Week 4 Lesson 7 - Tech Mediated Learning

(This is the final update for Week 4 of New Learning: Principles & Patterns of Pedagogy. Hello from the other side of the world *waves* THANK YOU both instructors Cope and Kalantzis for giving us such great insight. I have thoroughly enjoyed this course and can't wait for the next one!)

When COVID-19 hit the world, learners from all ages, all over the world were suddenly thrown into the deep end of the pool - School's out. No more face-to-face interaction. See you on Zoom tomorrow morning.

The world had to switch to e-learning in a matter of a few months. Learning had absolutely becoming ubiquitous. You could listen to your professor's lecture at 11.30pm, do your assignment the next morning, and take a computer mediated test next week, in the comfort of your bed. Learning was no longer confined to the classroom, to the time blocks on your timetable. Learning became so convenient. Even culinary schools conducted live cooking lessons on YouTube and Instagram.
This is the future we have to embrace. But how do we, as educators, make sure that learning is effective? Can I, as a teacher, feel assured that learners are still learning behind their screens?
Using Cazden's IRE model as a base, how can we initiate responses and ensure that students actually respond? As mentioned in Education as Social Construction, education technologies merely provide a medium, a platform for learning; even with Flipped Classroom, even with e-textbooks, if the pedagoical methods remain the didactic and mimetic, nothing changes.

The concept of Recursive Feedback - I've tried to relate this to the demographic of the students I've come across, in my private teaching experience so far.
Student A: "my high school teacher told me the student sitting next to me isn't my friend, she's my competitor."
Student B: "I hate teamwork. The other students just ruin the team's grade. I'd rather count on myself to do everything on my own to get a high grade. I need this grade for my college acceptance application."
Student C: "In lectures, no one asks any questions. If anyone does, he's seen as 'the weird student'. We just turn on our voice recorders to record the lectures, and catch up on some sleep."
In this highly-competitive society, where education is prized as having everything you'll ever need in your life, how do we encourage recursive feedback, using digital media for dialogical learning, promote formative assessment etc. (the irony is that South Korea is at the tops of technology and digital media in the world)
I'm all for collaborative intelligence, but how ready are our students for it? I'm not all pessimistic yet, because I've experimented with some forms of collaborative, peer to peer feedback learning in other lessons with younger, elementary school students.
Formative Assessment - at cram schools where the focus is purely on generating high scores, how do we ensure that formative assessment is adequate and thorough? I'm not ready to toss Didactic Pedagogy and Summative Asssessment away, of course. So, when and where should we still stick to these age-old methods?

Some subtle ways I've tried to use technology in my small classrooms:
- Getting the students to pronounce some English words, record their pronounciations and share the voice files in our Whatsapp group chat. It was hilarious hearing them laugh and give thumbs up to one another.
- Teaching them to use online dictionaries to look for words, and share the definitions and sentences to one another on social media.
I must say, my small classroom of 5 students is the noisiest in our academy. Fun!

I did some research online and found this new plan from the Ministry of Education in Singapore - https://www.moe.gov.sg/education-in-sg/educational-technology-journey/edtech-plan

YouTube video - Singapore's 21st Century Teaching Strategies
https://youtu.be/M_pIK7ghGw4