Group R: Becoming Digital Pedagogues

Computer Use 774:
Bloggers R: Blog post – 10 October

It may come as no surprise when we tell you that we all live in an ever increasing digital world. Some of you may even take it for granted, having grown up with smart phones and tablets. As time goes on and technology advances, it becomes more ubiquitous and accessible to the average learner. This presents a whole new world of potential digital pedagogical approaches to learning.



Technology occupies an important place within students' lives. In class, as experienced, we can see how teaching and learning by use of technology has become fun for both the learners and the teacher. It seems as though learners enjoy being in touch with the information itself: give them a tablet or computer with internet access and you will be amazed by how much you as a teacher can learn from THEM. When learners get the opportunity to work with technology, they seem to connect more with the content. This is also a way to get the learners to actively do work and research. It also makes it easier for the learners to learn and remember the content better. By providing students with the correct tools, we can take them into the 21st century and prepare them for the future, as it is becoming inevitable that technology will become part of the school syllabus.



Digital technology however, in the greater scheme of things, is relatively new and one may even consider it as being in an experimental phase, since not enough time has gone by to really assess the positive impact that it can have in the classroom. Is it actually helping learners or is it merely a distraction?



We must ask ourselves, in what ways can digital pedagogy be enabling, while at the same time we must consider its potential pitfalls. Give a child a tablet and they may spend their time looking up pictures of cats, rather than doing the work that is expected in a lesson. Technology give us the freedom to explore and learn but for a learner, such freedom can be inhibiting. How does one moderate the use of technology in the classroom? There is no easy answer to this question but it is something that we must keep in the back of our minds.


One can also consider the advantages technology can bring to the classroom. Technology can personalise a lesson in the way it can potentially support the topics that are being discussed and it often provides different teaching styles to every individual’s personal needs. A device like a tablet gives learners access to world of information. This is very useful in classrooms as some textbooks are often outdated: as teachers we can use this to our advantage and teach learners how to assess collected information. This is beneficial for the learner him- or herself as it is a useful skill to have for future use in the working environment.


As with anything, the key to quality classroom management is to have a plan, a Plan B, and to ensure that technology integration is consistent, clear, and supports the learning objectives and goals. It is important to ensure that your class time includes an active learning and creative piece that will yield student engagement. We, as teachers, will never be able to control it all, but we can put steps in place to limit the uncontrollable.

Group Q: Critical consideration of the School Visit (2)

Computer Use 774:
Bloggers Q: Blog post – 09 October

During teaching practice, students were faced with various challenges that theory could not have prepared them for. The module has aided the students on their nine-week journey in many different ways.


The main purpose of computer use was to prepare us for the classroom and its technological aspect, due to the new day and age many schools are leaning towards a completely technology friendly school environment. Moving away from ‘traditional’ schooling. As seen with the wealthy private school, they had a myriad of resources and everything was computerized and iPad focused. Thus the student was able to use the knowledge gained from the module to create new innovative lessons where learners were stimulated and challenged using the resources they had access to. 


Majority of students were placed in underprivileged, low-income schools in which majority of them lacked resources. This allowed the students who came in for their teaching practice to be creative in the way they conducted their lessons and transferred their knowledge onto the learners. Those who were placed in higher income or private schools were surprised to find that they had a drastic lack of resources for both learners and teachers.


Where there were resources available, including technology as well as textbooks, it was few and far between. Thus not all teachers and learners had access to the resources that were available to them. Therefore, teachers needed to adjust their lessons to allow for effective teaching and learning to take place regardless of the availability of resources.


In the underprivileged schools that were well-resourced teachers were one of the main problems. The faculty did a bad job at managing the resources that were available to them. Although resources were available it was not well taken care of or the teachers themselves did not have the training to be able to adequately work with them. Thus leading to instances where they resign themselves to ‘older’ ways of teaching, not being innovative in their lessons sticking to a teacher-centric, rote learning and lecture style of teaching.


The module helped students to be able to navigate the environment, be it a technology-free or friendly zone. The students were able to bring in alternate ways of teaching in order to thrive in both situations. Finding a balance between blended and traditional learning, where they were able to integrate various methods of teaching leading to the enhancement of the teaching and learning experience.

Group P: Critical consideration of the School Visit

Computer Use 774:
Bloggers P: Blog post – 09 October

Walking through the doors of different schools on the first day of our teaching practice, various expectations and prior knowledge filled our being. We were excited to explore the newest technology and e-learning methods within class-context.

The reality, however, quickly sank in: most schools, particularly public schools, are not making use of e-learning methods, besides PowerPoint presentations. Some schools are privileged to have interactive whiteboards, for example an ebeam, which enables the educator to have an interactive lesson. Unfortunately, very few schools have the financial capacity to provide these boards for every classroom, resulting in many teachers conducting lessons in a teacher-centred manner, using textbooks and a board. Many learners find this unsatisfying.

Too many educators are comfortable using passive methods - is it truly the best way for a learner to explore the content being taught? Are learners truly exploring content in this manner, or are they just receiving information? Reflecting on our teaching practice, we realise that the majority of educators have to work around the available resources and are resorting to teacher-centred methods that they feel comfortable with. This is done at the expense of the learners as there is little consideration for the optimum method to introduce and explore the content. Educators stick to the traditional method when one sees it from the vantage point of adhering and complying with a CAPS curriculum and rarely consider venturing into new methods of presentation. This raises the question: Should educators simply stick to their comfort zones and use what has ‘worked’ up until now and deprive learners from the opportunity of being exposed to new methods of learning?

Apart from this, numerous educators are also not trained to use e-learning methods. This however should not be an excuse to not incorporate new age teaching methods into the classroom. Classrooms have e-learning resources, but are used, because educators lack the training to fully incorporate the system. The potential of various e-learning methods have to be discovered and fully explored in the South-African schooling system.

It should be noted that the South African context is a unique and often challenging milieu to incorporate e-learning. The vast majority of schools lack the resources to equip classrooms with the basics let alone advanced technological equipment. Private schools that have adopted the new world of e-learning have done so with the luxury of resources at their disposal that is out of reach for the majority of underprivileged communities.

Through the teaching experience it became apparent that educators have become exhausted by everything that they are required to do. The least of these are shockingly teaching and doing thorough planning. Living in a digital age, learners are extremely visual and often learn through means of technology. For teachers to use technology as a way to facilitate learning; will require of them to put a lot more thought and planning into each lesson.

Groups L&M: Revisiting blog topics A through E

Computer Use 774:
Bloggers L&M: Combined Blog Post

Humanity is moving into a largely ICTs-driven era (Information Communication Technology), and as huge advances in this sector are made, education is necessarily reshaped under its influence. The classroom, both within the South African and the global context, have been irrevocably changed. Throughout the Digital Pedagogies course and the preceding blog articles, aspects of this change have been explored - both for the possibilities it presents, as well as the challenges it faces within the South African context. The effort of this piece will be to synthesize what has been discussed so far into a cohesive analysis of the potential for the implementation of digital pedagogies within our current education environment.

New roles/duties of teachers: Rapid advances have been made within the realm of ICTs, a fact which has influenced how we live our daily lives. The radical availability of information and communication through the rising technological interface necessitates a proficiency in digital and media literacy, which involve the skills necessary to participate, and use technologies ethically and responsibly. Within this context, the teacher now has the new duty of guiding learners through the necessary skills to use ICT effectively and safely.

Effective pedagogy & lesson planning: The recognition of the learner as a complex individual and the active engagement of the learner’s context-informed subjectivity is a large element of inclusive practice within the classroom, and therefore needs to be a foundational element that informs our pedagogies. The effective pedagogy is one that takes the learner and their learning process into consideration when teaching – actively involved learners are able to engage with and learn from the taught content. Incorporating ICTs as part of your lesson plan and your pedagogy creates an ideal platform to actively engage with increasingly technology-oriented learners inside and outside of the classroom, and it makes their learning experience more flexible, mobile and accessible. This is not a hard and fast rule, however – for some learners, the incorporation of technology can be disruptive. Counteracting this is part of the reason for the need for effective lesson planning. Lesson planning helps teachers achieve their role in the classroom, which is to help learners apply the concepts which they are taught. It also helps teachers to manage their classroom better and keep learners focused throughout the lesson.

ICTs as a teaching & learning aid: ICTs are increasingly regarded as a valuable teaching aid which can contribute to making lessons and difficult content more interesting and accessible. Its values have been list as, among others, providing access to information, helping engage learners with the content, acting as a communicative equaliser (through anonymous and standardised posting and access), and making sharing and working together easier when face-to-face working time is no longer required. It can help with lesson planning, logistics management, and serve as stimuli to help learners visualise, organise and apply concepts. The current generation of learners is increasingly technologically-oriented, having been surrounded by technology in most spheres of life. They are a generation that wants to see, do and experience, instead of just being passive listeners. The integration of ICTs within the classroom and learning environment allows for increasingly engaging and personalised learning, thus having learners accept more responsibility for their learning and allow them to be agents of their own knowledge.

The Use of Social Media: Social media is seen as one of the most effective tools for communication amongst learners. For this reason it can be seen as a potentially valuable resource that could make the classroom more engaging, relevant and culturally diverse. The interactive and communicative nature of social media allows learners to form natural communities where questions can be asked and answered within a communal digital space. This adds a social aspect to the learning taking place, an aspect that researchers are increasingly lauding as contributing to effective learning. Through this medium, learners’ interests and lived realities are brought closer to the teaching space, and vice versa – this naturally and positively disrupts learners’ study experience. The use of social media is also a potential contributor enabling teachers establish a channel of open communication with their learners, thus creating space for comfortable interactions where learners are able to voice concerns and potential challenges to their learning.

Challenges to the implementation of ICTs:  However ideal the integration of ICTs as teaching/learning aides may be, there are certain considerations that must be made, specifically within the South African context that results in successful integration not always being possible. One of these considerations in South Africa is the large lack of access to ICTs sources – the lingering inequalities within South African society that result in a large population of working class citizens without the monetary means to access to ICT devices. Schools that service this population are also largely unable to facilitate ICTs integration as it requires a substantial capital output to obtain the required hardware. Another consideration linked to the lack of access is the level of exposure and training teachers have received toward the effect use of ICTs. Many teachers have not had this exposure and training, resulting in an ineffective use of the technology that could be a hindrance to the learners’ appreciation and understanding of ICTs as a resource.

The overarching result of the research done so far within this course is that although ICTs have the potential to be powerful and diverse teaching and learning aides, the complexity of integrating it into the school system should not be underestimated. That being said, the increasingly vital skills of digital and technological literacy, coupled with the growing prevalence of technological resources and access points, the active integration of ICTs within the classroom will no longer be a recommendation, but a necessity.