I just joined this Ning community called: " The Educator's PLN, the personal learning network for educators." I am looking forward to reading the discussion.
Here is a link if anyone is interested.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Better be connected!
This topic is very important. Actually, I was just talking to my wife the other day that I have this feeling that I am running out of idea and I feel burnt out. I have been teaching in the same context nonstop without a break for two or three consecutive years. What is interesting is that I thought about taking a short break and start looking for professional development courses that may engage and refresh my teaching skills again.
I really liked the idea in Paulino's video, which is to follow a blog or two related to the topic of my interest. I already joined two Google+ communities related to using technology in education. Also, it is very important for instructors to be learners themselves of the tool they are trying to implement in their classes in order to be familiar with all the advantages and the disadvantages.
I am interested in trying Twitter. I created an account a while ago but never check it. I hear students talk about it a lot in class to follow each other and. Also, it is huge in my home country, Egypt, where people use it a lot to comment and express their political views. I have a friend who gets all the updates happening around the world by following people on Twitter and liking some pages on Facebook. So my plan is to start playing around with Twitter as a learner myself first and see how I can utilize this as a tool in my language classes.
I really liked the idea in Paulino's video, which is to follow a blog or two related to the topic of my interest. I already joined two Google+ communities related to using technology in education. Also, it is very important for instructors to be learners themselves of the tool they are trying to implement in their classes in order to be familiar with all the advantages and the disadvantages.
I am interested in trying Twitter. I created an account a while ago but never check it. I hear students talk about it a lot in class to follow each other and. Also, it is huge in my home country, Egypt, where people use it a lot to comment and express their political views. I have a friend who gets all the updates happening around the world by following people on Twitter and liking some pages on Facebook. So my plan is to start playing around with Twitter as a learner myself first and see how I can utilize this as a tool in my language classes.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
hanging out!
My group is very cooperative and understanding. We were able to agree on the hangout time in two messages and that was it. The meeting was very useful and the discussion covered more than one topic from teaching pedagogy to assessment.
We started our discussion with a very good question from our friend, Roula. In her case. she is teaching a face to face class and at the same time there is another class in a different school district receiving the live feed from a camera in Roula's class. She asked if we would consider this online teaching or blended. We took it from there to reach a definition of online and blended learning. What we came up with is that blended learning is a mix of face to face and online learning, unlike the online one, where the instructor doesn't meet his/her students in person. Therefor, we considered Roula's situation as a face to face learning.
We talked about how convenient online leaning is for some people who cannot make it to class physically but are still able to finish a degree or continue their education from the comfort of their home. Also, it connects people with different backgrounds and cultures, which could be amazing for language learners to connect with native speakers for practice. However, there is always that fear of the technical difficulties, which could add more work for the teacher on top of the course content. Moreover, the learning style and students' objective play a very important factor in deciding what platform or what tool to use. Our friend, Lana, gave a very good example of one of her online students who asked her to meet in person driving about an hour instead because he believes it is better to communicate with her in person.
My main concern is the fear of trying to impose using technology to cope with other languages or majors. I am still trying to see how technology and online LANGUAGE learning is effective comparing to the regular face to face or traditional classroom setting. That being said, I am looking forward to hearing other points of views that support the argument of teaching language online.
We started our discussion with a very good question from our friend, Roula. In her case. she is teaching a face to face class and at the same time there is another class in a different school district receiving the live feed from a camera in Roula's class. She asked if we would consider this online teaching or blended. We took it from there to reach a definition of online and blended learning. What we came up with is that blended learning is a mix of face to face and online learning, unlike the online one, where the instructor doesn't meet his/her students in person. Therefor, we considered Roula's situation as a face to face learning.
We talked about how convenient online leaning is for some people who cannot make it to class physically but are still able to finish a degree or continue their education from the comfort of their home. Also, it connects people with different backgrounds and cultures, which could be amazing for language learners to connect with native speakers for practice. However, there is always that fear of the technical difficulties, which could add more work for the teacher on top of the course content. Moreover, the learning style and students' objective play a very important factor in deciding what platform or what tool to use. Our friend, Lana, gave a very good example of one of her online students who asked her to meet in person driving about an hour instead because he believes it is better to communicate with her in person.
My main concern is the fear of trying to impose using technology to cope with other languages or majors. I am still trying to see how technology and online LANGUAGE learning is effective comparing to the regular face to face or traditional classroom setting. That being said, I am looking forward to hearing other points of views that support the argument of teaching language online.
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