First of all, I have to thank all the participants for their inspiring work! Thank you I am really learning from all of you. I have to say that it is so beautiful to have this diversity of people in this course… it is not only that you are from different wonderful places but also you have different teaching theories with different styles of thinking and expressing your ideas and thoughts.
As I see, most of the participants have their own blogs! For most of us too it is the first time we experience creating blogs. I share many of your ideas and feelings towards the process of learning. I think that blogs could be an excellent teaching tool; I think that it is fun to have a blog and I think that blogs can enhance students' learning. I like all the blogs including mine. But I have to tell you that I don't like routine and I will add things and change colors in the future.
Well, I am thinking of myself here as a student but I have to tell you that I am concerned about me using a blog as a teacher! Here with Deborah things are going great! Our teacher or I should say facilitator is giving us instructions, guiding us and observing our work. Deborah is providing help in case somebody asks for help or when she notices somebody needs help. Do you agree? But I don't know if this would be the case with my students… I think my students need more scaffolding than what we have… or maybe I am wrong! I don't know. I believe the best way to know the answer is trying things out! But it would be great if some teachers from our course who have already used blogs with their students share their experiences with us! And by sharing I mean telling us the details of how things worked or didn't work at their classes. I think this would be more helpful to me than reading more articles about blogs.
Thanks for reading,
Khuloud.
Dear Khuloud,
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful is your post. I agree with you that our students need help and support from their instructors. However, we shouldn't make everything easier for students. Our students sometimes need difficult things to do. I have read a good article by Holton & Clarke (2006) about scaffolding and metacognition. These researchers think that there are three kinds of support or scaffolding: Expert, reciprocal, and self-scaffolding.
In Expert Scaffolding, the teacher provides students with instructions and guidlines. He/she gives them some models for doing things.
In Reciprocal Scaffolding, students work in groups to accomplish similar tasks helping and supporting each other.
In Self-scaffolding, students work individually to complete tasks. In this stage, students become more independant.
So students need various kinds of scaffolding.
Thanks again for your post
Yours,
Azhar
Dear Khuloud,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that sharing real experience will be very beneficial. We know that we are used to spoon-feed our students and most of the time they are dependent on us.
What to do to avoid this?
Students must be encouraged to be imaginative with their comments, to independently plan their work. We should make learning become more personal.
Azhar, I also think that students need various kinds of scaffolding! Yet, making teaching more student-centered will better prepare the students.
Yours,
Luiza
Hi Azhar and Luiza,
ReplyDeleteMany thanks you for your comments.
Azhar, I think I will learn a lot from you about scaffolding in this course. If I am not mistaken this is your teaching theory...right? I also believe in Vygotsky and I once took a course about his theory but I think I should read more articles about scaffolding. If you have Holton & Clarke's article please send it to me.
Luiza, yes I agree that we should try to make our teaching more student-centered and it is even more important to try and make the students' learning more student-centered.
Khuloud.
Dear Khuloud,
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for your interest. Yes, I use the constructivism theory especially scaffolding with my students. Here is the link of the article written by Holton & Clarke (2006):http://sites.google.com/site/webskillssu2010/participant-files/
I hope it would be beneficial.
Yours,
Azhar