New Years Resiolution

It has been a while since my last post. I was overloaded with some stuff and preparing other tutorial. I was recently assigned as GA to one of the Educational Technology graduate classes, and since it is a new course that I am responsible of, it is taking a lot of my time planning, coming up with ideas, grading, preparing tests.

As the new years approaches (yay 2017) I am making a deal with my self to at least blog once per week and to post a useful link, tutorial or inspirational article. For this ill start with it today.
Over summer, I discovered Office Mix and have been using it since then. It is a very helpful tool for educators (and for other professions as well). It can allow you to record your presentation or instantly screen record what you are doing with lots of useful function. For example you can add your picture or remove it, you can add your voice or you can just rely on annotations,

For this I am sharing to day with you office mix tutorial i prepared my self to make it easier for you to discover.

#MSFTEDU #MIEExpert

In an ideal WORLD

What is wrong in our educational system and how can we improve that for a better future for us and for the next generation. From a teacher and student perspective, since i am still student an learning through the way,I believe small little changes can make a big difference. For example, allowing students to reflect on their actions, on their understanding and knowledge is a good starting point to allow them to better understand themselves and learn how to evaluate and critically think about everything during the day.

In an ideal world, education will be differentiated according to the students need. In an ideal world, students will always want to go to classroom to discover and learn new interesting things that is related to their world. In an ideal world, students will have hands on activities in almost everything that they relate and connect to. In an ideal world, the students is feeling safe to share and to learn and to make mistakes to learn.

In an ideal world, teachers are not limited with resources and time, teacher is trusted and given the chance to lead the class the way she can better do it. In an ideal world teacher is able to pick her professional development in the area she/he wants to improve along with the school vision and assigned professional development.teacher will also has time to browse and learn from teachers around the world, out of my experience, reading my colleagues padlet shares affected and improved the way i am developing my self.

A perfect or ideal world education is almost the same as we have, but little things matters.

Growing as a student

My learning Journey is still going, I am continuing my PhD studies in Educational Technology, so basically many factors shaped me as a learner.
As I mentioned earlier, I had amazing teachers who cared and made sure that the classroom environment is safe for us as learner and this helped me a lot. Then different teachers and different use of approaches helped me understand hard material.
But what maters is that my graduate studies.  I came from design background and continued my education in faculty of education. This shift is majors is not popular in our culture, i had to proof my self and my abilities to everyone and most importantly is my self. This made me committed to my decision that i was reluctant when i took it.

The only thing that I would like to experience during my primary and middle school days is adding more hands on activities, more technology and stations to be more exposed to different approaches but I know it was not in our educational vision. What i, as teacher, do is to make sure that my students are having different activities that tackles different learning styles and approaches. Moreover, what i consider important is to make sure my students are aware of whats going around in the world that they are part of it and they will decide their future.

what maters is a safe environment

Reflect back on the teachers you considered in the first reflection task at the start of this week. Reconsider what it was about them that made you consider them to be so good. Would others that were taught by them have the same conclusions?

A lot of my teachers along the way i consider them a good teachers, they simply were everything to me. Starting from early classes, i had an amazing homeroom teacher that used to care about our feelings the most. I remember her being involved in everything in our lives and she always followed up on topics that we share.  After that, in my middle school, what i used to consider a good teacher are the teachers that used to use different and interesting methods to deliver the lesson. I remember that English used to be my nightmare until that amazing Student-teacher came and changed my perspective. She used to take us to different places so that we relate, describe and persuade. She was the first teacher that gave us journal writing copy book. Through this journal, i learned a lot about my self and about my friends.Finally in my high school, my physics teacher is my best. I was able to see how things are related to each other and many factor affects the whole situation.

I believe that what i valued in these teachers are things that made me as a learner feels that i am in safe environment, and made thinking visible to be able to think and analyze outside the school context. I was never aware of these things up until I read more about pedagogy and theories of how we learn. So what matters to me might be the same to my colleagues and other students taught with the same teacher. but maybe they have their own reasons.

what maters....

I am still a students, But a lot of things had changed since i was in primary school. I am still studying and working hard on my reports, submitting papers, and finally studying for the final exams. Some of my courses are face to face while others are online - Online learning is not famous in our culture and usually it is considered as waste of time and doesn't support proper education.  Back in my primary middle school years, education was traditional where we had to sit and wait teacher permission to do anything. Sitting in class taught us discipline but we lacked opportunities to inquire, to question and to learn about life. Few students were in the top of the class, and i was one of them, where we had more space to share and solve maths together. Unfortunately, when one day i was not able to cop with the class for some emotional reason, i was left behind with the rest of the class and was a total clash to me. Grades were always the only criteria to think and to consider to judge students. However, our tests do focus on one aspect and forget the other. For example, we never had a thinking question up until we were in high school and it was hard to think back then after getting used to memorizing type of exams.

And now that i am still a students, a life long learner and a teacher in the same time, I seek to understand the students and consider it a priority because i believe what makes good learner is feeling that they are in a safe environment, making thinking visible and motivate those who need to be motivated to learn better and get to the class level or may be more. One last important point, from my point of view, students never lose faith in themselves as long as the teacher is there for them ready to support and guide them.

Learning By Doing

I was that kid in classroom that always need to write what the teacher is lecturing to be able to understand. My peers found it weird and always asked me to stop and enjoy the teachers words but to me it listening to my teacher talking was not enjoyable as I wouldn't be able to focus much with her/him.

With the presence of new tools used in classroom, educators are using different tools to suits students learning styles and their need to learn. In other words, educators in the 21st century are not the information dispensers any more but they are there in classroom to help and teach students how they learn best. For this, educators are focusing on preparing the tools and classroom environment needed to help all students in classroom to have equal chances to learn as mentioned in the first youtube video.  

For example, in my classroom I manage to balance technology and activity to make sure I respected students learning style in the same session. But most importantly is to make the classroom environment more appealing for students and make it safe environment to ensure the needed environment for them to learn.

Luckily, education should always has aim, For example is a country want to focus more on developing industry, the education plan will involve focusing on sciences and maths thus graduating more people to innovate and lead this shift. 

Finally, I would like to quote what UNESCO phrased "Learning to know, Learning to do Learning to live together and learning to be". I believe learning is a process and a cycle and every part of this quote is equally important and shall be focused on. But what grabs my attention is learning to do. I believe the future of education is going to focus more on this part, prepare students to do innovate, create and take action specially with the technology rapid pace.

I believe learning online is one of the most fruitful learning that we might have as we share and read wondering and reflections from students all over the world. This adds variety and experience and show different perspective of how to learn.