While I was reading my colleagues’ posts on the Nicenet Website, my messenger alert told me that I had a new message. When I opened it, I found it from my dear instructor Deborah. It is about the start of the second week. I like the idea of giving us a brief overview of what we’re going to do before we start. I consider it as a way of organizing my work. First, you get an idea about your tasks as a whole, then you analyze them into pieces to be easier to accomplish. At last you reflect on what you have learned and what difficulties you faced. Actually it is a good framework.
Any way, I feel that this week is a little bit difficult and we need to use our imagination and creativity to accomplish its tasks. I think I’ll need to devote more time and effort to search on the web, read, analyze and comment on other colleagues’ posts.
For the tasks of this week, there are four. One of them is related to the project we’re going to do throughout this course. In this task, we’re asked to describe a class that would be benefit from making a technology-inspired change. Unfortunately, I’m on my summer holiday and I will not teach until the half of Sept. Thus, my task is just to do a plan for the project. I hope to apply it in the next school year with my students. I select this task to do first because I consider it as a basis on which I build the other tasks. I mean I can’t write smart objectives or use search engines unless I take my students’ characteristics and class setting into consideration. I described my students, their ages, levels, their computer skills and their motivation to use technology while learning. I also described the class setting and technology available for students and teacher.
Actually the task of describing a class provides me a good opportunity to have a closer look at all classes around the world. Through my colleagues’ descriptions, I got a thorough idea about what their classes look like and what technology they have access to. Of course, this is not for making some sort of a comparison. But I just want to analyze the situation in all countries.
How amazing is your visit to all classes around the world in minutes?
What do you think of this? Am I right?
Azhar,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your reflections. The idea of visiting so many classes around the world is definitely exciting. As we read and write on this topic, I think there is much we can learn from the similarities as well as the differences in our classes that emerge.
Like you, I am also enjoying reading the descriptions of the classes. This is an example of where descriptive narrative can be a valuable educational tool. The reader possesses some measure of verisimilitude when reading the descriptions of the classes and individual teaching situations. We can almost picture ourselves in the classrooms of our colleagues. Consequently, we are engaged in meaningful learning experiences. Reading a colleague's detailed account of the the context of their teaching provides the opportunity for vicarious experience and thus the construction of knowledge. The reader can draw inferences and determine if those inferences are relevant to other situations they are familiar with. As you point out, the sharing narratives about our teaching contexts makes it possible to analyze (and learn from) a variety of situations.
Regards,
Stephen