“We shouldn’t decide beforehand what we’re going to learn.” Improvisation, play, and experimentation are essential to learning.
An example of critical pedagogy? Permeable, fostering agency, concentrated on the process, making meaning through a friction of words and activities.
At many institutions there’s a problematic divide between instructional designers and teachers — between those building online courses and those teaching them. Expert teachers need to build their own online courses or we need to create closer collaborative relationships between teachers and instructional designers.
Isn't this the case between designers and users of tools, not only in education, but in politics and the workplace? Betsy deVos, the Republican US secretary of Education, is currently attempting to eviscerate public education. She's been scrutinized for never having interacted with a public school in her education or career. How do we bridge this gap between designers and users? It can also seen in the mass of teachers buying material from Teachers Pay Teachers (a platform on which teachers can purchase teacher-made resources) instead of using books and resources made by bigger businesses.
Academic rigor shouldn’t be built into a course like an impenetrable fortress for students to inhabit.
This imagery of an impenetrable fortress reminds me of the authoritarianism and control of Skinner and the teaching machines. I agree that rigour is fostered through a student and teacher's love of learning discovery.
Some learning happens best in rooms with walls, but some learning happens best in fields or in libraries or in town squares.
This correlates to the view that we teach through a screen and that the whereabouts of online learning isn't online, it's differently.
Digital education reshapes its subjects
Is this a Technological Determinist perspective?
2016
It's interesting that they have removed part of their 2011 manifesto which says 'Online spaces can be permeable and flexible, letting networks and flows replace boundaries.' I can't seem to match it with a statement in the revised 2016 manifesto. Why was it taken out? Is this critical digital pedagogy? as it concentrates on the fluidity of learning without limitations and on the process of discovery rather than on the knowing. If it was taken out, have they found that digital spaces are not permeable? do they not foster agency and empower learners?
Online courses are prone to cultures of surveillance. Visibility is a pedagogical and ethical issue.
Is there an underpinning anti-capitalist perspective here? Seems to be in opposition of being closely monitored, maybe agrees with students taking ownership of their thoughts and work?
Contact works in multiple ways. Face-time is over-valued.
As educators, do we know this already but just refuse to accept it because of pride? Do we enjoy having students face-to-face too much to consider online education as equally valuable?
Online teaching should not be downgraded into ‘facilitation’.
With information at the students fingertips, the dynamic certainly changes, but it doesn't necessarily downgrade. The value of teachers remain the same in 'facilitation' in how they guide the students to gather and present information, encourage them to be critical of their technology and the given information online and in the teacher-student relationship.