Teach Others to Learn While You Are Learning to Teach: A Personal Journey in Linking Pedagogy and Technology

Life is a pilgrimage Be joyous during the arduous journey to the summit For the arduous journey is the daily enlightenment and The summit non-existent. --Tara, June 4th, 2006 I have found that teaching others to learn while you are learning to teach" is a good statement of my pedagogy. What better could life offer as a profession? I enumerate here a personal journey of my teaching and pedagogy and its links with modern technology. Teaching is my passion, and a large part of my profession. It all began for me in 1983. Is teaching your passion?? That is the first question to ask for anyone wanting to teach. It has to come from deep within, just like a lactating mother wanting to release her nourishment to her child. Similarly, the revelation of the truth within oneself and the joy thereof has to be shared. Is that your situation? The development of the passion in oneself is what propels a teacher to teach across culture, discipline, ethnicity, gender, economic stratifications and borders, in order to reach the common human denominator: unique minds who can be motivated. Sharing is as limitless as it is joyous. This gives a sense of freedom to the self and is thus self-liberating. Is it then loaded with responsibility? Are you ready for the challenge? Challenge, which tells you to first know the truth and then lead others to that truth? Today, teaching is done in many ways using different forms of technology. I find all those very fascinating and have incorporated many of the different digital media into my teaching format. I have created computer applications in a style that helps me to express my unique and personalized design for sharing information with the students in a colorful, and animated manner. In most of the situations, this is done with a touch of humor too. These applications complement my lectures and help me to use my research material as examples in these designs. All the animations have been created with the help of the Macromedia Director software. The next question is, "Do we have to know whether we can teach before we start to teach?" No, is my answer, because everyone is capable of teaching. While teaching, you learn many things. That is why my pedagogy is inspired by the motto "teach others to learn while you are learning to teach." Given my disciplinary background, I find biological metaphors sometimes powerful for capturing all that is involved in this process. The process of developing a teaching strategy is like the development of an embryo, no matter what the stage is of the embryo, it is functional. The heart is beating before the four chambers of the heart are constructed, the nervous system developing, while helping to develop other parts of the body. The germ cells that create the genitals wait in the yolk sac, until the genital ridges are formed, which would be the final destination for these germ cells to reside on after which the sex is determined. But slowly and steadily we function while we build ourselves, unlike a machine that is not switched on until it is completely built. I find the process of teaching just the same, it grows on us and we go on constructing the parts of teaching while becoming a teacher. Further, present research in biology tells us that we inherit a genome (the genetic component from each of our parents) and an epigenome that makes this genome functional. This epigenome can be influenced by internal and external environmental factors. Similarly, during this phase of becoming a teacher, we are influenced by both our heredity and our environment, and keep changing our teaching style as we respond to the individuals whom we teach. While I was doing my doctoral thesis on the genetics of mental retardation, I came in close contact with children who were mentally challenged. This brought me to the understanding that everyone does not learn the same way. All of us come with different types of learning capacities, yet all can be taught to bring out the best in themselves. …