Monday, January 18, 2010

Which Came First - tech or pedagogy?

Well, here it is-two posts in as many days. Exciting, I am going to do my best to keep this going. Time will tell!
I was going through my bag of conference info and found (what I think is) an interesting article in the FETC Show Journal (I couldn't find a digital copy of the journal) titled Which came first-The Technology or the Pedagogy? picture link
The article is about the conflict between the college of educations and the classrooms. The colleges say "We're doing a great job, but then students go out into schools and they don't have access to technology or don't see other teachers using technology so some of this prep goes to waste". The schools say "If colleges of education just better prepared new teachers in technology, we'd be all set, but they're not doing their job". Sound familiar? So which one is it, the chicken or the egg?
The story goes on to say that the plan can't be just using the technology, but it must be integrating it into the curriculum. Now there is a statement that has no conflict and no question! "To use technology well you have to know three things. You first have to know the content. It is hard to teach a subject if you don't know the subject! Second, you also need to know the pedagogy associated with that content - the best instructional strategies that will be effective. Finally you need to know the innovation or technology that you're going to then use." So, if the colleges are teaching these methods, and teaching them in this order, then isn't it up to us as teachers to make sure that we can integrate this pedagogy into the classroom and help our classroom students get the most out of all teaching practices?

No comments: