring a tablet along -  come to understand and practice digital pedagogy? Is our generation not, to a certain degree, too premature with regards to using technology within the classroom because of our groomed classroom manners and rituals? How do we get rid of those preconceived ideas of teaching and learning to enter a context of digital pedagogy?

Sean Michael Morris explains in his writing, Decoding Digital Pedagogy, PT 2: (Un)Mapping the Terrain, that digital pedagogy is "less a field and more an active present participle, a way of engaging the world, not a world itself, a way of approaching the not-at-all-discrete acts of teaching and learning.

He further states that digital pedagogy "calls for screwing around (and here my inner creative starts to throw glitter in the air and do all kinds of wild dance moves) more than it does systematic study, and in fact screwing around is the more difficult scholarly work". The thing about being a digital pedagogue is that it is less about knowing and more about a rampant process of unlearning, play, and rediscovery. In fact, (and I quote) ''expert digital pedagogues learn best by forgetting - through continuous encounters with what is novel, tentative, unmastered, and unresolved".

The answer to the above mentioned questions is quite simple then, isn't it? Let's get screwing. Academically.

On Naked Teaching

Paul Fyfe discusses the many critiques and praises of technology in the classroom in his article Digital Pedagogy Unplugged.

Living in the 21st century, one does not simply wake up and, without any thought, stumble to the bathroom. No. One (without any thought) checks one's many social media profiles - whether it be Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or Snapchat - first.

We live in a day and age where Facebook and Twitter is not solely used to connect with friends or post photos of last weekend's events. These platforms have become sources of current events - whether these events are social or political. These are platforms that we check on a daily basis, if not hourly, to ensure that we are up to date and on the pulse of all the latest events, disasters, gossip and political debates.

Teaching completely naked is not something I can support in an era of constant technological connection. I am the first to argue that the smell and touch of a book will always be better than the electronic version on my tablet, but I need to question why I feel this way in terms of the context I grew up in and how the current generation of learners would react if asked the same question.

I believe there is a space in the classroom for naked teaching. But the fact of the matter is that teachers are stuck in the comfort zones of how they were taught at school. As educators it is our responsibility to constantly move away from this zone and explore boldly what it is that triggers passion and debate within our learners. Technology has become the source of conversations. We thus need to learn the language and incorporate it in the classroom a responsible and creative way.