About That Blog You Purportedly Have...

So yeah. I haven't blogged in like forever. Or since early August. And October looks like it will be busier than September.

One reason for all of the busy is that I've enrolled in the Leading Edge Certification - Digital Educator course. As I was writing a post for next week is occurred to me that the post - and perhaps several other that I will do - made a decent blog post.

So the discussion post is below. The prompt is in italics. More cross-posting to come?

How might the pedagogy for a digital educator look different than that of a traditional brick-and-mortar teacher? In what ways might it stay the same? Does technology change the way we teach, or just enhance it?

Pedagogy looks different for a digital educator than that of a traditional teacher in a number of ways. However, I believe that the most important way is that given that information is now almost ubiquitous, learning should be almost ubiquitous as well. If we are teaching and learning digitally as professional educators, we must extend that same courtesy to our students. No longer should all students be learning the same thing at the same time for an entire year in a course. Students should have time to dive to more depth in areas they are interested in and pursue answers to questions that they create - NOT driving questions the teacher creates like PBL says to do! - and genuinely want answers to. This requires a significant letting go of control for a digital educator that a brick-and-mortar teacher may not be comfortable with.

However, kids are still learning. They still must read, write, and synthesize information. Students must still defend their beliefs and understandings about a given topic of study. But most importantly, education was, is, and always will be about relationships. All good teachers focus on relationships - they always have and always will.

For me, technology dramatically changed the way I taught. I ran a relatively progressive inquiry-based classroom for about three years. Then, everything changed: I did the MERIT program, learned for a year online with my PLN, and attended CUE Rockstar. Things are different now, not just enhanced. An infusion of technology, a dynamite PLN that lets me see into their classrooms and challenges me to be better every day, and a belief that students no longer need to all be learning the same thing all the time has dramatically shifted what my classroom looks, feels, and sounds like. I firmly believe that my classroom is evidence of the transformative aspects of technology in education.