We Are Powerful Beyond Measure...

Retrieved from http://loveandtheairport.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-deepest-fear.html

All Things Come To An End!

In this life, one can never imagine what will happen. I never imagined that I would be teaching teachers in Egypt, and I am sure that the Egyptian teachers in my two courses never imagined that they would have been taught by an Afro-Caribbean woman from Trinidad. But it has happened, our paths have crossed, and we have learned from each other, shared, laughed, cried, got mad, discussed, calmed down, reached out, and stressed. We have been bored, motivated, impressed, impassioned, surprised, and delighted. We have felt relief, anger, pain, and joy. But above all of this we have all enjoyed a wonderful sense of accomplishment! We did it! And now the time has come for this semesters work to be packed away. All we will have are the memories, the blogs, and the stories to tell. My best wishes to you all. Thanks for touching my life in the ways that you have. In the words of my late, dear mother, All The Best!!!

Learning by doing!

The black and white image below is based on Edgar Dale's work on the Cone of Experience in the 1940s. Since then percentages have been added by unknown persons to produce the more common expressions of Dale's work as seen in the coloured figure below called The Cone of Learning. The take away lesson is that we learn more by doing! 

Educating the mind and heart, with heart!

Learning from our students!

Who should learn more in a classroom, the teacher or the students? As I continue on my journey as a teacher/learner, I have come to realise that as teachers we should leave our classrooms with more knowledge than when we entered. Using blogs has enabled me to learn a lot about my students, their lives, their interests, their thoughts and their intentions. They have also probed issues, extended questions and posed new ways of looking at teaching and learning. I have learned so much from reading these blogs. True learning should be two-way. Classrooms as a learning space for teachers and students. What do you think?

One-computer classroom? That can work!

So many of my students have argued that they cannot integrate technology into their teaching because they only have one computer. Here are three websites to help you get some ideas on how you can integrate technology in the one-computer classroom.

The One-Computer Classroom

http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic84.htm

One Computer Classroom
http://webtech.kennesaw.edu/jcheek3/onecomputer.htm

How to Thrive -- Not Just Survive -- in a One-Computer Classroom http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech092.shtml

Blinded by the forest, not seeing the leaves

Sometimes focusing on the big things, like the forests, makes us forget that the little things like the leaves are what indeed make up the forest. Students are often anxious to achieve the big goals, like getting the math problem correct or getting a high assignment score, without appreciating all the little things, the building blocks or leaves, that go into making a successful end product. Teachers need to help students recognise that 'how' they are learning is as important as 'what' they are learning. We need to make sure that students can see the leaves in the forests. But this is by no means an easy task, especially when many students only want to see the forests and feel that they are being distracted by the leaves. In those cases we have to let students imagine the forests without the leaves.

Lowercase "a" opens doors

Have you ever noticed how its the small things in life that sometimes make a big difference? Well this week, I was reminded about that as my students struggled  to access Blackboard and to write their references in APA style. Both activities were eventually conquered by paying attention to the small details. This made me think that as teachers, we may plan and prepare to teach, but we have to also pay attention to the small details that may affect students' learning in the classroom. Do they know how to put things in alphabetical order? Do they know how to extract information from a printed source? Do they know how to find a copyright date? Do they know how to distinguish between an author an an editor? We cannot take these small things for granted. We must dig deep to really find out if they know the little things that we think they should know to be successful.

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy!

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy by Mike Fisher
1. Read more about this at http://www.angelamaiers.com and in Andrew Churches' article on Blackboard.

2. Check out an interactive version of the taxonomy by Samantha Penney at
http://faculty.indstate.edu/spenney/bdt.htm

Click on each logo to get to the links. Awesome!!!!

Blisters, Bullets and Broken Bones!

"Lessons written on the body are really well absorbed: and you may learn something about your soul as well" (Salinsky, 2006)

This week's classes were filled with intriguing discoveries, developments and discussions that left me reflective, refreshed and rewarded. The question that I have puzzled over this week is, how can learning become embodied or inscribed on/within/ or with the body? This question emerged from my reflection on the physical activities we engaged in during class: putting our bodies into alphabetical order to help remember the APA style format bibliographic references in one class and stretching to enable us to remember that we can always improve our performance. And outside class: me walking to class past bullet carrying guns that may have already harmed, in inappropriate shoes resulting in blisters; and seeing a woman fall in a park, after being pulled down by her dog, resulting in her broken bones. What learnings have these events sparked because of their inscriptions on bodies? How will this learning change each learner and those with whom they come into contact? How can we help our students to embody their learning in positive ways? How can we motivate students through the use of physical activities? What role does computer technology have in helping us to inscribe our learning on our bodies? Why do we continue to pursue activities that cause harm to our bodies? What are we learning? Answers anyone?

Reference
Salinsky, J. (2006). Written on the body. British Journal of General Practice, 56(527) 470-  471. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1839032/

Education World!

http://www.educationworld.com/

Online Resources

I am always taken aback by how many resources are available to teachers on the Web. I have indicated a few of these in your course syllabus.  One very useful resource and the answer to all your questions in EDUTOPIA. I would recommend you dedicate about 15 minutes per day to catching up with the developments on this site. There is an excellent pdf on mobile devices available for download now. Please register at http://www.edutopia.org/ to view all the wonderful developments in education and let me know via your blogs what you are learning!

Three weeks have come and gone so fast!

Three weeks have come and gone so fast! And I am still having a lot of fun interacting with my two groups of teachers. This week resulted in several "aha" moments for me. For example, one student asked, can we really motivate students to learn if they are not willing to learn? That question took me back to a comment made to me by a male student early in my teaching career. He said "Miss, you can do all you want, but if I don't want to learn, I won't." And so, can we as teachers really motivate students or do we simply cajole, inspire or influence them to care enough to want to learn?  Is this motivation? In my other class, I saw teachers become so enthralled with using technologies that were new to them (but not new to their students as they later found out), that their faces shone with excitement. How important it is for us as teachers to continue to experience the joys of learning and to share that joy with our students. Have a great week all!

Keep on trying!

I have decided to only post my blog once per week, so that I have enough time to follow the 30 blogs set up by my students. For most of them, this was their first blog ever and for those who may have blogged before, it is their first reflective blog. I am so impressed that my students have embraced this space to express themselves as they "reflect thoughtfully on their thinking as they experience this class." The course requirement is that "each entry should reflect issues related to new ideas, challenges faced, insights or “aha” moments, thoughtful questions, clarifications needed, and/or appraise opinions related to the ideas studied or expressed in the articles, or discussed in class." My students are really digging deep and paying attention to what they are learning about themselves and their practice. So what did I learn from my classes this week? I learnt that people rise to challenges, if they are motivated to do so. Most of my students are motivated to do their course because they want to be better teachers. People also want to be actively involved in their learning: after all we remember 90% of what they do. My technological "aha" moment for the week was try it, and if it fails, try again. Don't give up. Because you did not give up on using computers, or trying to set up a blog. You can read this today. All the best!
 

I'm Blogging Too!

Hello, I could not let you have all the fun, so here I am! This blog is intended mainly for the participants enrolled in my two Fall classes. I believe that as educators we should walk the same journey that we ask our students to, so I too will be reflecting on my learning experiences over the semester. I had my first two classes this week and what strikes me most is how alike teachers are all over the world. This made me wonder whether or not teachers have similar personalities, drives? What makes us so similar, yet so different from other professions? The other inspiring thing for me is to see how groups of teachers can be motivated to want to continue to learn, despite the challenges they may face. All of this is being done for the benefit their students! So my congratulations to all of you for taking this brave step forward and best wishes for the course. My significant technological learning points for the week were: remember to bring adapter cords and flash-drives as back-up; use cut-and-paste less often; and save, save, save files. I know these things, but my experiences this week have reminded me that I can forget. Socially, I have learnt that although we may be culturally, linguistically or nationally different, we reach others when we reach from the heart. See you next week, inshaa Allah.