A reflection on what I learned till now

In this blog, I will reflect on the topics I mentioned in the earlier blogs, pedagogy, flexibility and technology. 

First something about flexibility. Flexibility in teaching was a kind of unclear thing for me. What is it? Is it really helpful? And would I like it in the classes I follow? After the lecture and the literature, now I think: Yes, I would like to have flexibility in my lessons. And it is allready there. Flexibility goes about the time in which and on wich you do your learning, about the content you are going to learn, the entry requirements, the approach and the delivery and logistics of the course. And less or more, I experience flexibility in all of these elements in the courses I follow right now. By example, I have classes on two days in the week, the rest I have to do on myself or with a group. When I do things, doesn’t matter, as long as I finish them on time. That is also the lack of flexibility. I have to do assignments every week, before a setted deadline. That’s not that flexible... Also the entry requirements are a bit flexible. I did another bachelor than the others in my class. And the delivery methods and kind of assignments are different in all courses. By example this blog, its totally new to me and we use blogs only in this course. I like that flexibility, its more challenging because I have to perform on different ways and I can do it a bit on my own time. I don’t have to travel each day three ours, but I can study in my own house. I can sum up a whole lot of other flexibilities which I experience, but I won’t do that, you can think of that by your own...

I wil go on to the second topic, pedagogies. I like that topic very much. It’s about the way in which courses are set. Examples are traditional learning, inquiry learning, problem-based learning or collaborative learning. By choosing the approach for a course, you have to think about what the best way is to let the students learn. I like this, because you think about how people learn, how will they remember and own the most information, skills or attitude? I like the collaborative approach. Students have to interact with eachother to construct their knowledge. You need a community to learn with, in and from. I think that’s important in real-life. You can learn so much from other people. They look at different ways at things, they know other things than you know. I believe you can learn so much from talking and doing things together, and others can learn things from you also. When people are sharing their knowledge, we are so rich in our world... But it cost a lot of time to work collaboratively, so it is nice that there are other approaches also in which you can learn a lot...

In the pedagogy-approaches teachers can use a lot of technologies. By now, there are so much different technologies you can use. From a simple pen and paper to the more complex nintendo DS. I used them both in the lesson about technology. Both have other possibilities and dissabilities. On the nintendo, we played the game ‘professor Layton’. In this game, the player has to solve logical problems. It was fun, but also younger people can learn from this things.

Especially new technologies have many possibilities for teaching. But always, the teacher have to look at the use of it in a pedagogy. The use of new technologies can be fun and thereby motivating. But technology has also other opportunities for teaching. With a digital learning environment, the different pedagogical approaches can be better implemented.

I think, technology can empower the pedagogy, and thereby create more flexibility. This will support a deeper learning from both the learner and the teacher. And that, above all, is the goal of education, isn’t it?