Well, when I first joined this course, I thought well now we will be starting to learn about this fantastic model of TPACK right away! In the first lecture, I slowly realized that we are first going to inspect and understand each element of the title of this course ' Pedagogies for flexible learning supported by technology'. The title did seem to intrigue me at first. I knew something about pedagogy and technology, but I was wondering about what is flexible learning! As I started reading articles about flexibility, pedagogy and technology and writing it on my blog, slowly they started to make sense, just like a jigsaw puzzle. The initial anxiety and excitement of starting a blog and feeling a little lost seems to now slowly give way to understanding about this course.
Few things that struck me like an aha! moment are: flexibility is not just about distance learning..anything which gives the decisions regarding learning in the hands of the learner is flexible learning. for eg: the students can choose how they would want to express what they have learnt or what should be the criteria of assessment or what to learn when and how. And as you unfold this further, the implications for learner, teacher and the course organizer can be better understood.
The second one was the difference between the pedagogical approach and delivery method. I had read about blended learning and posted an article on blogging as a form of blended approach. Blended approach is a instruction delivery method where there is a blend of a web based and face to face interaction. Its not like problem based or inquiry based method of learning. A significant difference! In the technology class, i realized how narrowly i was perceiving technology as digibord, computers and iphones. But during the exercise i saw that cameras, GPS, on-line games etc. are all technologies that can be creatively integrated in making learning fun and meaningful!
So here we have pedagogies that can make learning flexible and fun if used with appropriate technology. Sound simple, but i guess its not as simple to practice..like most simple things in life:) I keep wondering though how would they actually translate into practice, in a real life situation. There can be so many permutations and combinations of these three and other factors like context, teacher capacities, school polices, resource availability would be influential too! Hope to learn about these in coming days!
Nice reflection! I felt a bit the same in the beginning, after a couple of lessons you get what the structure of the course is. But I was wondering, in the last alinea you say that pedagogies can make learning flexible and fun. But isn't it in reverse? That flexible learning can be used in pedagogies instead of pedagogies that make learning flexible?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, did you read the article on blackboard 'effective practice in a digital age'? In that document, there are a couple of examples how technology can be used in the practice of teaching...