Rethinking our teaching practices: Hugo Pardo’s talk.

Last month, we were invited to a talk held by Hugo Pardo Kuklinski about “Educacion y cultura digital” at Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias (FHUC), in Santa Fe. At the conference, Kuklinski presented the results of his last two projects: “Circópolis” in Salta and “SERO laboratorio vivo” in Medellin, Colombia; at the same time that he shared with us those experiences, he stated some of the key points teachers should consider when acting as “Intrapreneurs”.

Hugo started his talk saying that “Education and pedagogy need to be rethought”. This comment didn’t surprise us, since it is very well-known that there are important aspects in education to reconsider. As future teachers, we are constantly studying new approaches and strategies to improve and adapt our practices to the learners’ needs and interests. Therefore, we were expecting that this man, who is PhD in Communication Studies, told as something new.

However, everything changed when he began to show us videos of his experiences in Salta and Colombia.  Kulinski ‘s talk became more interesting when he stated that after doing some research, he realised that “despite including ITC in the classroom , there are still issues to consider in education”. We completely agree with his statement and that means that we have some interests and queries in common. For this reason, we would like to share with you, some of the ideas that Pardo suggested in his presentation.

At the talk, Hugo introduced the concepts of “digital revolution” and “ teachers as intrapreneurs”  in order to put forward his idea of “changing education logics” by taking into account the following points:

• Differentiation of contents, methods and nets. 

• Create a personal brand.

• There are always opportunities, even for new profiles.

• If you play ecstatic, you lose. 

• “Anywhere” is a classroom.

• Take care of the new.

• New postdigital language.

• Write your own manifest.

• We all are designers of experiences.

• Experts in the new liquidity. 

In our opinion, although he had quite a business-oriented view, he seemed to have innovative ideas and good intentions, such as motivating teachers to “try” new things in the classroom, which may be useful to tackle with some of the problems school is facing nowadays. 

It was also evident that Kulinski is more a businessman than a teacher, since most of the time, he was selling his projects and ideas without taking into consideration the different school contexts. In addition to this, we found some of his ideas rather contradictory, for example: he tried to convince the audience (teachers, in particular) of taking more risks and trying new things in their lessons, but he gave up teaching at university because his strategies didn’t work for some of his students.

To conclude, we found this experience really fruitful. It is true that some of Hugo’s opinion about teaching were a kind of “far-fetched” . However, we consider that, as future teachers, we should take into account his ideas and adapt them to our learners’ need and contexts.

There is nothing to lose. Just let’s offer our students new learning experiences which allow them to express themselves and inspire them to finish school and fulfill their dreams.

Reference

•  Pardo Kuklinski, Hugo (2016). "Educación y Cultura Digital". Universidad Nacional del Litoral-Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias. Santa Fe