In a nutshell: In 2013, Pedagogishness will become a resource for teaching and learning in the humanities, with special features for teachers and students alike.
One year ago today, I launched Pedagogishness as a blog about teaching and learning in the humanities. In 2013, Pedagogishness will become a resource for teaching and learning, a destination for teachers and students alike. This is an evolving paradigm, but you can already see some of our new features beginning to take shape.
In the waning hours of 2012, two new features were added to the sidebar of the blog: a Tip of the Day and a list of RSS Feeds.
Right now, the Tip of the Day is a teaching tip for teachers. And yes, there will be a new one every day, even if it kills me. To obviate my imminent death, however, I will soon be soliciting tips for Tip of the Day from teachers who visit Pedagogishness. In the future, there will be a Tip of the Day for teachers and another one for students. And yes, that means I will be soliciting tips from students, too.
In the RSS Feeds list, I am aggregating items from a variety of news and information sources that I anticipate will interest readers of Pedagogishness. Right now, the list is pretty predictable given the intellectual perspective and political leanings of Pedagogishness: NPR, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books. Over time I will add more feeds and, I would hope, some more unexpected feeds. To be perfectly frank, one reason for the RSS Feeds list was to have something in my sidebar that would move. The listings refresh automatically in real time.
In addition to these two new, already up and running features, you will see the shape of things to come hinted at on the top navigation menu; in particular, links to new pages called “For Teachers” and “For Students.” Right now, there is nothing on these pages but a “Coming Soon” note. But over time, these pages will blossom into resource destinations for teacher and students. Only time will tell what resources will be included. Here, too, there will be opportunities for teachers and students who visit Pedagogishness to contribute.
Of course, the heart of Pedagogishness remains, for the time being at least, this blog. I will continue to write about all the topics listed in the Categories menu in the sidebar, including humanism, critical thinking, critical theory, and critical pedagogy, among others.
The main reason I moved Pedagogishness from the Blogger platform to the WordPress platform is versatility and functionality. You already see evidence of this increased scalability with simple little features like Tip of the Day and RSS Feeds. I’m learning by doing. Over time, I hope to incorporate more and more interesting and exciting functionality into Pedagogishness, particularly with a view towards incorporating a greater amount and greater variety of digital media, as well as finding ways to connect Pedagogishness with other education resources and information destinations on the Web.
Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen, teachers and students; it’s going to be an eventful 2013 here at Pedagogishness.