Naked Teaching-Reflecting on The Use of Technology in The Classroom

I had a very interesting experience this week. My laptop suddenly became unusable and I had 50 minutes to prepare a lesson with no projected visuals, no recorded sound and no video clips.

What happened? Armed with a black bin liner bag turned into a “touchy feely mystery item” bag and feeling a little bit awkward, I suddenly realised how dependent I am on technology.

Why? Ten years ago, it was not a problem-the technology was not readily available in schools and therefore not expected.

“Naked Teaching” can be a strategy to develop quality learning and teaching in the classroom, as advocated by José Antonio Bowen, Dean at Southern Methodist University in the United States.

The only aim of using technology should be to develop teacher-students interactions, but this is not always happening. In fact, technology can push people even further apart, with the only interaction occurring between students and machines.

However, some new technologies can increase students' engagement outside of the classroom and prepare them for real discussions by providing access to lesson content and assessment before lessons. This turns a classroom into a place where content is being manipulated rather than passively received.

Current research (Crouch and Mazur, 2001) demonstrates that “students retain relatively little content from most lectures, but they do take away a lot about your attitude toward learning and your subject”.

“Technologies’ greatest gift is to release you from the tyranny of content. There is time for everything now. The real problem is that this now leaves you standing naked in front of your class wondering what will happen next. That is also the moment when the most real learning can take place. Be afraid, but take the risk”.

Sometimes, the teacher is ready to take the risk but the resistance comes from the students:
“The lecture model is pretty comfortable for both students and professors, after all, and so fundamental change may be even harder than it initially seems, whether or not laptops, iPods, or other cool gadgets are thrown into the mix.” (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

It is also a fact that ICT does not engage all students and “going naked” from time to time should benefit these students as well as widen the range of learning experiences of all students. My own experience was that a couple of students confirmed this at the end of the lesson by telling me: "Miss, we prefer it without the laptop”

I like the idea that class time should be used to manipulate and discuss content rather than passively receive it, but is it fair that not all students will have access to this pre-lesson briefing? The digital divide is still very present in many deprived areas and there is no quick and easy way to tackle this.

Would I use this as a management technique? I would not make it a permanent feature of the teaching in my Faculty-and certainly not interfere with equipment-, but I would particularly recommend that younger teachers try it to widen their teaching repertoire. More experienced teachers should also consider how they could adapt some old low-tech teaching activities to make them more relevant to the 21st century. After all, good teaching involves a wide repertoire of ideas to engage students-high tech AND low tech.