After a week of tinkering and coordinating with my colleagues, the second lecture had finally come to pass. I say finally to underscore my excitement for the contact session, knowing full well that the week that had passed didn’t quite feel like seven days for any of us. Seven hours, maybe. (Optimistically trying to avoid the thought of someone finding a minute of my classes way too much to bear…) I was ready, and fully focused on delivering a well paced, meaning filled, easy-to-follow exploration of unplugged pedagogy; linked to an equally vivid exposition and consideration of our developing pedagogies in the South African context. Fancy words aside, this is not as complicated as it sounds. At the same time, it is infinitely more complex than I am able to unravel in one go. Things could easily have gone either way, but I was betting that these were the right risks to take.
Opening with a self-locating activity was worth the weird looks from left field. Asking the class to consider their relative comfort with their immediate environment seemed to help settle them. In dimming the lights, and then double checking their feelings of comfort and safety, I hoped to gain intrigue without losing trust. Asking my students to close their eyes, and to again consider their sense of comfort and safety, I endeavoured to flip the class into a completely “technology-free” space. For those who were not comfortable enough to close their eyes, I hoped the dimly lit lecture hall would do the trick. In a very real sense we were learning at the same time, but in very different spaces – entirely unfettered by technology. (Apart from the technology of imagination, that is.)
It appeared that some sense of contemplative meaning-making and honest participation was achieved. Who can tell what really came to mind as I asked four orientations: Who are we? What are our goals? Where are we situated? When are we situated? Wherever their thoughts had taken them during the thought experiment, the class easily switched gears to discuss the work done so far.
A chance conversation earlier that morning reminded me of Sugata Mitra‘s experiments in self teaching. His work resonated so well with the content of the lecture, that I had no qualms in including one of the TED Talks videos on his work. This was an authentic, internet-enabled, electronic realisation of digital pedagogy similar to that which many of the PGCEmixers defined in their initial musings on the subject.
Que the crisis in our storyline – the screening of Molly Blank’s documentary: Testing Hope. A potent, uncomfortably real challenge to what most anybody’s answers to the four orientations might have been, the documentary unapologetically thrust the not-so-shiny realities of our Education System into the room. A fifth orientation brought it all home: Why Teaching?
It was a potent and sobering note to end the lecture on – and one I’m very glad the class had time to digest before discussing it in one of their other modules the following day. I am incredibly thankful to have colleagues to collaborate and coordinate efforts with in the humbling task of preparing the teachers of tomorrow. I’d like to believe that the way we work together adds value to the programme, and enriches all our lives and pedagogies.
Looking forward to next week 🙂
Leave a Reply