Practical Digital Pedagogy:

1. HEAnet Ireland’s National Education & Research Network (Blog) http://www.heanet.ie/newsblog

This is perhaps one of the better blogs out there about the state of Irish Higher and Further Education. Focusing on what’s happening now with outlines of Conferences and announcements with posts about how Ireland’s education institutions are keeping themselves at the cutting edge of technology by investing heavily in the cloud, networking infrastructure and general ICT. A very interesting blog well designed and easy to use with an interesting twitter feed to the footer that’s up to date with what’s trending and being said. This roles over various tweets made using the hashtag #heanet2016. This site and indeed the blog is easy to access to find out about what’s coming up within the educational calendar and for those interested in educational technology and what new in teaching using IT.

2. HEAnet Ireland’s National Education & Research Network (Twitter) https://twitter.com/HEAnet

This is also worth mentioning as an excellent Twitter account for the same organization HEAnet has a really opened up Tweeting to various third level colleges around the country. It’s an up to date Twitter account and really gives an insight at what is really going on really quickly within Irish Higher Educational Universities and IoT’s. For example you can find out what happening re the HEAnet 2016 Conference a tweet on the 5^th Sept, polling information and digital infrastructures for Research in 2016. As I come from the Digital Media Design background I find this resource to be invaluable. They have only 676 tweets made and following 515 with 776 followers and 37 likes I am a bit disappointed that these numbers aren’t higher.

2a. Cindy Royal, Professor at TX State
https://twitter.com/CindyRoyal

As I teach Digital Media I follow other lecturers around the world to see what they are teaching and engaging with. The very nature of Digital Media, Digital Media Design, App Design and Digital Marketing allows for change over a very very short period of time. So as to keep in touch with what other Digital Media educators are doing and how they are doing it is important for me. Her tweets give me an idea on the equipment they use and what access they have to technology and how they teach, for example within her replies Cindy mentions a piece by @jonzmikly who talks about how to use Snapchat in the classroom to engage with his students, using Hashtags, excellent resource to tap into such a new area.

3. Teaching and Learning Approaches: Behaviorism (Skinner), Cognitivism (Piaget) and Social Constructivism (Vygotsky) (Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkzLAz25KPI

This 6 min video was one of the first videos I came across when I started to discover the Learning theories of Skinner, Piaget and particularly Vygotsky’s ZPD. I had no idea what these theories were or what significance they had on teaching in general and in particular my own way of teaching. I discovered that I had been taught as a child using the behaviourist theory and then as a adolescent my secondary education was mainly Cognitive in nature. My art school education however was totally different and mainly involved the Social Constructivist theory and this is what I now use to teach and engage with my students. It’s really interesting to understand now many years later how I was educated and how I have been teaching way before I knew anything about these theories. I would definitely recommend anyone who has already investigated these theories to have a look at this video and others in this series to get a better understanding of how they were taught but more importantly how they now teach their own classes today.

4. When Should We Lecture? Weimer, M. (2014). When Should We Lecture?. Faculty Focus. Retrieved 16 September 2016, from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/when-should-we-lecture (Article)

This is something that I have raised in a number of debates and discussions in teaching and learning sessions, should we be lecturing at all? Do we as lecturers talk too much? I sometimes think we should take a leaf out of the TEFL teaching world and try and get the learners to do the talking. This is an interesting article and I have read it over and over again to try and see what can we do to limit the amount of talking that we actually do within the lecturer theatre. I am all for limiting lecturing and getting into a more learner centered approach and it’s interesting that Weimer states “…but we do know that we shouldn’t use lecture as the default instructional method. We need to decide when lecturing makes sense so that it’s a conscious, purposeful choice.” However I think that we do and when things get tough we resort to jumping back into the lecture mode as the default teaching process. This article really opens up some great questions about getting away from the old ways and perhaps creating new approaches to teaching.
Digital media concepts have been integrated into mass communication curriculum

http://mediashift.org/2016/02/developing-a-digital-core-in-mass-communication-curriculum (by Cindy Royal)

This is a website that has an interesting article written by Cindy Royal Professor at TX State. As I teaching Digital Media, Digital Design, Digital Marketing and Social Media it’s very interesting how this university has a Lecturers contributing to a website about the teaching of new media. Cindy make a point here in her article of the 26^th Feb 2016 that digital platforms are not simply another tool but that it has and is transforming completely the area, scope and scale of mass communication. It’s interesting how a University is publishing information on their views in this new area as not much is out there in terms of what others are teaching in new media or indeed how there are teaching it. There are various excepts about how the course or University is allowing students to create their own personal blog/websites as this is exactly what I am involved with my own students in getting them to experiment with this new area and create something new and creative with what’s out their in the digital media world using online tools and website CMS systems.
This article also has a number of images of lecturer theatres, labs and teaching rooms which really give an insight on how some of their classes are organized and delivered. This is so helpful in trying to assess whether I am doing what I do in the same way or whether I am doing it differently and where similar synergies are or not as maybe the case. The students also make contributions in the form of comments and reflect some of the positive aspects of this form of communication.

5. Blackboard (Favourite Resource from the module)

When I first started teaching in third level the technology that we have today didn’t exist and all I had were a number of boards that I used as visual instructional aids. This was one of the reasons why I undertook my first Masters to delve into the area of Multimedia and try and find a way to teach using new technology and replace the card-boards I was using to teach complicated design ideas. Having Blackboard as a technical resource is excellent and I much prefer it to Moodle, which I was using as both a lecturer and a student in another IoT. Screen casting and uploading these to Blackboard is super and really opens up the ability to teach online but also to consolidate the discussions taken in class on the subject. As I teach Multimedia and Digital Media instructing on the use of technology such as software but also how to use certain online resource tools is important and I think using Blackboard to house this is important. I wanted to created my own resource like this and design and develop a website to house all of my videos and other important online resources but I thought that there were too many issues with privacy, copyright and disclaimer problems and as an individual this maybe problematic. So having a resource like Blackboard really opens this up for me without worrying about unforeseen issues arising. Try it, it’s great and so easy to use.

 

References

Heanet.ie. (2016). News/Blog. [online] Available at: http://www.heanet.ie/newsblog [Accessed 28 Sep. 2016].

O’Brennan, J. (2016). John O’Brennan (@JohnOBrennan2) | Twitter. [online] Twitter.com. Available at: https://twitter.com/JohnOBrennan2 [Accessed 4 Oct. 2016].

Royal, C. (2016). Cindy Royal (@CindyRoyal) | Twitter. [online] Twitter.com. Available at: https://twitter.com/CindyRoyal [Accessed 4 Oct. 2016 Royal, C. (2016). Developing a Digital Core in Mass Communication Curriculum – MediaShift. [online] MediaShift. Available at: http://mediashift.org/2016/02/developing-a-digital-core-in-mass-communication-curriculum [Accessed 4 Oct. 2016].

Teaching & Learning. (2016). National Forum Home – Teaching & Learning. [online] Available at: http://www.teachingandlearning.ie [Accessed 4 Oct. 2016].

Twitter.com. (2016). HEAnet (@HEAnet) | Twitter. [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/HEAnet [Accessed 4 Oct. 2016].

YouTube. (2016). Teaching and Learning Approaches: Behaviorism, Cognitivism and Social Constructivism. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkzLAz25KPI [Accessed 4 Oct. 2016].

Weimer, M. (2014). When Should We Lecture?. [online] Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. Available at: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/when-should-we-lecture [Accessed 4 Oct. 2016].