Digital Pedagogy, the good, the bad and the ugly. What will its future hold for us?

The Bad apple of Digital pedagogy 

 

If we were asked what the perfect classroom would have been like 10 years ago, what would our answers have been? We might have said wooden chairs, desks that could open and store textbooks and pencil cases in, a chalkboard of course and maybe a computer. Now today however, we think of classrooms based on smartboards, textbooks electronically stored on Ipad’s and Laptops and Libraries that no longer contain encyclopaedias but rather computers with google search engines. The world is rapidly changing as technology advances and so too is the education system. The debate however is whether technology-based teaching is advantageous or whether the touch of a button might be detrimental to children’s learning. I am not going to lie but I did not really understand much from the Paul Fyfe; 2011 article “Digital Pedagogy Unplugged” but I did however draw my own conclusions based on what I did understand from the text.

Technology is creating an environment for students to learn while ideally having fun in class. For many children, the advancement of technology is as fascinating in the classroom as it is outside. With the advancement of technology, students are able to access more information from a number of different sources during a shorter period of time, whereas in the past much learning was centred on a single textbook. Specialised internet devices also allow students to advance and learn at a pace subjective to their own abilities. Online learning games also provide an environment with which children can interact in a whole new way inside the classroom while at the same time assisting teachers in new and innovative ways of educating learners. Studies have shown that a lot of learners absorb information a lot better when engaging in activities rather than just listening or watching. 

The counter to this particular argument however is that with information at the touch of a finger, comes responsibility. With unlimited access to information, comes the obligation of teachers to ensure that children are not exposed to material they are not mature enough to handle. And how exactly are teachers supposed to protect children from some of the unruly more taboo things on the internet? Some of these disruptive aspects include cyber bullying. Children are now even more exposed to the social world where manipulation and victimisation can be extremely harmful. I also strongly believe that social media, through technology greatly damages person to person interaction. Society today is often so caught up on what is present on the web, or social dating sites that they can’t hold a conversation with living beings in front of them.

I believe that the world outside the classroom is developing at a rapid rate and that in order for children to cope outside the classroom, or after school, the necessary digital skills need to be taught as a foundation. However technology in education needs to be strictly and very carefully monitored as the potential risk causing damage to a child’s psych is far greater than the risks of bad textbooks. The human mind is an extraordinaire, an entity that I believe has never fully been tapped into by anyone yet, and that as technology develops, it can either create the opportunity to push our minds to their limits or create beings that cannot think for ourselves but rely on computers. I agree with the use of technology in education so long as its advancement parallels with our own developments.