Interactive What-board?

The interactive whiteboard has a lot of potential when it comes to teaching Life Orientation and English. I had to think long and hard about how to incorporate it into these two subjects - my future - but it eventually came to me. 

It gives me the ability as a teacher to interact with the tweets my learners sent me (as mentioned somewhere else, I would like to use Twitter to connect with my learners). That way they can see the bigger picture of the conversations around our classroom. I can stream videos on it from the internet or Skype with other educators as guest teacher without them moving an inch. 

Learners will be able to write on the board and save their work directly to my computer, where I can then access it immediately or bring it up so that everyone can learn from whatever mistakes was made as in a spelling exercise. It gives me the power to edit my PowerPoint slides and fill in learners' comments and questions while I do the lesson. I can even let the Google look for something while I'm teaching and have it right there for my kids to see. In Life Orientation I can bring up videos that relate to my lessons. My learners can give old-fashioned presentations by drawing flow-charts and mind-maps on the board that I can e-mail with the click of mouse to all of my learners. 

I'm due for some interactive whiteboard training this week, so I will know more by my next blog. I'm am excited to use technology in my class however as a very skeptical person I am aware of the pitfalls and still believe in traditional teaching with creative undertones. 

Hopefully I do not get disappointed by the truth of the interactive whiteboard and will eventually be at a school that has one for me to use. 

I really have nothing more to say - you see- Interactive What-board? Hope I get to find out more soon. Happy teaching! :) 

Teach and be Taught

Not being in control of your class might sound like a scary thing. It doesn’t have to be. By actively involving and engaging your learners beyond the point of teaching them a subject – they might make your job much easier.

By allowing your learners to give input on how they would like the classroom should look and how lessons should be structured might give you some insight on how to change those aspects you dread at night after a horrible day at school. Trust in your learners’ abilities – they know what they want. Allow for open communication and reflection on issues that concern the learners and the lessons. After a session you should give the learners feedback on their academic performance, behaviour in class and their social interactions with other learners and you. Sending reports home on the previously mentioned aspects can foster a relationship with the parents and help to address possible problems that parents rather than teachers need to address.

Being empathetic towards learners and being understanding towards their contexts can also help learners to be open and give them more courage to engage in the classroom. The teacher should intervene when needed, provide tools for solving issues and be pro-bonding by encouraging learners to be interested in their peers’ personal lives. By having a birthday chart in class learners will remember the birthdays of other learners in the class and make them feel included and wanted in the classroom.

Structuring the physical classroom into a learner friendly space can also help to engage learners in their education and make them want to be in class. Activities for doing this can include decorating the class with posters that they made and setting class rules that everyone agrees and had a say on. Learners can also make posters about their cultures and religions and be given the opportunity by the teacher to explain and discuss this with other learners in the class. This might be a solution to possible discrimination and misunderstandings based of belief in class.

As a teacher it is your duty know and find out what resources you have at your disposal in your school. You should make the most of it. Using the resources like the internet and library at your school can show learners that do not get enough support at their homes that they can also gain access to information and that you support them in their education.

Being a teacher can be difficult – by seeing the learners as your children can make a huge difference in the dynamics in class. Treat them with respect and you will be respected; allow them to teach you and they will allow you to have taught.  

Digital Self-Study

As someone studying Education I would like to believe that as a teacher I am needed. But – lately it doesn’t seem to be the case. As proved by the high school learners who developed and successfully taught themselves by means of ‘The Independent Project’. They learnt many things they would not have in class. What stood out for me was the fact that they learnt to TEACH.

This is a wake-up call to me as my job might be in danger. If kids learn how to teach themselves and their peers, then what is the point of me slaving away years of my life to become qualified when anyone can teach?

“Teachers guided by standards can certainly retain banker-like control, but theirs is a sort of shadow of power, as they are no longer in a position to determine what knowledge is worth depositing”

We have so much knowledge to share with our learners however we are restricted by curriculum statements and policies. Children are by nature inquisitive – why not let them guide the curriculum or the lessons you teach in class? Or – you won’t have a job in the next few decades (not just you, but the profession you are trying to keep alive).  

Technology-mediated self-directed and distance learning is the route education needs to take. Let learners learn what they want to, teach their peers and you as the teacher. Maybe you learn something new. This phenomenon is the way to make school something fun again. Distance learning has great potential. If we could learn from a screen and the teacher is on the other side of the world – why not? I mean, you would have access to the greatest experts in the field you are interested in. Learn from the best.

Technology is inevitable. It can help us as teachers who have a goal to educate children teach children on a global scale. We can sit anywhere in the world and teach someone on the opposite side of the globe. You can record your lessons and make them available to anyone with internet access. We will be able to teach literally anyone with computer access – children, teens, adults, the elderly – even our colleagues.

The opportunity for you to become a learner and broaden your knowledge bank is a click away, you won’t have to spend another year to upgrade yourself when you can do it digitally anywhere any time.

Don’t restrict the power of knowledge. Let your learners be creative in their learning. And become who you preach to – a learner. 

If you can't beat them - JOIN them!

I am specializing in Curriculum Studies English and Life Orientation. This means that I will hopefully be given the opportunity to teach these subjects in a high school. Now I don't care about the community I will serve as a teacher. There is one thing I know all learners in the 21st century South Africa are exposed to or at least know of - Social Media. I plan to use social media in my classroom one day because I know about the benefits it can provide in the modern classroom. I am aware of the pitfalls too.

English (Home Language and First Additional Language)
Social Media is a great way to connect to your learners. In communities that are relatively poor buying the newspaper everyday is an expensive habit. Giving the learners the opportunity to access online newspapers by means of their smartphones or the school's computer room, they can start reading actively and I can create activities like orals about contemporary topics and I could ask them to print and read aloud an article that interested them. That way they share information and practice their listening, speaking and reading skills as required by the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). To improve writing learners can use Twitter to summarize paragraphs into the allowed 140 characters provided in a tweet. I can create a hashtag like we use in our PGCE course at Stellenbosch University to track the tweets my learners send. I would encourage them to read the blogs of other learners around the world and start one where they do reflections about what they learn in class and in other subjects. This way they can engage with others on a global scale. If I struggle to explain a concept or a rule in language to the learners I will look for a video on YouTube and stream it so that they might learn from someone else. I will ask of my learners to create a wall in the classroom where they put new words on that they read somewhere, each week we can take a few, look it up in a dictionary and thesaurus and then after they understand the word they can practice using it or synonyms thereof. This way they build their vocabulary. When it comes to literature, they can develop plays and perform it, other learners can record it and watch and share it later. To practice writing further I will take the learners to the computer room and ask them to write an e-mail with certain information and they should e-mail it to an account I will create for assessment purposes. If they have no access to electronics at the school I can print pages that look like websites, blogs and e-mails for them to fill in.  

Life Orientation
Life Orientation being a sensitive subject at times can benefit a lot from social media and outside sources. Learners can throw private questions into a box after each lesson that I will research and answer in general in the next lesson. I will condemn them messaging other people via the internet with issues relating to school work that I do not know about as this can be a threat to them. When a topic like HIV, sex or pregnancy is discussed in the class and I see the learners do not take it up well, I can ask them to animate with software a short video clip that show their understanding of the topic. This will spare shy learners the embarrassment of speaking in class and children who might deal with these issues their privacy. The world of work is a mystery to most learners, by giving them the opportunity to brows university websites and by giving them year books of the universities they can see what marks they have to obtain to be accepted into a certain course after grade 12. Giving them case studies about certain topics and giving them questions to do can give me insight to their understanding of what we do in class and gives me the freedom and ability to adapt my lesson plans because I know where my learners are. Online is a great place to find the rules to different sports and ideas for developing games that they can use to obtain their physical education marks.

There are so many great ways to use the internet and social media in the classroom. The dangers of allowing your kids online is scary, but if you can control it, why not use it to give your learners a new and interesting way of looking at boring subjects like English and Life Orientation. These are two of the four subjects learners in South Africa need to pass every year in order to finish school. After 12 years they can become bored of the same old story. Do yourself a favor by not turning your classroom into the "off-period" and make them want to learn again. If you can't beat them - JOIN them.

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After reading ‘Decoding Digital Pedagogy, Pt. 1 and 2’ I am no longer so impressed with what digital pedagogy is. When I first heard about it two weeks ago it seemed like something new and I was so confused. At this point I still don’t know if I get what it’s about but to me it seems like what every fun and interesting teacher has been doing.

Growing-up in a family of teachers who have decades of experience there is nothing they haven’t tried. From allowing learners to YouTube for better understanding and demonstrations to building terrariums and going to the woods to understand Biology, Chemistry, Physics and geography. Never mind the countless Wiki hand outs to give a bit of popular belief and background. Asking learners to design games for PT and performing topics that I believed could not be acted out.

I agree with Morris (2013) that digital pedagogy is largely misunderstood in higher education. Personally I feel as a varsity student the closest we have gotten to realising it, is now only, in my postgraduate studies. After years of being drilled into “my way or the high way”. I’m happy for things like the flipped classroom and the odd ways we have been taught the past three weeks.  The paper tweets and drawing in English – Never thought I would ever draw in English.

Like the author I believe LMS came to soon, however I don’t think it’s a mistake. I enjoy and appreciate having my work at the click of a button and answers with the flick of my thumb. Saying it is easy is also not right – teachers put many hours into creating and putting content online. Learning from moocs is also not easy, there are some things you have to ask someone or need a better explanation that only a teacher can provide. Whether it be another online person or a video that was online since who knows when – someone made it for someone else to learn.

As Stommel(2013) says, it’s not the function  of the tools we have at our disposal but how we use them to educate at the hand of the needs of those we serve – learners. They know way more than their teachers about how to ‘hack’ technology and use it to their advantage. Be a digital pedagogue (wear that label with pride); teach by learning from your learners. What do you have? Use it in a way unimagined. 

Why not Both?

When I first encountered the term "digital pedagogy" I did not know what to think. The term was new to me just as paper was once, computers, telephones, you name it. The question that I am dealing with however at this point is whether technologies (digital and non-digital) can be reconciled in the modern classroom? My answer is obviously YES! 

By making use of things like PowerPoint presentations in class, students have easier access to the notes and can download it from a site like SunLearn at any time. For me this is great and although I say so, it can have horrible consequences. Learners might end up using their smartphones for not so academic purposes in class. 

After reading the Fyfe article (http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/3/000106/000106.html) I came to a realization that there might be hope for being not digital nor non-digital in your classroom but to incorporate a combination of the two. If we teach "naked" we might miss out on the wonderful things technology can serve us as "future" teachers with. On the other hand being completely digital can take away the humanistic experience of school. So if the two are then to work in harmony there is something to keep in the back of your head as the educator. PEDAGOGY... 

What do you aim to do when you teach a class at the hand of technology? The answer is simple. DO NOT use the tools available to you in the mediocre manner that bored you to sleep on varsity. Use the tools digital and non-digital to your advantage in a fun and new way - not saying learning is all about fun. Be creative, there is nothing more fun than allowing your learners to do something the way they want to under supervision and guidance naturally. An example of incorporating the two - Ask learners to make a poster but they have to print pictures that they found on the internet and then cut and paste (not Ctrl+x Ctrl+v) the old fashioned way. 

The way to use the tools you have at your disposal as a teacher should be used for the advancement of the pedagogy of the subject that you are teaching, not just for the sake of what it was created for by programmers or companies that make stationary. Envision a better way to teach for the sake of pedagogy and your learners. 

So here is to being a well-balanced teacher that children love. Be dynamic, be creative, be the future. And just a precautionary note - it's illegal to teach naked - so do not do it.