WEEK 7: INTERACTION! INTERACTION! WHERE ARE YOU IN THE CLASSROOM?

The central theme this week was INTERACTION in the classroom. One may wonder why in the 21st century we still debate of interaction in the classroom. Should it not go without saying that the interaction teacher -student is the very essence of instruction?

In fact, NO!

Having teachers and students in the same room doesn’t guarantee interaction is taking place.Interaction has been proved essential to the learning process, so why then some teachers still persist in delivering their instruction using approaches that strongly depend on lectures with no interaction with students. For some it maybe because they feel more comfortable this way, and others may blame the number of students in their classes.

STOP MAKING EXCUSES!

Generally teacher have high expectations about students’ thinking skills, but they should ask themselves whether or not they are actually training their students to develop these thinking skills!!

This week we got great tips from lecturers who believe that engaging students in their own learning is the core of their job. Why not following in these teachers’ footsteps?

For example, one may think that using some technological tools like PowerPoint in lectures suffices to settle interaction in the classroom. Open your eyes! Using PowerPoint can be as teacher –centered as any other one-sided teaching technique. However, with slight modifications it can turn to a great interactive experience for both teachers and learners. Instead of reading all through the slideshow, teachers can integrate elements of interaction like blank slides to shift students’ attention from the slide to the teacher or insert audio recordings and videos to address different learning styles.

Technology though not indispensable for interactive teaching definitely serves as a facilitating tool. What I particularly liked is this notion of just-in-time teaching. When students are engaged with course content outside and before coming to class, the classroom time can be used more efficiently and devoted to teacher- student or peer interaction more likely to increase learning.

This week, for instance, I gave my linguistic-class students some questions related to next week’s class and asked them to make a web search to find answers to these questions. I told them to email me their answers .I am expecting their responses before the class to adjust the time I will spend on each questions during the class. The class was on Wednesday, and I haven’t received any answer yet.
I think the main reason is that they are not used to be engaged out of the class, and for them I am asking too much. But I’m not giving up on them.

Indeed, it was another fruitful week with ideas from my fellow students and instructors which proves again that the power of INTERACTION in and out the classroom walls cannot be disregarded when designing our lessons.

Hassina

WEEK 6: Learning Styles + Technology = ?

Reading about the potential disastrous consequences of ignoring learning styles in our teaching practices was just appalling. How many students have lost faith in their educational systems just because we didn’t even consider that they might have individual ways of learning? I don’t even want to think about the likely multiple digit number.

When I read in Terry O’Connor’s article [1]: “as teachers attempt to modify their classrooms, they need to begin to explore their own styles,” I thought about us and this training. Indeed, this question of our students’ learning styles is important to consider if we want to move away from our traditional ways. But, have we thought of our own learning styles?

I know that I learn best when I visualize, verbalize, or do things by myself. What does this mean? What is or are my learning style/s? What about my students? What am I doing to address their individual learning styles?

I must admit that before this week I didn’t really think about it. I have always tried to come up with new activities in my different classes, but I didn’t pay attention to the learners’ styles they were addressing. If we are result-oriented teachers, I think this matter is worth pondering over.

Not all students are gifted with multiple intelligences, and in large classes it is difficult to observe students’ behavior and decide on each student’s individual way.
Quick surveys like the one proposed at http://www.chaminade.org/INSPIRE/learnstl.htm can be a good start to determine these individual ways. The charts can be used on or offline.

However, the best way to make sure we address different learning styles is by building our lesson plans with various opportunities for students to use their own styles and by so doing broadening the approach to our subject matter.

Because this week was still end -of -term -examination week in my institution I couldn’t start implementing my technology-related change .I tried to examine my personal project of a class blog in terms of learning styles, though.

Demonstrating and explaining the use of a class blog will definitely help my visual and auditory learners understand what they are expected to do with this blog. Making my kinesthetic & tactile learners perform the tasks themselves will circumvent to puzzled eyes or endless talks.
Intrapersonal learners will appreciate being given a chance to post their individual responses to a writing prompt. On the other hand, Interpersonal ones will enjoy online discussions or peer editing.

Along with learning styles, another key element of good teaching practices this week: rubrics. In our institution, all our assessment is based on students’ writing skills, but the number of assessment methods matches the number of teachers, each having his/her own views on how students should be assessed which in the end results in highly subjective ways of appraising students’ intellectual work. I will propose to my colleagues this method of assessing students, particularly in modules where writing skills are essential like literature and civilization, but in other modules, too. As a matter of fact, I’m expecting a lot of resistance. Yet, this debate can no longer be procrastinated, our credibility is at stakes.



[1] http://iod.unh.edu/EE/articles/learning-styles.html

WEEK 5: Project-based learning ! Webquests! What's that?

This week we were introduced to Project-Based learning and webquests. I thought in the first place that it was another of those trendy educational methodologies that emerges from time to time, but I read the articles with concrete examples of projects and webquests, and it proved me wrong.

If I had already heard of PBL though superficially, it was the first time for webquest, and I was amazed to read that they have been used in education for more than 10 years.

Both are inquiry-based methodologies and anchor in the constructivist approach to learning where learners who learn by doing are no longer passive recipients of their teachers’ information.

I really like this idea of putting discovery in the curriculum. Even if students generally feel safe with our traditional ways, they are somehow “blasé” of this teacher -centered approaches, and with PBL and webquests they are given the chance to be the leading parts of the teacher/learner paradigm.

What is interesting too is that webquests or projects do not need to be web-based and can be designed on paper, a simple and portable option for teachers with no web-based technologies around. However, the internet which offers a wide range of various types’ resources is certainly the most attractive to students.

On this matter, the discussion we had on the readings was particularly appealing .One fellow student raised the question of whether one methodology was the key to successful and effective learning. Of course not and we all agreed that eclecticism in our methodologies should be the rule to keep our students alert and motivated.

The TASK is at the basis of these inquiry-based approaches to learning. These tasks can go from the simplest to the most elaborated ones, matching Bloom’s taxonomy of thinking skills. Designing these tasks and their assessment is I think the most challenging parts of the webquest creation and need careful planning.Careful planning because if well-designed they can not only challenge students individually but also teach them how to work collaboratively which is ideal when you deal with mixed-ability classes.

What I liked the most is the research section of the inquiry because it was eye-opening to me.The last semester (I didn’t know about webquests) I wanted my students to write an informational report about environmental issues. I screened a documentary movie on this matter ‘HOME’ which was meant to be the trigger of their research, and then I released them in the world-wide-web jungle for the assigned task.

The task was to make them surf the web for information about environmental issues that particularly matter to them.The final product of this inquiry was the cited- above informational report. First, most of them handed in their works after the deadline. I think the main reason was their lack of web-searching skills; they should have spent a lot of time searching from one site to another. If I had browsed the web in advance, I would have provided them with relevant web resources already evaluated, and this would have facilitated their tasks.
In addition, I chose to make them work individually because I knew from experience that generally ONE extremely motivated student does the entire job, but assigning specific roles for the search would have lightened each student’s work.Also,the quality of their final products was not the one I expected. Even though they studied the prerequisites of the informational report in class and were given a model, they could not synthesize the results of their web search and plagiarized full parts of their internet resources.I shouldn't have assumed that they already learned how to synthesize and should have provided them with resources on this question.

This week I learned that projects and webquests are powerful tools to enhance learning because they involve processes and skills students will need in real life as exploration , organization and evaluation, but here again planning is essential for success.

Hassina

Week 4: Skill-buiding Websites for Reading/Writing and Technology-enhanced lesson plans

This week was another great week for learning about skill building, indeed: building students’ reading and writing skills, but also building our own skills towards a technology-enhanced classroom.

Our learning journey is becoming more and more concrete and practical.

All the readings presented are easily replicable ways to help our students build their reading and writing skills. However, when I read Liao’s” E-mailing to Improve EFL Learners Reading and Writing Abilities: Taiwan Experience”, it was like a slap in my face.

When I started to think of moving away from traditional teaching in 2006, the first thing I thought about was to use e-mailing. At that time I thought that this would be the easiest and most workable web-based computer application I could use to get my students more involved in their own learning. I was already teaching “writing techniques “and I wanted to give my students more opportunities to use English by conversing with me out of the class and develop their writing skills, at the same time. Getting early feedback on their writing pieces was also one of my objectives because I knew that we learn by doing and not by being lectured especially in writing. To make a long story short, it was not a great success only few, actually 3 or 4 out of this class of 25 students seized this opportunity and here comes Liao with his successful experience with e-mailing. I thought like him about key -palling, but I suggested it to my students more than tried to implement it.

I raved at my poor web-searching skills. Where were you Deborah and Sandra to instruct me on web-searching?

I would have read Liao’s experience and learned from it. But, now I know that it was not my students’ fault, it was mine. I should have thought more carefully over it and planned everything in advance with a lesson plan similar to those proposed this week for study.

I must admit that I do not always write a lesson plan for each lesson I teach maybe because I have been teaching “writing techniques” for quite a long time now , so I have a generic lesson plan that broadly outlines the unfolding of the class and sometimes the whole writing session

In the lesson plan recommended by the University of Tennessee some headings particularly interesting to me. Firstly, when I read the questions to consider for the classroom layout and grouping of students, I thought of my administration which sole view of teaching is a teacher facing and lecturing students. I gave a slight smile and thought I should show them this lesson plan.

I read probingly this notion of “NETS-Performance indicators”:”standards that each student should master to function effectively in their future; a future that is characterized by great change and information growth”. People in charge of designing curricula in my country should start integrating these performance technology standards in our schools if we want to extend the use of the new information technologies in our educational system.

However, these student performance technology indicators should be matched with the equivalent teacher performance technology indicators if we want to integrate technology successfully and in doing so reduce risks of resistance.

“Students’ present level of performance and skills” are important to evaluate for successful instructional outcomes. Yet, some questions came to my mind when I read this heading .How do we evaluate these pre-requisite skills in our mixed-ability classes? With a test? What happens if they don’t have these skills?

For “Adaptations for Special Learners”, there is still a long way to achieve equity on this matter. Most of our educational facilities are not yet adapted for disabled people. In a near future we hope.

The last heading "student product" reminded me of our own artifact for this training: THE REPORT, and at this moment I had a blank.