Do you have kids? Have you ever thought about what they’re (not) learning? Sir Ken Robinson has a few thoughts on the matter. This one is highly recommended whether you have children or not.
Posts Tagged ‘education’
Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? @ TED
Thursday, July 10th, 2008JALTCALL 2007: Web 2.0 Tools for EFL
Friday, June 1st, 2007Here we are at Waseda University in the middle of Tokyo. Several of us are now at our third workshop at JALTCALL 2007 looking into the world of Web 2.0 Tools for teaching and learning English. Some of us are blogging about the experience, and we’re going to link them together. The presenter is Marc Sheffner from Tezukayama University. We started with creating a Blogger account, moved on to changing the language, and customizing our templates for that cool look!
We then moved to Google Reader to sign up the blogs that we wrote. We were asked to get the feeds from our neighbors and add them as well. I now have a nice list of feeds to go nuts with. Students can then add each other’s RSS feeds to keep track of what everyone is writing. Bloglines is another reader that was mentioned.
We then moved on to another Web 2.0 tool: del.icio.us. This is the place to keep your bookmarks. At first it may seem like a lot of trouble, but if you use different browsers or move between different computers, you can access these bookmarks anytime anywhere (as long as the Internet is up where you are). Another bonus: tagging. You may have created many different folders to keep your bookmarks, but the sites you want to bookmark may fall under several categories. Tagging your bookmarks allows you to have multiple categories for your bookmarks. You can also share selected bookmarks with selected friends, colleagues, and students.
Thanks for the interesting presentation, Marc. I hope we weren’t too noisy over on the side. 
Lifehacker: Technophilia: Get a free college education online
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006The good folks at Lifehacker have put together a great list of resources to help us get a free online education (albeit without the paperwork annoiting us with an actual college degree). Reading the comments below the actual post, I see that our mileage may vary on the actual content. However, this blog provides us with a good starting point to see what is available online for free. There should be much more out there, so get those browsers and search engines working.
moodle 1.5
Wednesday, June 15th, 2005Although there is no official announcement on the http://moodle.org homepage (it’s still linked as a beta version), the download page shows moodle 1.5 has reached stable status. I uploaded it last week, and I really like its feel. 1.5 has added a message feature which allows users to send an instant message to other members of courses. The message feature could be used in a number of ways. One is to alert learners who have not fulfilled a particular task that something needs to be done. For language teaching, it can also provide an opportunity for more spontaneous communication. Another feature is a more robust quiz module. The latest quiz module includes an adaptive function to allow users to try a missed question again or move to an easier question on the same item. Quiz-makers can choose a percentage for a penalty or allow learners to earn the same credit. I have not used the adaptive portion yet, but plans are in the works. Film at eleven…
On the downside, the wonderful Journal module is being phased out. For those of you who are not familiar with journals, they allow learners to respond in writing to a particular topic. Teachers can then evaluate all the learners as well as provide feedback, all from one page. Journals have been replaced by the Assignments module. Now teachers have to click on each student’s work and provide the feedback/evaluation on individual pages (in addition to the extra time for the loading of each page). Fortunately, Journals can be reactivated in the Modules page of the Administration area. This reactivation has saved me time and clicks in the past week.
As I learn more about the new version, I’ll try to bring my comments up to date.
JALTCALL 2005
Thursday, June 9th, 2005Well another year, another JALTCALL conference, this time at Ritsumeikan University in Kusatsu, Shiga, Japan. I thought it was one of the better of the JALTCALLs, although the attendance numbers seemed to be smaller than in the past. Besides the opening and closing ceremonies, there were five types of presentations: keynotes/plenaries, papers, workshops, posters, and “show & tell.” As usual, there were a wide variety of presentations to see. The biggest problem, in my opinion, was the fact that at any one time there may have been as many as 15 presentations to choose from!
A simple breakdown of those I saw (more information coming as time permits):
Saturday
—The keynote on using video, voice, and text for for (a)synchronous communication…
—A networked project between Thai and Japanese learners of English, using a social constructivist model…
—Creating your own audio files for disseminating to learners (or anyone for that matter)…
—A workshop on putting your web page design and construction into your own hands…
—A new computer game targeted at 15-18 years olds for Japanese study…
—The latest in creating mobile CALL (think cell phones and/or PDAs)…
Sunday
—The plenary on keeping track of students’ learning in self-study mode…
—A talk on helping to make learners’ presentations more communicative…
—The latest multimedia solution from the folks at Longman’s…
—A workshop and paper on wikis…
—And, of course, mine on developing online learning communities…
Book Review: Creating Significant Learning Experiences
Sunday, May 8th, 2005You may have noticed that I have been reviewing many books dealing with education and course development. I am always trying to improve my own courses, so I have been using my DCTE 760 doctoral course as an opportunity to work in that area. Fink (2003) is the last of the books I aimed to read during my spring break from classes. Unfortunately, I read this one last and could not finish it before classes started up last week. I would like to use Fink’s model, as well as others, to revamp my own courses as soon as I can get a chance.
First off, Fink (2003) is another excellent book on designing college courses from start to finish. Fink (chap. 2) begins by outlining some of the elements of a ‘good’ course. He observes that good courses:
—challenge students to significant kinds of learning.
—use active forms of learning.
—have teachers who care about the subject, their students, and about teaching and learning.
—have teachers who interact well with students.
—have a good system of feedback, assessment, and grading (p 28).
Fink mentions Bloom’s work (see my post #111 for a chapter review of the updated version) on creating a taxonomy for learning. Fink has created his own taxonomy which he claims can increase opportunities for significant learning to take place in college courses:
—foundational knowledge
—application
—integration
—human dimension
—caring
—learning how to learn (pp. 31-32).
Fink provides examples in several academic disciplines where his taxonomy can be used to create courses of all types. The first two chapters lay out Fink’s philosophy and the foundation for the taxonomy, and the rest of the book is a step-by-step guide on putting his ideas into practice. I can recommend this book to anyone looking to improve one’s courses and teaching.
Reference
Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Book Review: Thinking about teaching and learning: Developing habits of learning with first year college and university students
Friday, March 18th, 2005Leamnson (1999) was recommended to me by a former colleague and good friend. We both work with first-year university students, and I have never read a book aimed specifically at this unique population. Overall, the book is very well written, and the arguments are presented carefully. Let me start off by writing that if you work with such students, this book is a must-read!
I chose this chapter (Leamnson, 1999, chap. 5) because I have had several Aha! moments in reading it. Leamnson starts off the chapter with an unorthodox definition of teaching: “any activity that has the conscious intention of, and potential for, facilitating learning in another” (p. 51). He wants to separate teaching from learning because this chapter is about the behavior of teaching itself.
Critical concepts from this chapter (Leamnson, 1999, chap. 5) include the fact that we should be persuading our young college students to have the motivation to learn. We should be exposing and inspiring (he also uses the word seduction for lack of a better term) our students because learning is internal. We also should be encouraging our students to make notes (as opposed to take notes, like it is something we give our students) and organize the material they are working with. He stresses language is a key for our students; they should be talking and writing about their work.
Leamnson (1999, chap. 5) summarizes the chapter with five of the techniques he discussed:
1. Use ten minutes of class time to talk with different students about course material (for example, material from the previous class).
2. Give the concept first, then the term which defines it (we usually do it the other way around). This way the students will listen better.
3. Have the students do the cognitive work. Do not give them pre-packaged notes, outlines or organized material!
4. Teachers should be “inspiring and persuasive” (p. 81).
5. Cooperative learning is important. Students should work in groups to check their knowledge and share ideas.
Reference
Leamnson, R. (1999). Thinking about teaching and learning: Developing habits of learning with first year college and university students. Sterling, VA: Stylus.
Book Review: The Adult Learner
Tuesday, March 15th, 2005Knowles, Holton, and Swanson (2001) is the latest version of a book on andragogy, or adult learning. Chapter Four (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, chap four) starts by noting that many of the great educators known throughout the world (Confucious, Lao Tse, the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Cisero, Evelid, and Quintillian) were known as teachers of adults. However, many of the dominant theories of teaching are directed towards children (pedagogy). The concept of andragogy, or the teaching of adults, was first mentioned in Germany in 1833, but did not come into its own until it was developed in Yugoslavia and Hungary in the 20th Century. The chapter gives a very detailed history of this development and andragogy’s introduction to the U.S.
The points of main interest to me were the major differences in how education could be different for children and adults. Children need to know because they need to get through school; adults do because they want to improve their lives. Children’s self-concept is that they are dependent on someone (like their teachers); adults’ is they are responsible for themselves and can do whatever that takes. Children’s role of experience is that the teacher has the experience to impart to the learners; adults have experience, and they want to build on it. Children’s readiness to learn comes from their teachers telling them what to study in order to pass whatever goals lie before them; adults want situations they can use in real life. The orientation to learning for children is the material (or subjects) they need to pass; adults need and want life/task/problem-centered foci. Finally, the motivation for children is external (their parents’ pressure, their teachers and the resulting grades); adults’ is internal. They want to improve the quality of life and get better jobs.
It is important to note that these concepts are not black and white. Sometimes issues such as grading plays a part in the education of adults. Some of the andragogical concepts are finding their way into pedagogical environments. Maybe our goal is to find the best of both worlds.
Let me finish by saying that if you work with adults, then you should know the material in this (or earlier versions) of this book.
Reference
Knowles, M. S., Holton III, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (2001). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Elsevier.
Book Review: Working with Objectives
Tuesday, March 1st, 2005Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian, Cruikshank, Mayer, Pintrich, et al. (2001) is the state of the art concerning Bloom’s Taxonomy. I found the second chapter particularly helpful putting together a recent online “mini-course” for my Instruction Delivery Systems course.
The taxonomy has been revised to two dimensions: knowledge and cognitive processes. The knowledge dimension (KD) incorporates four areas: factual, conceptual, procedural, and meta-cognitive. The cognitive processes dimension (CPD) includes remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. Notice that the KD is all nouns and the CPD is verbs. The KD is basically the material that is to be taught/learned and the CPD is how that material is to be taught/learned. The chapter continues with a discussion of types of objectives: global, educational, and instructional. The global ones may take months or even years to learn. Educational objectives are the global objectives broken down into more manageable chunks. The instructional objectives are the day-to-day activities that are designed to help reach the educational objectives. One thing the authors (Anderson et al., 2001) stress is that we should not be using phrases like “be able to” or “learn to” when we create our objectives (p. 17). These are implicit in our preparation of our objectives.
There is also a section on the problems with using objectives. Personally, I think there are going to be many problems using these objectives with my main work, namely teaching English to Japanese university science students. Language is not a set of skills that can be taught like math, etc. (although it is often taught that way in this country). We also have to be careful heading into the meta-cognitive areas because too much grammatical and lexical information can cause another set of problems. I will have to look into this more later.
Reference
Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., Airasian, P. W., Cruikshank, K. A., Mayer, R. E., Pintrich, P. R., et al. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.
Teaching Online Lessons
Thursday, February 17th, 2005I’m in my final semester of coursework at Nova Southeastern University. One of the courses is called Instruction Delivery Systems. It’s an exciting course, and I’m glad that I waited until the end of my coursework to take it. I think I’m going to get its full value this way. Anyway, each of the 20 students in the course needs to teach a three-week mini-course to 3-6 students. We have to prepare our content and our objectives and teach everything on WebCT (a very user-unfriendly environment). I am teaching in the first session, and there are five students in the course. I’m teaching a mini-course on writing academic summaries which I thought could be useful for doctoral students. So far things are going well, and the students are providing excellent feedback and making great suggestions. Problems I’ve encountered are the students did not understand an assignment I gave because I did not explain it fully. This is one huge difference between a completely online course and a hybrid course (one that combines class time with online time). With a hybrid course, I have the advantage of being able to explain and demonstrate what I’m asking students to do. I’ll write more on the topic when I get there…
