Digital Pedagogy- The Future of Education

 Digital Pedagogy

Digital Pedagogy- the Future of Education. Why does this statement make so many people uncomfortable? Why is everybody so resistant to change? I would like to quote John Dewey who says: “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” As true as this may be, its very difficult to let go of our set ways because we believe that we are doing what is best for our learners. But are we really? Is learning about us (teachers) or about our learners?

Learning can be improved by using technology to create a highly interactive digital learning experience, hence digital pedagogy. Majority of learning happens with color, sound, visuals, action because when learners are having fun- they tend to learn the most. In our schools, learners are given all the information in the format of fully structured problems, where they can just plug in the correct information in the formula and get the correct answer. Also learners are bombarded with a lot of information which they have to learn somehow and parrot it back to us. and if they can do that, we think that learning has taken place.

Albert Einstein states that "The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or exponential skill." This can only happen if we as teachers create a safe environment, which encourages questioning, deconstruction of concepts and formulation of problems. Most teachers may refer to this as chaos. Indeed it is chaos! But a necessary chaos because it encourages thinking and provokes conversation. 

We need to move from content to conversation, consumption to creation, correct to correcting and from control to chaos.  This is where learning takes place, in the chat, more than in the content where its the teacher who is doing all the talking and the learners are bored to death and even falling asleep during the lesson. When learners make videos and compose songs about the content, they learn better and remember the concepts, hence creation. Learners can help each other learn by using social media, ChatRooms, Google Docs, Wikis, YouTube videos, etc. This is learning through chaos! Chaos is not necessarily the opposite of order, instead it is giving the learners an opportunity to reorganize the content by themselves. "The teacher must intentionally cause enough chaos to motivate the student to reorganize."- Doll, 1986: p15

The Future is now!