Friday, November 18, 2005
Hypnose
The new hypnotising fragrance! Hmm that is my b'day present to myself.
Woke up early today and had my sahur at 5 am. I'm determined to finish my puasa in Syawal, God permit. My literature review is rather slow. I'm distracted (hypnotized) by the books. In fact, I'm reading every page of the PBL book by Savin-Baden (2004). I'm attracted by the chapter on the application of learning theories in PBL. It is interesting how a theory can be made to suit your needs. PBL lends itself well to the applications of many learning theories, learning styles, and learning environment.
To engage a learner in learning you have to first know the learner, what the learner brings to the learning environment, match the pedagogy to the learner needs and monitor the learning by coaching and mentoring and see the results.
PBL has many variations, of which the implementation would depend much on the philosophy of the designer and the implementor and the vision of the organization. We saw TBL in Bandung, of which the components are pretty similar to the PBL. I use PoEIT (pedagogy of engagement integrating technology) in my class. The method is based on students working with real life problems and real clients in an environment where technology is a solution. It has the elements of group work, real problems, tutorial, coaching and interacting.
An interesting aspect of PBL which I feel is important for facilitators or lectures to know is how to manage conflict in group, which I notice occurs quite frequently in the group work in my class. An interesting report that I am reading from the students perspective they will not report the conflict to the lecturers for fear of the repercussion on their grade. It boils down to how their performace is assessed.
If the group grade matters then there will always be someone in the group who will be a sucker to work hard for everyone else, and of course the freeloaders are there for the ride. I suppose a way to overcome this problem is to ensure that individuals assess the other group members. I have done that, but what I have found is that not many people are again willing to tell on their friends. Often individuals will give a similar mark for everyone in the group. But there have been occassions where the individual student will come and report on the other individual in the group especially when that student perceives that she/he has put in more effort than everyone else in the group. I suppose as a lecturer we have to be vigilant and always be on the look out for these type of behavior to ensure that the experience benefits every individual in the group.
Back to the reading!
Woke up early today and had my sahur at 5 am. I'm determined to finish my puasa in Syawal, God permit. My literature review is rather slow. I'm distracted (hypnotized) by the books. In fact, I'm reading every page of the PBL book by Savin-Baden (2004). I'm attracted by the chapter on the application of learning theories in PBL. It is interesting how a theory can be made to suit your needs. PBL lends itself well to the applications of many learning theories, learning styles, and learning environment.
To engage a learner in learning you have to first know the learner, what the learner brings to the learning environment, match the pedagogy to the learner needs and monitor the learning by coaching and mentoring and see the results.
PBL has many variations, of which the implementation would depend much on the philosophy of the designer and the implementor and the vision of the organization. We saw TBL in Bandung, of which the components are pretty similar to the PBL. I use PoEIT (pedagogy of engagement integrating technology) in my class. The method is based on students working with real life problems and real clients in an environment where technology is a solution. It has the elements of group work, real problems, tutorial, coaching and interacting.
An interesting aspect of PBL which I feel is important for facilitators or lectures to know is how to manage conflict in group, which I notice occurs quite frequently in the group work in my class. An interesting report that I am reading from the students perspective they will not report the conflict to the lecturers for fear of the repercussion on their grade. It boils down to how their performace is assessed.
If the group grade matters then there will always be someone in the group who will be a sucker to work hard for everyone else, and of course the freeloaders are there for the ride. I suppose a way to overcome this problem is to ensure that individuals assess the other group members. I have done that, but what I have found is that not many people are again willing to tell on their friends. Often individuals will give a similar mark for everyone in the group. But there have been occassions where the individual student will come and report on the other individual in the group especially when that student perceives that she/he has put in more effort than everyone else in the group. I suppose as a lecturer we have to be vigilant and always be on the look out for these type of behavior to ensure that the experience benefits every individual in the group.
Back to the reading!
Thursday, November 17, 2005
My Birthday
Today I'm celebrating my half century! Is it supposed to mean something? well yes it does. I feel that I have achieved something having lived that long and survived many events that has shaped me as a person.
What is my greatest gift? Well, I would say a call from my family especially Sam's pride in describing how his interview went today at the British Council. He spoke like a man who just turned 18 a week ago. Welcome to the adult world my son!
My other gift is from my husband who gave me a card with a bouquet of roses on it... there's always a first time. It is so touching. To be loved by someone who's been with me for so many years, who has put up with my many insecurities and ... I won't say more! Thank you sayang!
My gift to myself, well, I was up about 6 am today, took sometime to read books and to work on the literature review of which I have to get done soon. Spent some time on skype with Harith and read some more and talked to Sam later, and finally mandi about 11.30 am. That is a luxury!
What is my greatest gift? Well, I would say a call from my family especially Sam's pride in describing how his interview went today at the British Council. He spoke like a man who just turned 18 a week ago. Welcome to the adult world my son!
My other gift is from my husband who gave me a card with a bouquet of roses on it... there's always a first time. It is so touching. To be loved by someone who's been with me for so many years, who has put up with my many insecurities and ... I won't say more! Thank you sayang!
My gift to myself, well, I was up about 6 am today, took sometime to read books and to work on the literature review of which I have to get done soon. Spent some time on skype with Harith and read some more and talked to Sam later, and finally mandi about 11.30 am. That is a luxury!
Friday, November 11, 2005
Post raya and IWB
Having recovered from the raya feast now I'm back in Canterbury and hope to spend the last few weeks of my sabbatical here buried in work.
I'm still fighting the jet lag, hopefully by tomorrow I would be back to normal. My first day at work today was to attend the training on smart baord given to 20 High level teacher assisstants. These teacher assistants are attending 20 hours of training to qualify. They come to campus once a week. Today they are presented with the ICT components of their training. They learned to sign in to the CCCU IT services, learn about the smartbaord and the blackboard.
The trainer Nyree spent about 25 mins with 10 of them at a time. Though the time was short but it was useful as an introduction. Most of them have seen a whiteboard before in their schools and some have had experience in using them.
After the demonstration the trainees spent about an hour to explore the smart notebook software. They were impressed with the ease that they learned to use the software. They particularly liked the gallery. It makes their work a lot easier if they know how to access the many templates and activities that are available in the galleries. They were also impressed with the capture (camera) tool, which they tried to capture pictures from the web and saved them to the notebook pages.
I learned something new today, that you can move the object on the screen by tapping on it and tapping another part of the board where you want it to go. Hard to describe this though.
Though the interactive whiteboard has been around more than five years in some schools in UK, teachers are still learning to use it. One of the assistants told me that she helps a maths teacher in her school with ICT use, since the teacher has no time to learn new skills. She is keen to learn more how to use the IWB so that she can help the teacher.
An interesting observation... most of these teacher assistants are mothers who chose to be in schools because they want to help their children. They get to know what is happening in their children's schools and get to be with them during schools and holidays. Wish I could do that too... though according to the mothers the pay is not much, but they get the satisfaction that they are involved in their children's education.
I'm still fighting the jet lag, hopefully by tomorrow I would be back to normal. My first day at work today was to attend the training on smart baord given to 20 High level teacher assisstants. These teacher assistants are attending 20 hours of training to qualify. They come to campus once a week. Today they are presented with the ICT components of their training. They learned to sign in to the CCCU IT services, learn about the smartbaord and the blackboard.
The trainer Nyree spent about 25 mins with 10 of them at a time. Though the time was short but it was useful as an introduction. Most of them have seen a whiteboard before in their schools and some have had experience in using them.
After the demonstration the trainees spent about an hour to explore the smart notebook software. They were impressed with the ease that they learned to use the software. They particularly liked the gallery. It makes their work a lot easier if they know how to access the many templates and activities that are available in the galleries. They were also impressed with the capture (camera) tool, which they tried to capture pictures from the web and saved them to the notebook pages.
I learned something new today, that you can move the object on the screen by tapping on it and tapping another part of the board where you want it to go. Hard to describe this though.
Though the interactive whiteboard has been around more than five years in some schools in UK, teachers are still learning to use it. One of the assistants told me that she helps a maths teacher in her school with ICT use, since the teacher has no time to learn new skills. She is keen to learn more how to use the IWB so that she can help the teacher.
An interesting observation... most of these teacher assistants are mothers who chose to be in schools because they want to help their children. They get to know what is happening in their children's schools and get to be with them during schools and holidays. Wish I could do that too... though according to the mothers the pay is not much, but they get the satisfaction that they are involved in their children's education.
