Online Education

Have you ever heard the saying: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”? Well due to the holiday vacations, I kind of lost track of the activities I had to do and the result was that “A lot of vacations and a lot of fun made Mitoh a lazy girl J”

Anyway, I’m back to continue blogging. This time, it’s going to be about the goals I need to achieve in order to teach well my Information Technology (IT) class.

After a lot of thought, I decided to choose the following:

GOAL # 1: FACILITATE AND INSPIRE STUDENTS LEARNING AND CREATIVITY”

What I heard from some students of the last IT class, they didn’t like some activities, for them it was just plugging and unplugging in focus cables, and cameras (they were the comment of the young ones who are between 18 - 20) but on the other hand one adult that is 23 told me that she really learned a lot with this class. One of the things she liked the most was the wiki news that where each school would post their events and then an email would be sent to all the teachers so that they see what is going on in other schools. (I thought this was a fantastic idea in order to create an online community)

What I am afraid of is the following:

- If I teach this subject to young adults from the other faculties it’s going to be hell for me. From my experience as a student is very complicated to create an activity that satisfies the different learning styles from the three faculties: Communication would want to create something (maybe I could use the comic strips one). Ecology would want something related to education and Administration would want something related to politics or numbers.

- If I teach only to teachers, well they are motivated by their own (I mean, they pay because they want to learn) so I can create activities related to Education only.

So, one performance indicator that I really want to emphasize on is the one about and I quote from the NETS-T is to “Engage students in exploring real- world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources. “

So, here is one of my challenges. I have to create activities that are fun and interesting that at the same time encourages worrying on what is happening around the world and see how they can solve them. Maybe an online newspaper can help me. Students who are creative might want to use bistripz, other others would write an article about e-g “The Education Law”. Maybe another one can create a survey in Google docs about the same topic and report the results in the online newspapers. (Hey! maybe I can use these ideas for my final individual homeworkJ). I think that by doing this, students no matter the faculty will be motivated to collaborate and work on it.

The other Performance indicator that I also want to work on is to “Promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify student’s conceptual understanding and thinking, planning and creative process. “

One of the best ways I can do it is by using blogs. Maybe like a learning log where each student can create their own blog and they would have to reflect what they liked, didn’t like about the tool they learned and since I want them also to collaborate, they have to comment on 2 of 3 friends each week. And in order to make it fun and interesting is that they have to do some learning longs through podcasting. They might feel like a reality show where they look at the camera and comment on what they like or not.

GOAL # 2 : DEVELOP SELF DISCIPLINE FROM STUDENTS

Uy! Well if it’s self then I wouldn’t need to help jeje. But since this technology education world is new for them and XXI century students have to become Self disciplined, I need to help me. The problem is, students tend to need deadlines and pressure to do things.

Performance Indicator: Set deadlines

It’s the only way, if don’t do it they won’t do anything. What I can do the first month is to remind them every week what they have to do until they get used to. After that I will tell them that it’s time for them to be responsible for their work, check the moodle with the deadlines of the activities they have to do .

Performance Indicator: Set Rewards

Well, what I think I can do is that if they turn in their work before the time assigned, especially when working in groups because that can create peer pressure, they can have a bonus of an extra point or one more day to turn in an assignment. (I know that this will develop only external motivation but I think that is also internal. It’s optional for them to turn it in before, and from a book I was reading about motivation, when an activity is optional, 30% do it, when an activity is mandatory (“if you don’t do it until this day you get cero”) 80% do it and when it’s for a reward only 40% do it.

I don’t want to set punishments but it doesn’t mean they are not going to get a good grade for turning something in on time. If the students I will have are young adults who don’t work and only study, there is no excuse. But if I have teachers who work and are parents I would be more flexible with the time and therefore wouldn’t punish them.

I’ve realized I write a lot haha!

I think I have to write less or people won’t read my blogs, but the thing is that one I start writing I just go on and on because I really try to reflect on this and write my fears, my funny jokes and everything that goes through my mind that for example I don’t realize that I ended that this post is about two pages in a word document. Well that’s it. Sorry if you are bored or something and the same time thanks for reading this. :)