I read the three articles that in Topic 1 reading and I found most of them very interesting. I have learnt perspective from an different point of view.  After I read the first article, Jesse Stommel’s “Learning is not a Mechanism”. I realize that in order to use technologies in modern education, we should being more creative with technologies rather than treat the them just as a tool. I do believe that objective metrics is important to score the students in most of the cases. But in same criterial, being dogmatism could ignore students’ talent.  The author mentioned “stop attempting to distinguish so incessantly between online and on-ground learning, between the virtual and the face-to-face, between digital pedagogy and chalkboard pedagogy. Good digital pedagogy is just good pedagogy.” I am not 100% sure the concept of it. Educators have to try different digital learning tools to find the optimal choice. And they don’t have enough time to try everything. For example, if a middle school teacher found using Slack to communicate with students during Covid-19 is efficient, then I believe it is just a good digital pedagogy. It will be gone, and no longer a pedagogy anymore once the life goes back to normal.

 

There is one point of view that I disagree with the Jesse Stommel. He emphasized “listen” does not mean “surveil”, I think he is half- right. It really depends on the culture of one country. I know in North America, students and teachers are equal, and they should learn from each other. However in China, Confucianism is deeply rooted, it not only emphasis the order of hierarchy but also respect student in it education system. The common size of a class is more than 50 students, so it is hard and no time for them to have open dialogue. I do think his idea is correct, but just not fully practical.

 

I found the other reading about edtech is also meaningful. And the introduction post that we have a in this course is a perfect example.  It is a good starting point to customize study plan to bases on their interests, background and etc. But it is quit hard to implement in large scale because of potential privacy crisis.  Personally, I think people’s attention to privacy does hinder the development of modern education, and it is important to find a balance in between.

 

Overall, I really enjoyed reading these articles, and it does change my views of personalized learning.

 

References

Stommel, J. (2018). An urgency of teachers: The work of critical digital pedagogy. Hybrid Pedagogy.

 

 Vaughan, N. D., Garrison, D. R., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. AU Press. [Chapter 1]

Regan, P., & Jesse, J. (2019). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(3), 167-179. DOI: 10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2