Cool teachers wear bow ties

This past week I've really been thinking about how I can be a cool teacher. Should I get an arsenal of jokes? Should I give them coffee on a Friday? Should I have a talking parrot in class? Should I wear a bow tie?

Luckily, it seems to me that Instagram, Blogger and Twitter might come to my rescue. Being a Life Science and Life Orientation teacher, media and social media may actually be really functional. Here are a few things that I will definitely consider.

Firstly, in Life Orientation, a lot of the topics covered are not necessarily a matter of fact, but rather a matter of opinion. The sooner you empower a teenager with their own voice, the better. Thus, having a Blog to post their thoughts or opinions on a matter such as relationships or rights, may be invaluable. Not only will it give them a platform to air their thoughts, but also a place to comment on other's opinions and shape their own. To utilize this as best as possible, no criteria or specifications should be given, adding a creative and personal level for the learners to explore.

Secondly, in Life Science, YouTube and Instagram can become my best friends. Having science experiments and explanations readily available on YouTube is amazing. More importantly, YouTube and Instagram can be a great way of handing in assessments. Experiments can be documented and presented in creative and alternative ways, posted on YouTube, watched by the entire class and assessed by everyone at once. It is an awesome opportunity for peer assessment and sharing knowledge.

Thirdly, as a teacher, Twitter and Blogger are great platforms to communicate with other teachers. How privileged are we not to have an entire support network at the touch of a button? These are great places to get new ideas for class and to meet people in your subject area. These platforms can also be used to keep parents up to date about classes and experiences that you and the learners may have had during the day.

Finally, media allows learning to continue long after the school day has finished. Finding something interesting on YouTube or reading Blogs about the different views people of the world might have on religion, may be very enriching. The absolute key here is to teach learners responsible media use. Not only about stranger danger, but also how social media never really deletes anything, how to spot a cyberbully, how to spellcheck and how to know when something is better kept to yourself. Privacy should still be valued and something that might harm another person should not be posted. The consequences should thus be made very clear. Learners should also know how to vet information, because everything on 9gag or Reddit may not be true.

All these things are extremely useful when used responsibly and in conjunction with real life experiences in classrooms. But my absolute dream is to use media in my class to overcome one thing.

Competition.

Not the healthy kind, but the kind that makes students hide knowledge from each other to maintain their competitive edge. Forcing them to engage with each other's knowledge and to share it with each other, might help to some extent to build a collective basis of information between them. I do hope that this is not a naive thing to say, because I'm not known for being naive. Competition can be something that brings about anxiousness and stress and not motivation. I would love for that to not be that case in my classroom. Maybe I'll be a cool teacher then. If that doesn't work, I'll go for the parrot or the bow tie.

Endangered Teacher

Are teachers endangered?

That was a thought that kept on going through my head while I read these posts. I sometimes get the idea that teachers fear digital pedagogy - not because they can't use it - but because it makes them feel replaceable.

A teacher can never remember everything Google can. A teacher can never be there 24/7. A teacher most definitely won't be able to fit into your pocket. A teacher will never be able to show you the world the way Discovery can (not on our salary at least). And a teacher won't be able to entertain you the way YouTube can.

Basically, everything to be found in a textbook or in the curriculum, can be found online. There are online schools (even if they are bad, they are still there), millions of journal articles and billions of videos, all with content that can possibly contribute to knowledge building. 

We as teachers need to redefine our roles. We need to play to our strengths. We may not have infinite memory or information, but we do have real life experience. We experience and share life with the learners in our class. We get to  see how they grow and who they become. We get to have the immense privilege to see them become human. And we need to use that very humanness to shape our pedagogy. 

I love how Jesse Stommel said "The digital pedagogue teaches her tools, she doesn’t let them teach her." That's exactly what we need to be doing. We need not fear digital pedagogy. We might just as well wipe the word digital and just call it pedagogy. We can not be intimidated by a mere tool. We must manipulate the tools at our disposal to facilitate growth and learning, no matter what the tool is. It is in our very nature to use what is around us to better ourselves. By using any tools around us, even if it's the oldest book or the newest tablet, we must model that to our learners.  

We need to be pioneering and modelling inquisitive mindsets and curiosity. We need to model positive attitudes towards others.  The medium of subject content may have changed slightly from a textbook to an e-book or from a chalk board to a PowerPoint, but it actually doesn't matter. In some classes every child has a tablet, in others some might not even have a desk. We just need to use what is relevant in our classrooms. Our pedagogy is not defined by what we use, but rather how and why we use what is around us.

Teachers are not endangered. Some methods we used 50 years ago may be, but that does not seem to be a great evil. But teachers are vital. We are the pedagogues. We are the ones reading the nuances in class. We are the ones who can spot the sadness or frustration in a child's eyes. We are the ones who lead by example that unconditional acceptance is valuable and that kindness is more than just words. We need to play the role of facilitating their journey through the moans and groans of life. Show me a Google that can do that.

Digital pedagogy according to Fyfe (2011)

Digital pedagogy is the part of our future jobs that we will not be able to hide from. The children in our classes will bring it in through the door, literally in the palms of their hands, if we try to deny it.

Pedagogy is a word thrown around a lot in these past two weeks. Honestly, I'm still confused as to what it really means to me as a future teacher. What I do gather though, is that it boils down to method. To me it seems that with all that's going on around us and life moving at a million miles an hour, teachers have to fight for attention. The only way to get attention is through your method. 

In this article, Fyfe challenges the notion of what "digital" really means and how this will influence our methods. 

Constraining ourselves to the definition framed by electronics, is the problem we are facing at the moment. In many instances, I believe schools still operate on the end of the digital spectrum where an overhead projector and a wooden pointer is seen as exciting or even distracting. On the other end, many university lecturers have fallen victim to the awful idea that by having a PowerPoint presentation, that their 50 minute rant about molecular cell structure will somehow be life changing and inspiring. 

Being an educator, it is unavoidable to be a hacker. You have to manipulate an often broken system to your advantage on a daily bases - thus hacking to meet the goal of educating. You have to hack media, hack the newspaper, hack the curriculum, hack the blackboard, and most importantly, hack the children in your class.

I watched a series, Mr. Robot, this past week. The story follows the life of a hacker. He often speaks to the term of "hacking people". We need to adapt our pedagogy to hack people, to mold their minds, build their creativity and adapt their cognition. Here we need to use what is relevant and challenging. Intuitively, I may still think computers fall under challenging and pencils under relevant, but I think we need to realize that the tables have turned. Every teenager has a very relevant phone in their hands and a very challenging classroom where they should write instead of text. 

We need to be hybrid scholars. We need to mix relevance with challenge. Teachers cannot be lazy for one single day. We need to keep our eyes fixed on YouTube and PowerPoint without letting it do the teaching on our behalf. We need to add on to these relevant methods with something challenging and foreign such as a real life magazine or a difficult question. We might be surprised by the innovation sparked by something as simple as a question, especially one requiring the help of their brain and their gut and not of Google.

Disclaimer

For me, there's always this awkward moment after I had a thought.

It starts out with this spark of a vicious opinion, complete with a set of arguments to support it and counters if someone dares to cross me. As it simmers for a day or two, I tend to realize that on some level my default truth was not so true after all.

To no surprise, my opinion of blogging was no different. I was sure this will be the end of my life as I know it. And please do not even get me started on Twitter. I was ready to create my first blog as a sort of disclaimer stating how my privacy was ensured if I choose it to be, that my unplugged life will be safeguarded, that my freedom of social media would be preserved and that I would somehow get by without really doing much. Here is the quirky twist. At the end if I wanted to subscribe to this disclaimer and tick the neat square next to "I agree", the following would appear:

Not Found: Error 404

I thought it to be terribly clever - a perfect irritated first blog.

And of course, to no disappointment, I came to the earth shattering conclusion that I was wrong and not so clever as I thought. It almost sounds like the climax to every movie ever. This wonderfully irritating platform might just be the start of something unexpected.

So here follows the new pledge.

I agree to guarding my own freedom and privacy. I agree to not posting twelve selfies every day and not check in at every coffee shop in the Western Cape. I agree to not post every intimate thought and place it under public scrutiny. I agree to posting something relevant and hopefully interesting. And I agree to do it in a small way, for taking up too much space in life (and on social media) limits authenticity.

This social media monster under my bed might not be the source of my nightmares. Rather, it might be the guardian of my thoughts. It might be the place where my vicious opinion gets tamed before I have to go through an awkward moment. It might be the place where I learn. It might be the place where I stretch myself and explore the written word and spirited debate.

And hey, it might even be fun.