Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel’s Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Definition highlighted many great things in this piece. However, I feel that, due to the amount of quotes, I struggled to find their true opinion on things. Nonetheless, here are some lines that stood out to me: “…educators and students alike have found themselves more and more flummoxed by a system that values assessment over engagement, learning management over discovery, content over community, outcomes over epiphanies. Education has misrepresented itself as objective, quantifiable, apolitical.” (Morris and Stommel) Over the course of this class, I feel we’ve read countless pieces with this same narrative. Even when speaking to teachers, I so often feel like everyone knows the system doesn’t work, yet no one is doing anything about it.
“If we are to keep every educative endeavor from becoming mill-work — from becoming only a reflection of oppressive labor practices and uneven power relationships — we must engage deeply with its reality.” (Morris and Stommel) I know we’re focusing on technology and digital pedagogies, but we need to get back to the basics — reality. Through these vehicles and the pressures of rigidity and standardization, we’ve lost the reality of things. We’ve lost the human connection and personal touch of teacher and student, which is the best facilitator of learning. “So, Critical Digital Pedagogy must also be a method of resistance and humanization.” (Morris and Stommel) Back to the basics — humanizing the experience.
“Most college educators (at both traditional and non-traditional institutions) do little direct pedagogical work to prepare themselves as teachers.” (Morris and Stommel) This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot this semester, due to the things I’m currently studying. Being that not too long ago, I went through the process of becoming a teacher, I reflect on the amount of things I didn’t learn during my time in school. From problems like the mentioned pedagogical work to how to teach ELL students or even how to teach students to read, there are so many things I wasn’t taught. Not only is this not preparing me for my career, but it’s a disservice to students.
Sean Michael Morris’s Technology is Not Pedagogy was a great listen, making important points. I agree that technology needs to be utilized in a thoughtful, intentional way, as it can either help or hurt the educational experience. This goes beyond technology as well; educators need to be intentional in all aspects of teaching. I also liked that he emphasized the importance of relationships in the classroom and that technology should support and not replace them. “Teach through the screen, not to the screen.” (Morris) As technology grows, we see this happening more and more, but it’s important that we maintain the personal connection and keep the actual student in mind. This same theme can also be seen in Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel’s Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Definition: “Far too much work in educational technology starts with tools, when what we need to start with is humans…And when we’re looking for solutions, what we most need to change is our thinking and not our tools.” (Morris and Stommel)
Martha Fay Burtis’s “Messy and Chaotic Learning” is a good critique of Learning Management Systems. Everything she said is spot on. “But when the LMS goes beyond merely providing administrative and management features…it is obviously influencing pedagogy.” (Burtis) As time has gone on, as reflected in this, LMS has become invasive and has overtaken the education system. “…we are allowing a corporation to deliver a coded set of tools for us to improve our pedagogy…while also turning over our students’ work, data, and information to this corporation and its partners.” (Burtis) Don’t get me wrong, LMS has definitely lightened the load for educators. The administrative features are incredibly helpful and not problematic. However, in an effort to make things so helpful, true learning has been lost, which impacts students. As Burtis stated, students now have a particular expectation and view of learning because of the conditioning of LMS. As I’ve mentioned throughout this, we need to get back to the basics and reel in the things we’ve been doing.
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