Participation is key 

Not many understand the difference between digital pedagogy and teaching online, I was one of many that thought they were the same thing, just one happened to use a more fancy word. However, I was mistaken and once reading the article by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel it finally starts to make sense.

Digital pedagogy is important as it is willing to experiment, to be creative, take the risks and improvise. Digital Pedagogy is a “way of engaging the world, not the world to itself”. Digital pedagogy is not so easy to define as one may think, there are various different definitions of what digital pedagogy is, the one that I enjoy the most is the combination of the use of “electronic elements” and with playfulness, tinkering and building that will essentially alter the experience of education

But here is where the difference comes in, a digital pedagogue encourages her students to participate, to get involved with other people about the topic and to not allow the limitations of the learning Management System hold them back from engaging. “The digital pedagogue teaches her tools, doesn’t let them teach her”. We need to think critically about the tools that we use

The biggest problem with the Learning Management System is that it allowed for online teaching to become super easy; all you had to do was upload all the work through whether it be the creation of a video, slideshow ect and boom online learning! This is not fun and definitely cannot be thought of as pedagogy.

However, many talented young teachers have fallen trap to the excuse of the learning Management Systems fails and has all these limitations and thus have become less innovative and lost all their best pedagogies, yes we know that, but don’t give up, don’t become boring and stop trying because a system is not operating the way it is meant to.

The key message in the articles by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel is that “ we must develop a participative pedagogy” that will be assisted by digital media and networked publics. The main message is that through a more participative pedagogy there will be more facilitating and more inspiring of the students. This is how we should teach whether it be online or in a physical classroom, engagement is the key to learning.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”

≈ Nelson Mandela