Learning Reflection

Innovation Education Technology in the global classroom

            ESOL  teachers must be inventive, creative,  and committed to keeping up with innovation in a rapidly changing world. Teacher should be encouraged to employ instructional technologies in the educational setting- including online discussion, podcasting, and blogging- so that they can keep abreast  of  best  practices in technology.

            The future teachers need to  know how to teach students  who represent generations to come.

1.  Integrating  instructional Technology into an Assignment

Seeking to understand how ESOL teachers create meaningful content for future

Teaching content, such as case study portfolios, can be integrated with instructional technology, such as online discussion, podcasts,  blogs, and wiki, to enhance learning experiences and provide better curriculum.

2. The ELL Case Study

This part of the assignment consisted of a number of step: (a) prepare a case study (b) collect data from the ELL (c) analyze multiple data sets, and (d) create a problem scenario specific to the ELL by coming up with the reflective and discussion questions based on the case study experience.

3.  Blogging

Blogs are online commentary, personal reflections, or new on a particular subject.

4.  Podcasting

Internet-based audio programs available for downloading that allow the listener to play the audio through a computer or on  the MP3 player.

5.  Creating a Wiki

After posting their case studies, blogging about them, and creating they podcasts, the preservice  ESOL  teachers suggested teaching methodsand activities to their classmates via a wiki in Blackboard or another program or Website.

6.  Online Discussion

Communities maybe private or public, and the content can be created and maintained by the instructors. In this project, online discussion provided   a window to observe how the preservice teachers constructed knowledge and interacted with other.

7.  Implications

This assignment focusing on implementing technology in the classroom  proved to be dynamic, effective, and  beneficial for everyone involved.

                There are 5 tips for integrating Technology in the classroom

1. Take risk with new technology.

2. Be familiar with the technology before introducing it to others.

3. Make sure that instructional technologies carryfully fit  with course objectives and outcome.

4. Built a positive learning community.

5.  Research and use various tutorials and helpful Web sites.

Learning reflection

What is reflective thinking?
The description of reflective thinking:
Critical thinking and reflective thinking are often used synonymously. Critical thinking is used to describe:

"... the use of those cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome...thinking that is purposeful, reasoned and goal directed - the kind of thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions when the thinker is using skills that are thoughtful and effective for the particular context and type of thinking task. Critical thinking is sometimes called directed thinking because it focuses on a desired outcome." Halpern (1996).
Reflective thinking, on the other hand, is a part of the critical thinking process referring specifically to the processes of analyzing and making judgments about what has happened. Dewey (1933) suggests that reflective thinking is an active, persistent, and careful consideration of a belief or supposed form of knowledge, of the grounds that support that knowledge, and the further conclusions to which that knowledge leads. Learners are aware of and control their learning by actively participating in reflective thinking – assessing what they know, what they need to know, and how they bridge that gap – during learning situations.

In summary, critical thinking involves a wide range of thinking skills leading toward desirable outcomes and reflective thinking focuses on the process of making judgments about what has happened. However, reflective thinking is most important in prompting learning during complex problem-solving situations because it provides students with an opportunity to step back and think about how they actually solve problems and how a particular set of problem solving strategies is appropriated for achieving their goal.

Characteristics of environments and activities that prompt and support reflective thinking:

Provide enough wait-time for students to reflect when responding to inquiries.
Provide emotionally supportive environments in the classroom encouraging reevaluation of conclusions.
Prompt reviews of the learning situation, what is known, what is not yet known, and what has been learned.
Provide authentic tasks involving ill-structured data to encourage reflective thinking during learning activities.
Prompt students' reflection by asking questions that seek reasons and evidence.
Provide some explanations to guide students' thought processes during explorations.
Provide a less-structured learning environment that prompts students to explore what they think is important.
Provide social-learning environments such as those inherent in peer-group works and small group activities to allow students to see other points of view.
Provide reflective journal to write down students' positions, give reasons to support what they think, show awareness of opposing positions and the weaknesses of their own positions.

http://www.higp.hawaii.edu/kaams/resource/reflection.htm

Why do we blog ?

Martin Fenner, asked some questions to science bloggers in Nature Networks that I think are interesting. Plus, the meme is going around my blogging neighbourhood so I thought I would join in as well:

1. What is your blog about?
It is mostly about science and technology with a particular focus on evolution, bioinformatics and the use of the web in science.

2. What will you never write about?
I will never blog about blog memes like this one. I tend to stay away from religion and politics but never is a very strong word.

3. Have you ever considered leaving science?
Does this mean academic research, research in general or science in general ? In any case no. I love problem solving and the freedom of academic research. The only thing I dislike about it is not being sure that I can keep doing this for as long as I wish.

4. What would you do instead?
If I could not do research I would probably try to work in scientific publishing. Doing research usually means that we have to focus on a very narrow field. Editors on the other hand are almost forced to broaden their scope and I think I would like this. I would also be interested in the use of new technologies in publishing.

5. What do you think will science blogging be like in 5 years?
Five years is a lot of time for the pace of technological development but not a long time for cultural change. I could be wrong but, if anything, there will be only a small increase in adoption of blogging as part of personal and group online presence along with the already existing web pages. I wish blogging (and other tools) would be use to further decentralize research agendas from physical location but I don't think that will happen in 5 years.

6. What is the most extraordinary thing that happened to you because of blogging?
I have gained a lot from blogging. The most concrete example was an invitation to attend SciFoo but there are many other things that are harder to evaluate. In some ways it is related to the benefits of attending conferences. It is useful because you get to interact with other scientists, exchange ideas, forces you to think through different perspectives, etc.

7. Did you write a blog post or comment you later regretted?
I probably did but I don't remember an example right now.

8. When did you first learn about science blogging?
As many other bioinformatic bloggers I started blogging in Nodalpoint, according to the archives in November 2001. I started this blog some two years after that.

9. What do your colleagues at work say about your blogging?
Not much really, I don't think many of them are aware of it. If any, the responses have been generally positive but I don't usually find many people interested in knowing more about blogging in science.

Directions: Describe the following terms.

 Asynchronous Tools  Asynchronous tools enable communication and collaboration over a period of time through a "different time-different place" mode.

Ah's

• allow people to connect together at each person's own convenience and own schedule.
• useful for sustaining dialogue and collaboration over a period of time and providing people with resources and information that are instantly accessible, day or night.
• advantage of being able to involve people from multiple time zones.
• helpful in capturing the history of the interactions of a group, allowing for collective knowledge to be more easily shared and distributed.

Oh's

• require some discipline to use when used for ongoing communities of practice (e.g., people typically must take the initiative to "login" to participate)
• may feel "impersonal" to those who prefer higher-touch synchronous technologies

Synchronous Tools  Synchronous tools enable real-time communication and collaboration in a "same time-different place" mode. These tools allow people to connect at a single point in time, at the same time.

Ah's

• Synchronous tools possess the advantage of being able to engage people instantly and at the same point in time.

Oh's

• they require same-time participation - different time zones and conflicting schedules can create communication challenges.
• they tend to be costly
• may require significant bandwidth to be efficient
• needs fairly good technical expertise

http://swinilearn.wetpaint.com/page/Synchronous+and+Asynchronous+Tools

Classroom Activities

This section presents three stand-alone language learning activities related to the theme of knitting. Each activity is designed for students at the proficiency level indicated.

Classroom Activities

about transition signals or content that helps determine the order of information. Tell those students you would like them to share their ideas with the whole class when everyone is finished putting the essay in order.

8. When all groups believe they have their essays in the correct order, have students report their choices to the whole class. Ask a student to read aloud the paragraph his/her group chose for the introduction and explain why they made that choice (e.g., because it introduces the topic by defining the topic of the essay, knitting circles). Ask a different group to read its choice for the first body paragraph and so on until the whole essay has been read in order. Make sure to draw your students’ attention to the introductory clauses in each body paragraph and the way they help connect the paragraphs in chronological order.
a) First, you should invite some people to join your knitting circle.
b) Next, you need to decide when and where to meet.
c) After you have decided on a time and place, contact the other members of the circle to tell them where you will meet and what they should bring. (In this sentence, time and place is a reference to when and where to meet in the previous paragraph.)At your first meeting, you should discuss your long-term plans for the club. (The other paragraphs discuss what to do before the first meeting.)
d) At your first meeting, you should discuss your long-term plans for the club. (The other paragraphs discuss what to do before the first meeting.)

Be sure your students notice that the conclusion summarizes the main idea and provides a concluding remark—in this case, one that offers a prediction for what might happen in the future.

9. You may choose to provide everyone with a copy of the reading passage in the correct order after you finish the class discussion about the correct order of information.

10. Ask your students to think back to their predictions about the information that might be included in the essay. Were they correct? What is different or missing, and why?

Resorce  :  http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/forum-11-49-01/49_1_7_classroom-activities.pdf

What is blog ?

A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.

Resorce  :   http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/02/05/what-is-a-blog/

exercise

Directions: Find words or phrases standing for the following acronyms with short descriptions.

1. IT          :      Information Technology /Instructional Teachnology /  Innovative Technology

2. ICT       :     Information and Communication Technology

3. CAI       :     Computer-Aided Instruction

4. CALL    :    Center for Army Lessons Learned / Computer Language  Learning

5. WBI      :     Web Based Instruction

6. CBI       :     Computer Based Instruction

7. CMC     :   Computer-Mediated Communications

8. TELL     :   Teaching English Language Learners
9. MUD     :    Multiple User Dialogue
10. MOO   :   Matter of Opinion

Resorce: http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/