Technology in the Classroom

With the rapid advancement of technology over the years, it has become normal and most of the time expected that teachers would use technology as a tool to teach their learners. When hearing the words, “Digital Pedagogy,” I immediately assumed it meant teaching by making use of computers or other forms of technology in the classroom. However once reading the article, “Digital Pedagogy Unplugged,” by Paul Fyfe, it became more clear to me that digital pedagogy does not necessarily have to be electronic.

The question that is posed in this article is; can there be a digital pedagogy without computers? Many teachers are under the assumption that digital pedagogy means the use of electronic tools or computers. The article suggests that this can be problematic because it limits the teaching to the extent of its tools. In many cases this is true, as teachers tend to read off a power point or an overhead projector and don’t actually engage creatively with the learners. A lot of the time the material that is on these power point presentations or on the overhead projector is provided to the learner anyway, which they can go and read for themselves.

The article speaks about “teaching naked” which simply means removing all computers and projectors from the classroom. In the article Fyfe poses the question, “What if instead we kept the "digital" in the non-electronic senses of that word: something to get your hands on, to deal with in dynamic units, to manipulate creatively?” This makes a lot more sense, in such a way that learners would benefit more from a classroom atmosphere that inspires creative thinking, where discussions are constantly encouraged, where learners are free to ask those “silly questions” and where learners engage with one another and with their teachers, challenging one another and ultimately resulting in learners actually learning and not just moving from one classroom to the next totally bored and having gained absolutely nothing of real substance.