2
weeks have passed so quickly. It is amazing how time flies by…
I
haven’t had a
chance to stop and write, as I had to:
1)
Plan the web 2.0, I wanted
to teach my teachers (that was Glogster, my LOVE)
2)
Read articles (lots of
them) for the course: Qualitative Research Methods
3)
Think of a computer based
unit for the course: Social Network in
Education
4)
Finish the interactive
lesson for my 6th graders (print out the codes, laminate the cards
etc)
5)
Completing 4 charts for the
inspectorate's visit at school
6)
Stat planning my husband's
surprise party (he doesn't read the blog – so do not worry!)
7)
Marking tests and dictations
(I teach 6 classes)
8)
Looking for time to spend
with my daughter and husband
So,
as you can read it ain't easy going back to school, work full time, give
courses once a week after school, being a mother and a wife etc…..
Anyhow
--- enough about my problems…
(sorry but it is easier writing everything down for you to read instead of
going to the shrink – no time and no money for that J
I'm
taking a course at college which I found out is an online course (asynchronous)
and not a frontal lesson. The goal is to set up a group of students and to
think about an ICT (information and communication technologies) learning unit based
on one of the social networks out there. We have to write our thoughts and
progress during the process in a blog, the lecturer opened for us (which is 60%
of the final grade), commenting on other students' blogs (10%) and the final
part should be working on the unit - (practice and review) by our students at school or by our colleagues (30%).
We
have chosen Facebook, of course, but it is hard to come up with a subject as we
(the member in my group – total of 3 teachers) teach different subjects to
different age groups. Any way we agreed on (my suggestion!!) planning the unit
based on the timeline the Facebook has to offer. Now if I think of that, it
will best suit to teach History, as the pupils can enter many data, pictures,
videos, presentations and more on a specific topic, on the specific date and
year! As the Facebook gives you the
ability to choose the date for entering any information, thus if I decide to
teach about the Great Fire of London, I will post all the information in the
year 1666 and I (as a pupil) can choose the day as well.
But
I am sure I can find more useful things to it such as (just come up to my mind)
if I ask my pupils to create a page on Facebook and specify special or/and important
events in their lives, such as birth, parties, first kiss, first
boyfriend/girlfriend etc… (I am sure they have other
events they consider to be meaningful)… There is
still a lot to think aboutJ
Let's
move on…. Another
course offers the Second Life environment. Now that is a tool I just don't
get!! I HATE it! I don't see the point in it (I can see it, I just don't like
what I see!) and I can't seem to understand the implantation of it in my esl
classes. It is basically a virtual world parallel to ours and you can travel to
other countries, places, meet new friends/old friends, chat, talk and maybe
learn a bit. The problems that I see are:
1)
Teaching this environment
will take ages. Especially to kids in elementary (which is significant for my
work)!
2)
Pupils can easily "forget"
it is meant to be a learning tool.
3)
Teachers should LOVE the
tool they teach with.
4)
To make a video, you need
to teach a different tool which takes more time
5)
Don't Worry!! I will think
of more reasons why I don't like that tool (game)
Well,
okay – I have got to finish… I still have to take a
shower and finish some other things (like paying the utility bills) and be at
the college at 13:00 (it is 9 am)
Oh, another thing… I will love to hear what you think about Second Life.. (if you know it of course)
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