My school is not technologically equipped. And not all of my students have PCs or laptops, however, all of them have mobile phones. I just want to make use of what they have to develop their creativity and create an engaging atmosphere for enjoyable learning. In short, I want to bring life into my traditional classrooms. There are a lot of apps that I can download for free, but this is not my ultimate goal. I want to build my own apps that suit my students' needs and levels. That's why I decided to search for some online courses that can help me to achieve my goals. I'd love to share them with+Clara Cordero Balcázar and other friends who are interested in the same area:
Coursera launches many courses on September 2013. There are just three courses that catch my attention. My only criterion of choice is watching the instructors' introductory videos. You will not believe it. I know that these short videos are not enough to judge the quality of the whole experience, but they have a very great impact on learners before starting their journey of learning. Please check this great article by Sarah Linden to know more about the reasons behind using video introductions rather than text-based ones when creating your online courses.
Kindly explore each course info and choose what you need and add to your expertise:
Crafting an Effective Writer: Tools of the Trade is another amazing adventure that I have just completed on Coursera. It was offered by Mt. San Jacinto College, and instructed by Lorrie Ross, Lawrence (Larry) Barkley, & Ted Blake. The course was broken into five weekly units with each unit spanning one week. Each weekly unit had the following items: video lectures, in-video quizzes, readings, journal writings, discussion forums, peer reviewed writing assignment, and weekly quiz. Our first week started with a video by Lorrie Ross giving us some tips on how to become a successful online leaner. We spent the whole week reading the syllabus, taking the course guide quiz, checking the weekly materials, creating a success list, and a calendar as an effective way to organize the work. Then, we introduced ourselves in the discussion forum. It was just as an exploration tour for learners in order to be familiar with the platform of Coursera. By clicking each week on the sidebar, one can find all the required activities and assignments with links, benchmark dates, credit points, and estimated time to complete them. This well-designed format helped us a lot to be more organized, and saved a lot of our time. Here is a screenshot of week 2 activities:
I have just completed one of the most well-organized online courses on Coursera "Statistics: Making Sense of Data" that was offered by University of Toronto, and instructed by Alison Gibbs, & Jeffrey Rosentha. It was about statistics and how to make use of this field in our lives. As any course I took on Coursera, we watched video lectures, took quizzes, completed, and reviewed assignments following model answers prepared by the instructors. What makes this course different from other learning experiences is its well-designed format, clear objectives, and high quality content. In addition, the To-Do-List provided on the top of the sidebar helped us a lot to know more about each week's tasks and assignments, and it saved our time and efforts. In contrast, I dropped another Coursera course running at the same time "Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence" because I didn't know what tasks and readings I should do in each week although the instructor was very creative and had a powerful impact on people.
I'm Azhar Youssef, an Egyptian EFL teacher who teaches high school students in a village. Learning adventures are only what I seek for since I became a teacher. Completing mypost graduate studieshelped me a lot to research and try out things to make my students happy while learning. My whole professional teaching life completely changed when I was nominated to take a 10-week online course offered by Oregon University titled "Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web" and instructed by Prof. Deborah Healey in 2010. This course was about how to integrate technology into curriculum. We were introduced to many tools that can make a difference in our classes. Once I got involved and found my way in the Nicenet platform, I started to help my colleagues as I always do. One of them called Roxana commented on my last post: "You became my trouble shooter. I am very thankful for all the pieces of advice you gave. They really worked." Helping people and drawing smiles on their faces is one of my dear things that I love to do in my daily life. As a result to my hard work during these 10 weeks, I was also nominated to attend the E-Teacher Scholarship Program2011 hosted by Maryland and Oregon universities. This 3-week program was another amazing learning experience where I managed to meet 26 colleagues from all over the world face-to-face at UMBC. Really, I never forget all those sweet memories we spent together learning, discussing, creating, evaluating, presenting and finding time for chatting and laughing. I came back home with a strong desire to create a new life for my students. I used all what I learned previously to encourage them to be more innovative and responsible citizens who are able to serve their country. They created a wiki through which they invite tourists to visit Egypt again after the 25th Jan. Revolution. They won the First Place in the Regional Forum held in Jordan 2011 and also participated in the Global Forum held in Washington DC, 2011 to showcase their achievements. I was also Featured on Microsoft website to tell the whole world how a teacher with limited facilities can make a difference in her classes.
Gamification is a new term that has recently gained more attention in the field of education. When first saw this term among Coursera online courses, a couple of questions came to mind. Is it similar to the game-based learning? Does it mean playing games to achieve some learning objectives? To answer these questions, I decided to take this courseby Prof. Kevin Werbach offered by University of Pennsylvania. It was run from Aug. 27 - Oct. 7., 2012. The course was divided up into 12 units, which were in turn divided into short video lecture segments. Each unit included 45-60 minutes of material, and there were two units per week. There were 4 quizzes, 3 written assignments (including peer assessment) and a final exam. We communicated with each other through the discussion forms and collaborated to create a wiki as a resource for gamification.
What is Gamification?
It is applying game mechanics,e.g., points, badges, rewards, levels, bar progress ... etc to an existing content to make students more interactive, motivated and engaged.
How to Gamify?
Reading this article, one or more of the following can be done:
Add points to tasks that need to be completed
Define badges/rewards to be given out after a criteria is met
Create a Leaderboard to show top performers
Define levels to repeat tasks or to perform harder tasks
Earning of badges can be tied to unlocking higher levels
How to start Gamifying your teaching?
After completing this course, I tried some simple steps to incorporate such a new trend in my traditional classrooms. I just tried to gamify my whiteboard. Here are some of my tips:
Divide your students into 3 large groups. Each group will complete some questions. If the students of a group answer correctly, they will get a POINT. At the end of the activity, add up these points and tell them the Winner Group.
A list of active students can be created on the right top of the whiteboard.
Smiley faces are given to students instead of points or badges. I can give students a happy face if they did a great job, a wow face if they did an amazing job, sad face if they didn't complete a task or answer incorrectly ... etc. Students love this technique so much because it is a visual funny way that expresses their performances and learning progress.
Online courses have become popular nowadays in the field of teachers training because they provide teachers with a variety of opportunities for lifelong learning and professional development without thinking of time, place and pace. Recently, I have taken a new path for learning and developing my teaching skills. I decided to find what I need not to attend what the Ministry of Education provides us. My first online course was offered by Oregon University titled "Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web" in 2010 followed by another one by the same university to develop the listening and speaking skills (ATDOP) in 2012. These courses didn't only provide me with a huge flow of information, materials, websites and more, but also helped me to be connected to the whole world. I met a lot of colleagues from all over the world. We shared many experiences and successful practices.
This year, I took TWO online courses that are a little bit different from those previous ones. The first was the "Gamification" course by Coursera. It was not just an online course with 30-50 participants. It was a massive open online course (MOOC). There were more than 2000 participants from all over the world with different backgrounds and specializations. They worked together to achieve the objectives of the course sharing experiences, scaffolding and helping each other to move on and reach the end. The second course was "Designing a New Learning Environment (DNLE) 2012" offered by Stanford University and instructed by Prof. Paul Kim from October 15 – December 23, 2012. I love this course because it helps me to develop a new learning environment that is suitable for my students' ages, needs and interests. This doesn't mean I'm going to develop it from scratch, but search for open sources that allow me to select from varieties. The objectives of this course are:
Identify advantages, disadvantages, limitations, and potentials of at least 10 interactive learning models and solutions.
Describe how online communication, collaboration, and visualization technology play a role in the behavioral, cognitive, constructivist, and social dimensions of learning.
Describe the major components and processes involved in development of interactive education systems.
Communicate rationales of learning technology design approaches through team-oriented collaborations.
Evaluate the value of ideas, principles, and techniques used in educational media or systems.
In the following posts, I will share with you what I'm doing in this course!
