New Experience and Old Lacks

These first days of the project are very meaningful for me. Struggling with my lack of skills in operating the blog I haven't given up. Previously, I would just quit if I couldn't download the comment or add a new post. This time inspired by my new colleagues, I went on  with some progress.

I have used blogs with my students for the Country Study projects. Most successful were creating of the  Travel Agencies. This year I hope to go on with a new group. I can't say I use it very effectively. What I feel as a drawback- poor moderation of the blogs as they were not united in one net. This year I would love to improve it with more of my  learning on the matter.  Secondly, there was little response and feedback from the school-mates to the blog- actually, no blogging in this sense. This I will try to avoid through teaching students writing the comments.

I have two different groups of students: school children who are the school leavers aged 16-17 and the University students taking correspondence course, aged 21- 26. With this project I keep in mind to find out the following:

• how much  technology might be able to help with self directed learning, which is important for both groups;
• how technology can help me as a teacher in preparing interesting lessons and motivating students for sustainable self directed learning;
• how to make school subject meaningful and relevant to the lives of young people- engaged learning;
• strengths and weaknesses of different possible solutions, using some of techniques and tools in the class in the process of actively engaging pupils/students in their learning;

Week 1

First Steps in Blogging.

I created my first blog long ago but never used it. Now the time has come to change the attitudes. My students work with blogs which I asked them to create, I enjoyed theirs- now I will try to have fun with mine.

This week I started with intensive readings on the suggested issues. But as soon as I came to the link I found another one which seemed even more useful and interesting.

http://edublogs.org/2011/09/07/edublogs-update-manage-multiple-blogs-with-a-more-powerful-my-blogs-page I will use at my next lesson to start creating blogs with my students for the lessons and hope it will be more structured work  than it happened before.

YouTube treated me as always to much new ideas. This time Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Sir Ken Robinson states that creativity in education is as important as literacy and we should treat it with the same status. He argues that we are killing children's brilliant creative capacities in the most arrogant way, presuming to know what is best for them for when they enter the workforce in a future that we can scarcely imagine. I find it especially true regarding the time we live in and the future facing today’s students. I agree with Sir Ken Robinson that intelligence is diverse, dynamic, that is highly interactive, and we should educate the students of Digital culture considering both the quality of the education and HOW they are taught. I am doing my first steps to make my teaching more systematic with the technologies.

I visit many blogs now and then but feel always reluctant to leave a comment. Great feedback and tips I read on  http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/2011/02/22/student-blogging-activity-3-beginner-teaching-quality-commenting  to start thinking of it differently.  I agree with one of the bloggers that a good comment is often times another idea. Teaching students to write a nice comment will be one of my next tasks.