zsheker’s blog

Overall Reflection

After eight weeks in the UAQ Basic Education school (cycle 2), I realized that this was a rich learning experience for me. I was able to observe the learners in nature and how they are reacting according to their age and characters. I also learned that the new generation has a high intrinsic motivation toward use of technology if they are provided with the appropriate teaching/learning resources. I also noticed that learners react differently in each subject regarding if it’s their favorite subject or not or the teacher has a role in motivating them. Moreover, it was enjoyable to implement my action research with its new approach of teaching and learning in the school and seeing the productive results of my AR.

The school as a learning context:

The learning atmosphere in the school needs to be improved because I noticed that there is less focus on the learning and a lot of emphasis on unnecessary activities and events that have been hold in the school. I agree that some of the activities that some schools set can be related to student’s educational objectives. Unfortunately, I did not see any relevant educational events for student’s learning in UAQ Basic Education School. Therefore, I suggest that the school either rearrange the type of activities with its objectives that should hold for students or put more emphasis on the learning aspect because based on my observation in different classes with different grades I believe students are distracted with events in the school rather than focusing on their learning.

The ICT course:

I discussed the ICT course content issue from the first semester that I went to visit the school and observe ICT classes. I think the ICT course needs to be improved to meet the learner’s needs in the classroom because the CD is focusing on some themes of the ICT which basically the students learnt in earlier grade levels. I also believe that the CD cannot be counted as a curriculum to be taught; it is rather a supplementary resource that the teacher uses within the class resources.

The school administrators and teachers:

I learned about the administration work and how the organization is being runned by the principal. However, I felt the principal needs some counseling in her field to manage her school better and to focus more on the educational aspects rather than the reputation of the school. The fact that the principal is holding activities for the school reputation and inviting important people such as the UAQ Educational Zone director to see the attractive events will not improve the education or student’s learning.

Moreover, most of the teachers are stressed with the extra workload that the principal gave them to prepare for the school activities and take part in it made the teachers more dislikable to provide the appropriate learning support for their learners or even providing a constructivist learning environment.

Implementing my AR:

The blended learning approach aimed to engage the learners in the learning and introduce them into formal virtual learning environment where they can use discussion forums, blogs…etc as educational tools. Some of my findings at the end of my teaching practice are that students liked the idea of having an online and face-to-face learning environment more than the classroom based learning, students were able to express their thoughts through writing and they improved their writing and communication skills.

Myself as a learner:  

As far my skills are concerned, I think I improved my problem solving skills when I tried to independent with my colleague Hayat in solving the challenges that we faced in the work environment such as extra work that we were given and classes to teach.

I also improved my communication skills when I communicated with the principal, my SST, the teachers in the school and the learners professionally. I also improved my thinking skills because most of the time I did reflective thinking with my colleague about the school and how should it be improved. Moreover, I feel working in teams make relationships stronger, sharing new ideas with others and learning from others as I did with my colleague.

To conclude, every work experience is valuable to me when I learn and construct my knowledge and improve my skills from this learning experience. This is the last work experience for me in my academic life in the Educational Technology program and I believe it is the start of my career and where I learnt a lot as a beginner researcher to do a small scale research within a school context. I learnt with my students as I taught them through understanding their interests, needs and abilities. I learnt that each individual learn differently than others and therefore I need to vary my teaching strategies to meet their needs. I also improved my communication skills through working in a professional environment.

This was the last week in our teaching practice in Umm Al Quwain Basic Education (cycle 2) School.  I did some teaching for my target group and the shared group. I also created an assessment for Grade 7. Moreover I graded student’s performance in the class and their participation in the ICT lessons.

I observed the students using the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle. In the beginning when I implemented the Moodle project in the class and started using discussion forums with the students. I noticed that some of the students were not used to use this tool within a learning environment even if it was informally and on their own. I also noticed student’s mistakes in using discussion forums by posting a new discussion forum just to reply back to my questions. However, within the implementation time of Moodle in the classroom, I noticed students become familiar with the discussion forum and they learned how to reply back to their friends within the one post that they entered. The main purpose of using discussion forums in the classroom was to engage the learners to work in a collaborative learning setting where they can share their thoughts and discuss it with their peers. I succeeded to make the students work in collaborative learning environment where they worked as individuals and in group to do some class activities. However, now they value the group working atmosphere where they have to become partners in the learning instead of individuals.

In the first week of using Moodle, I found out that the students were exploring the different features of Moodle as viewed for them as students. One of the Moodle’s features that students were interested to use was Instant messaging. I realized that students were using instant messaging to communicate with each other and discuss any ideas or problems that they might have through texting their peers.  I think instant messaging is a useful tool because students were able to ask me any questions that had about the lessons that I taught them and it was a direct tool between me and the learners in a virtual world to communicate and solve the problems.

I also used the glossary feature in Moodle to help the learners to know the new vocabulary of the lesson. I intended to put the new vocabulary of the lesson in Moodle before we take the lesson so the students can at least look at it and learn the meaning of the new words. I found an electronic version of the glossary very handy for my students because they were able to access it anytime they want to revise the vocabulary without having the problem of losing their papers.

To conclude, I think the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle has engaged the learners in and outside the classroom to use Moodle as a communication learning environment where they were able to share their thoughts and collaborate with each other to construct their knowledge.

This was the last week in our teaching practice in Umm Al Quwain Basic Education (cycle 2) School.  I did some teaching for my target group and the shared group. I also created an assessment for Grade 7. Moreover I graded student’s performance in the class and their participation in the ICT lessons.

I observed the students using the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle. In the beginning when I implemented the Moodle project in the class and started using discussion forums with the students. I noticed that some of the students were not used to use this tool within a learning environment even if it was informally and on their own. I also noticed student’s mistakes in using discussion forums by posting a new discussion forum just to reply back to my questions. However, within the implementation time of Moodle in the classroom, I noticed students become familiar with the discussion forum and they learned how to reply back to their friends within the one post that they entered. The main purpose of using discussion forums in the classroom was to engage the learners to work in a collaborative learning setting where they can share their thoughts and discuss it with their peers. I succeeded to make the students work in collaborative learning environment where they worked as individuals and in group to do some class activities. However, now they value the group working atmosphere where they have to become partners in the learning instead of individuals.

In the first week of using Moodle, I found out that the students were exploring the different features of Moodle as viewed for them as students. One of the Moodle’s features that students were interested to use was Instant messaging. I realized that students were using instant messaging to communicate with each other and discuss any ideas or problems that they might have through texting their peers.  I think instant messaging is a useful tool because students were able to ask me any questions that had about the lessons that I taught them and it was a direct tool between me and the learners in a virtual world to communicate and solve the problems.

I also used the glossary feature in Moodle to help the learners to know the new vocabulary of the lesson. I intended to put the new vocabulary of the lesson in Moodle before we take the lesson so the students can at least look at it and learn the meaning of the new words. I found an electronic version of the glossary very handy for my students because they were able to access it anytime they want to revise the vocabulary without having the problem of losing their papers.

To conclude, I think the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle has engaged the learners in and outside the classroom to use Moodle as a communication learning environment where they were able to share their thoughts and collaborate with each other to construct their knowledge.

I observed my SMT in her ICT classes and I noticed that her teaching style has returned to become old fashioned and most of the time she did the talking in the classroom.  I believe the change that I noticed in few weeks of my observations for her classes was just a trial show to test it. I asked her what do you think of using games in the classroom. She replied that creating interactive games takes effort and time that she cannot afford for her students and she prefers the traditional approach because it is easier to deliver in the classroom. I think if these old fashioned teachers do not have strong beliefs of change in the classroom; they would go on in teaching boring lessons for rest of their teaching career and the victims will be the generations who are involved in the learning in their classroom.

I observed the students using the blog feature in the Moodle. They were excited to write about their daily activities or events that happened in their lives in their blogs. I believe it is good to give the learners an opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings through writing. It will improve their writing skills. It will also improve student’s writing in English language and they can practice the English language outside of the English class.  As one of the students stated “teacher, I like blogs because I can write in English and it will help me in my English writing.”

 I noticed two indexes of motivation in student’s use of blogging which are their persistence and effort to write. The National Association of School Psychologists (n.d) defines persistence of learners on a task as “the ability to stay with a task for a reasonably long period of time.”  I realized that the blogs feature has captured student’s attention and I noticed their interest through the amount of time students were putting to write their blogs on a daily basis. I also noticed that when I gave them time to write their blogs in the class; students were focused and took long time to write their blogs and read their friend’s blogs. I also found through my reading to student’s blogs that some of the learners has put more effort into their writing either the language was Arabic or English. Through my observations to student’s blogs I found out that they used the blogs as a communication tool among them and were sharing their ideas and thoughts about their daily routine or what happened in the class.

To conclude, I think the blog feature in Moodle has engaged the learners in and outside the classroom when they started writing their blogs at home. The learners enjoyed sharing their thoughts with their peers and what happened in their daily live.

Reference:

National Association of School Psychologists. (n.d.) Motivating Learning in Young Children. Retrieved January 10^th, 2009, from, http://www.nasponline.org/resources/home_school/earlychildmotiv_ho.aspx

This week I was busy with Education Without Borders conference. I presented a paper “The Challenge of Teaching a Computer Literate Generation: Podcasting as a Tool in Educational Contexts”. The core of my paper was about our learners enjoy listening to audio materials.However, teachers are not providing any effective resources for them to learn from it. Therefore, I did a mini research and found out that teachers need training to be able to create and use podcasts in their classroom as an creative tool to engage their learners.My paper was one of the best papers presented in the conference which made me happy and proud of myself.

I learned a lot by attending this conference where I met different students from around the world and I attended some of their presentations. I was impressed with their thoughts and critical thinking and creative ideas that they came up with. I communicated with some of the students and shared some thoughts. I was glad to speak to English native student who picked up the Arabic language because he is studying in an Arab country which shows how the cultures can exchange knowledge and experience without any borders between them if we try to communicate and discover what other cultures are like.

I started this week with the learners using Blended learning which is learning face-to-face and using Moodle (online learning). Blended learning is integration of the traditional classroom teaching and the online teaching where online courses are either delivered via the Internet or through the video conferencing. I am delivering my classes using the Learning Management System (Moodle).

I explained the meaning of Moodle to them and why we are going to use Moodle in this course. The nice thing about my target group is that they accept the new ideas about using technology smoothly and get use it easily without any difficulties or arguments. In fact, they get excited more about it and wait to learn how to use it and try it themselves.

 I introduced four features of Moodle to the learners which are how to login, Calendar, Blogs, and Forums. Then I started to show to them how to login to Moodle. They logged in and were excited to see what inside the website. I showed them how to create events in calendar and they practiced how to create events in calendar. I only showed them how to do events in March; however, they created events in different months and explored the Calendar independently.

I also explained to them what does blog mean and showed them how to write a blog entry. They were enthusiastic about blogs and writing daily entries. They asked me a lot of questions about what can we write and what kind of topics we can discuss and how can we view other’s blogs and read them. Moreover, I showed them the News forum and told them to write about check the News Forums regularly and go the Introduce Yourself Topic and post a topic. Some of the students posted their topics and some of them could not because the bell rang. Therefore, I gave them homework a blog entry and Introduce Yourself post. The students were intrinsically motivated that they went home and posted in the forums and explored the Moodle once again. They told me that they are waiting for next class to have another session about Moodle to learn more about it! I am excited too with my learners and replying back to their posts and collecting data from their posts. Moreover, I am checking their login and I think they are still new and exploring the Moodle. When they get use to it; they will know to post and reply back to their friends and to my posts too. I think Moodle will be the communication bridge between me and my learners.

Student’s intrinsic motivation:

Student’s intrinsic motivation comes within themselves and their interest in the ICT subject. They are enthusiastic to learn more about the Excel 2007 and explore it themselves. Their curious nature is behind their intrinsic motivation in ICT classroom. Moreover, most of the learners participate in the classroom out of their interest to explore things on the teacher computer.    I am glad that my learners are intrinsically motivated to learn ICT course out of their curiosity about technology and computers.

Student’s extrinsic motivation:

I engaged my learners in the classroom using different methods such as verbal reinforcement “Great Job, Good, Excellent” and I encourage learning by using by reinforcement cards such as “Computer Star”. All these methods have positive effects on learner’s behaviors as I noticed. They behaved well in the classroom to get stickers or praising. Moreover, I realized that the cards had more effect on the learners than the verbal reinforcement did and the learners were hard working and focused on task and engaged when they received stickers if they finished first. This showed a different persistence level of working on the tasks that I gave them based on the reinforcement that I provided for them to motivate them.

My teaching approach:

My teaching approach is a mixed approach between constructivism and behaviorism because I am teaching instructional lessons where I am using some behaviorist approaches and I use constructivist approaches where I am giving the learners opportunities to do the tasks independently without my help on their own ZPD. Moreover, I noticed as learners are working on tasks, some of the learners are quicker than other and they are scaffolding their pairs to finish the tasks so it is a student centered learning environment where learners have ownership of their learning.

Teaching strategies that I use in the classroom:

I use varied teaching/learning strategies from classroom rules, grouping the learners, letting the students work collaboratively in pairs, or work individually on their computers, playing games. These strategies I use them to engage my learners in the classroom and get their attention in the classroom, construct their knowledge, make the learning student centered, give the learners more opportunities ownership on their learning and more important to motivate them to attend ICT classrooms.

My teaching approach:

My teaching approach is a mixed approach between constructivism and behaviorism because I am teaching instructional lessons where I am using some behaviorist approaches and I use constructivist approaches where I am giving the learners opportunities to do the tasks independently without my help on their own ZPD. Moreover, I noticed as learners are working on tasks, some of the learners are quicker than other and they are scaffolding their pairs to finish the tasks so it is a student centered learning environment where learners have ownership of their learning.

Teaching strategies that I use in the classroom:

I use varied teaching/learning strategies from classroom rules, grouping the learners, letting the students work collaboratively in pairs, or work individually on their computers, playing games. These strategies I use them to engage my learners in the classroom and get their attention in the classroom, construct their knowledge, make the learning student centered, give the learners more opportunities ownership on their learning and more important to motivate them to attend ICT classrooms.

Observing the ICT teacher:

I attended with my SST lessons with Grade 6, 8 and 9. I observed her and I noticed that her approach is behaviorist and teacher centered. I noticed that there were not any stages in her lesson or activities except for building knowledge by the teacher and the worksheet that the learner did. Her teaching strategies were not varied. She used the white board, the computer and the worksheets as the main resources of the class; the only way to manage the behavior in the classroom was to shout at the student. Most of the time the teacher did the talk, as a result the students felt bored and lost interest in the lesson. I did not notice any collaboration work between learners or students seeking for their own knowledge even they were taught by their instructor.

Discussing about the implementing the blending learning in the school:

My colleague Hayat and I started thinking about how to implement the blended learning in the school environment. First of all, I started working on the UAQ Moodle site. I learned about how to customize the site theme to a personal one. I figured out that I need to get the directory URL where the Moodle originally has been installed and kept. My teacher from college visited me at the school and I discussed with her about this issue and she supported me by telling to ask for IT help at the college. I found out that I need to go to the college and ask for the IT help in order to assess the Moodle directory and start changing the theme. It will need some coding and I need to design a simple template for it. However, I found out that I can use a ready template from the Moodle site and insert a logo that I create with some coding.

I also enrolled my target group (Grade 7/3) in the UAQ Moodle after I created them Email accounts. During this week I have plans to get the Moodle ready for the learners to use it.

Difficulties that face us:

There are some difficulties that are facing us such are misunderstanding of our role in the school from the principal side. I think we Miss Maryanne comes in her next visit to our school to explain for our SST and the principal about our project. Moreover, the problem of having the IT class for one session per week which is a problem for us.