Week 10. Food for thought...

Well, 10 week course is approaching its logical end. I can't say that it was easy as it requires enough time and when you are working your usual hours and even more it's a bit challenging to find enough time to complete all assignments consciously. Although I didn't read all the articles I added course assignments' page to my Delicious page, so I'll be able to look through some articles when I need it. 

As for most successful topics I can't stress some of them as in every topic I found ideas which are new, interesting and practical for me as I work with different groups, levels, programs and languages, so this or that idea can be used with this or that course and it will be useful and will make course more efficient. 

There were a lot of new tools for me. Although I heard about them before I didn't use them and even didn't read or learn about them. "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn" (B. Franklin). I thing this quotation is the essence of this course. Nothing to take away, nothing to add. May be my more advanced colleagues will be more critical and constructive as some of them are real professional in a great variety of technology tools. And I'm happy to be with them in this course!

Thank you!

Best,

Olga

Week 9: Learning styles

We feel comfortable when we teach as we did it before. I met a teacher in France and he said - what can technology give to students that I can't give? In any way it's just a text, then why not to use usual printed texts? I tried to persuade that a teacher can use a great variety of technology tools to develop these or those skills, to make learning process more efficient but I failed.  The answer was - I prefer classical university teaching. 

To my mind the answer is that this model is teacher-centered - I can do it and I'll do it as I think appropriate. 

Learning and teaching should be a reciprocal process and student-centered because our aim is to help students and ourselves acquire new knowledge and skills which can lead to individual and collective development. 

One more argument is that students are different as people are different, they have their own learning styles and it doesn't depend on them. Sure they learn completing assignments which teachers give them. But how more effective and useful and interesting would this process be if we were not so teacher-based!?

Conclusion of this week is - assignment can one but its results can be presented differently. Just add one or two sentences to your assignment and teaching-learning process will change to be more innovative, capturing and effective!