What a week!! Just like my colleague Pamela I’m whacked out, but because
of my computer. It just stopped to work and all my life stuck. After this forced
“break” I realized that our lives are really connected to the internet. After
we start to make part of this world when you’re not connected, it’s like you’re missing something. But at the
same time, I took a look at my books, my old drafts of interesting seminars that
I attended and checked my old notebooks with some ideas on different projects.
It was like to review my teaching life and confirm that with the internet, it
can be much better. But to reach that it’s necessary to train our eyes to see
what’s important or not.
That’s what I answered to my colleague Sitaram. He was wondering if one
day we could use all these technologies that we are learning about. Of course
they have their importance and can facilitate our teaching life but let’s start
from the beginning: what is our objective and which technology can help us to
get there?
And this week I discovered (re-discovered) a useful technology that I
use a long time: power point. The task to prepare one that has interactive
resources challenged me. But it was really a pleasure to work with that. Also,
the readings about engaging students helped me to discover that many of the
suggested activities I’ve already worked with my students but I just didn’t
know the name.
Also, after doing the reading “Teaching large classes” (http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/LargeClasses.html)
and Enhancing
Learning by Engaging Students, from Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw I could add some
more ideas to improve my teaching. Both readings were really useful for me.
One of the activities that I found interesting was Just
in Time Teaching because we can save a lot of time just by developing the
students ideas that were already presented before the class. Also, it helps us
to guide our teaching exactly in the points that students were not so
confident.
As soon as I finished this reading I thought about
another education technique called Flipped classroom, that has the same idea
of this activity: to save the time of teacher talking and go straight to the “do”
part. But there are many pros and cons about it. And if you want to know more
about it my suggestion is to read the article The Flipped Classroom: Pro and Con
by Mary Beth Hertz
There, Mary Hertz presents what she understood
of this methodology and also its pros and cons.
Week 7, wait for me!!
See you
there!
Claudia
Dear Claudia,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, three meaningful as well as symbolic pictures in your blog of this week are enough to captivate our attention.I have interpreted these three pictures in a very symbolic was; first deals about how disconnected and grumpy we may go in the absence of technology. In contrary, second picture hints about pleasant, resourceful and cheerful world in the presence of technology, and third picture about future possibilities. To be very honest I am still struggling on the part of interactive powerPoint. Nonetheless it has heralded a new possibility of using powerpoint to make our classes more interactive and participatory.
Prakash
Hello Prakash!
DeleteThank you for your interesting comment based on the pictures. You did an exact interpretation on them.
I also understand your problems to deal with the power point functions. I faced the same difficulties in the beginning, but when you start to understand and practice, you get addicted to that! And the best part is that our classes become much more interesting!
All the best,
Claudia
Dear Claudia and Hi Prakash
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that Prakash made some points about the picture you use in this post.
There is sometimes that life is much better without technology especially when you are on holiday or enjoying the time with no rush. However, when you cannot count on technology in a certain time, books will always be good source of inspiration.
Glad that you have rediscovered the powerpoint for teaching. But still, there is time when you can use or not use the powerpoint. Anyway, please say hi to your two friends who helped you with the interactive powerpoint. I will be glad if you could share about your experience in teaching large class. How many students do you have maximally in your class?
Wish you all the best Claudia.
See you in week 7.
cheers
Herman
Hello Herman!
DeleteWell, that's was a hard week without computer, but
at the same time,it was good to take a look on my books and other old projects during this period.
Now the powerpoint quiz I really liked to prepare that. The video was used in one of my classes so I just adapted to my quiz. My friends on the video are not working with me anymore, but we had a lot of fun to record that.
Answering your question about the classes,as we use the television to reach the communities, that are many of them that have the access to the tv signal now. I'm not quite sure about the number of classrooms but we have approximately six thousand students just for the middle school. And with we add the students from high school we have approximately 35 thousand students total.
I promisse that I'm going to talk more about it on the blog for you to have a better idea of my work.
Thank you for asking and for your comment.
All the best,
Claudia