Combination of the topics flexibility, pedagogical approaches and the use of technology

The last few weeks I posted information on this weblog, mainly about three main-topics: Flexibility, Pedagogical and Technology. But what about the combination of those three aspects? When chosen a pedagogical approach there are several ways of flexibility that can occur in the approach. And there are several ways to support this flexibility in a certain approach with technology. It is good to think about the different aspects and how you can combine them in such a way that the best outcome is reached.

Reflecting on those three topics, I think they have to be in balance to gain a postive effect of flexibile learning supported by technology. But it does make a difference what you consider to be the starting point. It is possible to first choose the technology and then the Pedagogical approach and the flexible aspects about it. But this can be considerd to be a technological push, because the technology is the starting point and not put in as the support of the content and the approaches. Technology can be helpfull, but I think it is important that the technology does not become the purpose instead of the support. (unless learning to work with a certain technology is ofcourse the goal itself). I believe it is (in most cases) better to first decide about your content and your pedagogical approach before chosing which technology could support your approach best. Then, or even before that, you can decide on the flexibility of the chosen pedagogical approach. Some approaches are more easily flexible than others. The available technology can support the choices of flexibility. For instance, when you don't have computers which you can use (for example during a course) or when students don't have computers at home you can not decide on flexibility to follow a course on the internet wiht a webcam. Or you can not give students het oppertunity to email their homework, because they don't have internet-access at home (or no computer). Those are all aspects to consider when you are planning to make a course more flexible, supported by technology.

As said, in some pedagogical approaches it is easier to implement flexibility and technology as in others. One of the other students (who is taking the course) wrote on her weblog the use of webquest for inquiry learning. It is a flexible way for learners to find their own information on the webquest and learn from it. But it still has its limits, the amount the learner can learn depends on how the programmer has programmed the webquest. But the learner can find his/her own way in it. (and this way the teacher still can decide what the learners should be learning from the webquest) Using a webquest is a nice technology to support the inquiry learning approach. But it is always wise to consider what the additional value of the webquest is. Would the learner have learned less when you did not use a webquest?
Was the starting point the webquest ("we want to do something with technology, lets make a webquest") or the content and the learning approach? ("this inquiry learning approach fits very good with a webquest, and the content does also, lets make a webquest") It is important to be aware of this difference when chosing a technological support and implementing flexibility in a course.

I think it is interesting to see the connection of those three topics. They need each other, but they exsist separatly: there are many pedagogical approaches (as mentioned before), many ways of flexibility (also mentioned before) and different ways to use technology in course. But I believe the strength is in combining them by letting technology support a certain pedagogical approach (it goes for every approach) in which a flexibility approach can be implemented. Example:
1. First choose a Pedagogical approach
2. Secondly think how you can make this flexible (as well as for the teacher as the learner)
3. Thirdly think about how technology can support the flexible aspect in the pedagogical approach.
This is the way how I think the three topics should be combined, based on the previous information of those (seperated) topics. It can be done differently of course. It is possible to first decide that you really want to make use of webquest and then think: "hmm inquiry learning would then be a good approach", or you can first decide that you really want to make the course more flexible and therefore decide that using a webquest can support the flexible aspect because students can work on it in their own pace/time, in that case it would almost be a logical step to use inquiry learning as pedagogical approach. So it is possible to use a different strategie (and follow-up) to combine those three topics. But they are still combined with each other, no doubt about that.