Abstract:

With continuous developments in digital educational technology, it may be tempting for educators to use some of those technologies in their practices for the sake of it, like as a tick box exercise, without much thought about how best such technologies can fit with the different pedagogies. This can especially be the case when professional development reviews identify one of the areas needing development as the lack of usage of technology in teaching practice. The role of digital educational technology is to enhance or support the learning and teaching processes. Technology is not meant to replace the educators, but to extend their capabilities in facilitating learning. As such, pedagogy should remain at the centre of every learning activity with the aim to achieve learning outcomes in each of such activities. From its Greek roots, pedagogy basically refers to the art of teaching, that is, the methods employed to facilitate learning. It incorporates the theory and practice of teaching.

One of the mistakes educators make is planning their curriculum and/or lessons without considering what technology can aid the delivery of the learning activities, and later randomly try to fit one in. Inclusion of digital technology in learning and teaching activities should not be an after-thought, but it should be considered right from the curriculum development and/or module planning stages to ensure that it is appropriately embedded. This particularly helps with the selection of technology which fits with the pedagogy that is being planned to be adopted. Consequently, this promotes higher chances of successful implementation of the chosen technology, and achievement of the learning outcomes.

This paper maps various digital technologies to different learning pedagogies based on the revised version (2001) of Bloom's taxonomy. This ensures that all levels of learning are represented and will help inform educators on the choice of digital technologies to employ in their learning activities in a way that addresses their pedagogical approaches. Bloom's taxonomy is a framework that helps categorize learning objectives into six distinct categories in the cognitive domain. They are layered in a hierarchical manner, with concrete and fundamental levels forming the base, while abstract and complex levels build up to the top. The categories are: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating, in that order.

As learning outcomes need to be measurable, verbs can be derived from each of the categories to enable evaluation of whether the learning outcomes were achieved or not. For example, "Remember" cannot be used to determine whether someone has the basic knowledge, instead verbs like "recall" or "list" which are measurable can be used to check if learners remember what they were taught. Quiz tools are technologies that naturally map to the remembering category.

This paper presents a map of digital technological tools aimed at supporting educators in the selection of appropriate digital technologies especially those new to using technology in teaching practice.

Keywords:

Pedagogy, educational technology, e-learning, teacher training, staff development.