NEW SCHEMAS FOR MAPPING PEDAGOGIES & TECHNOLOGIES Gráinne Conole, professor of e-learning at the Open University, in his article titled “New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies”, focuses mainly on comparing the potential of WEB 2.0 in education and its actual impact, coupling with it Social Networking to a further extent in order to maximize the effect on education. Through such digital environment educators require to develop new teaching resources and adapt to new methodologies of teaching to elicit the benefits of such technologies vis-à-vis education. The introduction of Web 2.0 made it possible for educators to think of and develop different educational pedagogies. Web 2.0 offers students speed and ease of gaining information. Students can become more autonomous and become active participants of the learning process. However, many argue that such a fast paced educational approach is by far very contradictory to the traditional approach that tends to let student reflect on the knowledge they are receiving and build their learning process slowly. Thus, one can view a firm opposition among the introduction of Web 2.0, as a ‘new’ tool for progressive education, compared to traditional education. Web 2.0 emphasises on user participation and in recent years, even though there was a general increase in a group collaborative approach, yet educational systems focus on individual testing and tend to recognise and assess on the basis of individual collaboration. Another argument arises when one acknowledges that with the use of WEB 2.0 students can access multiple sources from where to gather information with ease. Here, plagiarism is the culprit due to the ‘Copy & Paste’ approach. Also, academic referencing is being challenged. Through Web 2.0, ideas are developed and transferred via blogs. This might make it impossible to identity the source of the information and the ideas presented across the world of blogs. Nowadays different educational pedagogies such as ‘social constructivism’ and ‘situated learning’ have evolved with the main agenda being to change the role of educators from applying a teacher-centred approach to a learner-centred approach. The argument being that through such a change students will not remain passive but become active participants of their own learning process. However, the majority of educators tend to use the traditional way of teaching and even though educators change their educational approach to a more student-oriented one, yet they are still bound to the educational system which revolves around the traditional approach, most prominently being the administrative processes and assessment practices. Reflecting upon all this, one can notice the “firm tension” between current educational practices tending to be “individualistic and objective” and Web 2.0 which constitutes a “social and subjective” philosophy. Technologies are so exciting and appealing that it tends to bias the mental framework to a “technology deterministic drive”, rather than focusing on concrete pedagogies that can be extracted from the use of such technologies. The author is therefore proposing some ideas to counter balance this mental approach towards technologies by suggesting two new schemas that might overcome this mental barrier. The first idea is based on a framework stressing the different dimensions of learning and the different technologies that can be used according to different contexts. The second idea helps in recognising particular learning principles and maps them against four main learning characteristics.
For the first idea (mapping different pedagogies to the use of tools) it was imperative to review the different learning theories and extract the key characteristics of each. For instance, behaviourism focuses on trial and error learning, cognitive constructivism advocates that learners build their own mental structures when interacting with the environment through self directed activities, social constructivism emphasis on interpersonal relationships and situated learning highlights learning through social participation. These characteristics are then mapped against the three different dimensions namely individual vs. social, information vs. experience and passive vs. active. Through such a mapping one can match the tools available according to the context such as using blog as a reflective diary focuses on the individual, active and experience learning dimensions; while using blogs as a class blog leads to the social, active and information learning dimensions. Another example would be the use of e-portfolio as evidence of the students’ work based experience which portrays individualism and experience. The point of this idea is that it provides a schema where the individual can think about the appropriate tools available to complement with the different contexts and different learning characteristics. Instead of focusing on the tools being used, the second idea (mapping learning principles against learning characteristics) focuses on how certain learning principles maps to the learning characteristics being thinking & reflection, conversation & interaction, experience & activity and evidence & demonstration. These four characteristics make it possible to choose certain pedagogical principles for specific learning situations. For instance, activities that requires learners to reflect on their experiences maps perfectly to ‘thinking and reflection’ and ‘evidence and demonstration’. On the other hand, an activity that involves group work (collaboration) maps with ‘conversation and interaction’. As to conclude, the author stresses the point that new technologies provide students with the possibility to personalise their working and learning environment. Students can choose a range of available tools according to their interest and needs. In fact, research showed that students are already adopting and mixing different technologies, those they think are appropriate to them in order to meet their personal preferences, and not just relying on the technologies offered by institutions. Here we can see that there is a tension between ‘personalised tools’ and ‘institutional tools’. Moreover one can also debate on what the institution should control and what the students should control throughout the whole learning process. It is important that we reflect on innovative ways of thinking in order to bring a certain change in strategic policies and to emphasis on changing the role of educationalists from a teacheroriented to a learner-oriented philosophy. Technologies have the potential to instigate a more personalised learning approach to education and learning, an approach that our students are already experiencing on their own initiative.