Week 4 : reflection on week

Hi everybody,

This week, extensive discussion on reading and writing websites was carried out. Website poured like a rain in our discussion. I took the opportunity to copy and paste it on my delicious. Thanks to my entire classmate. Searching for website related to reading and writing was exciting one. I understood that, other than teaching manual, there are lots of manual where we could enhance our teaching exploring through internet.
Describing my project class was another activity where I could share with my classmate on the situation of my present class, who would be the first to graduate from this school with computer skills.

Since I became a teacher I have been planning my whole life, sincerely, I haven’t heard of Development of technology enhanced lesson plan may be there wasn’t need for it. Now with the advancement of world towards technology and our country trying to catch up with it, our teachers need to know the existence of technology enhanced lesson plan. All the detail components of planning are taken care of in this technologically enhanced lesson plan. I have a dream of implement this type plan successfully when our school children become competent and ready to accept my plan.

News: with the recommendation and support from Mr. Robert I am able to convince my higher authority the need of computer in our school. One of the Primary School (Trongsa Primary School) even shared two sets of their computer for my project class. Thanks to Principal and faculty of that school.


Thanks

Week 3 Reflection

We see our reflection every time we look in the mirror. This mirror is important not only to see our physical appearance but also to see our mental and emotional make up. Great Rishis have termed such a mirror as mindfulness. To be mindful is to be reflective, the very process of human development. To be a reflective teacher, one will need to acquire several attitudes and abilities. “Action without reflection and reflection without action are both unacceptable stances in education”. This statement by Bennett & Rolheiser (2001) calls for an intense connection to the reflection and action.
All most all the teachers in our community depends on the supply of teaching learning materials or certain instruction form higher authority for us to develop certain activities. We are still depending on the curriculum to develop activities for our children. Teachers never took time and opportunity to do so either.
Haven’t I been instructed I too have been same old teacher who would turn his same old yellow page for teaching. Now equipped with browsing tools and tips, I am confident to look for what? and where?
I was not able to begin from where? So I just typed “Listening and speaking” in my now favorite search engine “sweet search” (www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-plans/listening-and-speaking-strategies.cfm ) and found out many interesting facts on this topic. We can get numerous ideas on how we can develop children’s listening and speaking skills; as games, simple classroom activities, we can even download videos and audio for these activities, if we have high net connection. It is important for us to look for other alternative activities and not just followed what is given to us in teacher’s manual. We can even substitute and find other advance activities for our classroom.
www.delicious.com something similar to what I used to do; hyper linking the page and book marking, but this can be only used in my computer. With the instruction and guidance from course leader I could develop my own delicious page. I am surprise to find out that we can use page form anywhere. Right now I have added the links pertaining to this class activity only. I am planning to add as many important URLs as it is very convenient for me to browse and search.
Writing project (concerning technology) and thinking of writing project was always a problem to me. The problem added fuel to the burning fire when my computer refused to upload the sample project. I request Mr. Khaled my class mates to send one but unfortunate for me he send me the same URL which I was not able to upload. Thanks for support and advice any way. I had no other alternative than to ask Mr. Robert to send me the samples through my mail, which I immediately received, thanks to him.
Most of the project I read had similar situation like mine, the pros and cones tackled by the authors alerted me for preparedness, that is why I proposed to my higher authority for few more computers for our school for my project class, I hope I get positive response from them. Otherwise, as suggested by Mr. Robert I should be able do my project even with one computer.

Jigme Norbu.

WEEK 2 : Reflection

As I have mentioned in nicenet that there are largely two types of development that teacher need to explore;

1. consider all the ways in which the teacher can learn and improve independently.
2. Experience of other, read books on teaching and browsing internet.


Teacher can also help learn themselves is to think carefully about what they do. People often say that making mistake is a learning experience, but this is only so if it is recognized as a mistake and the learners for it are carefully thought through.
Our tutor used to say “Teachers need to reflect on their practice” and so, on the course too. We should always remember that reflection on our practice is an essential part of a developing teacher.

First day of a week is always been an excitement for me since I joined this course, new mails, new topic to discuss and new comments to read. Google!, Yahoo! and Altavista! was only the search engine I knew. This week, going through new (for me) master of search engine called www.noodlettool.com introduced by our tutor Mr. Robert, I was able login many other search tools; namely www.onestopenglish.com, www.oup.com, www.publishing.combridge.org, Reading through post posted by class mate I was able to find many other search tools which I haven’t heard before. I did scanning of few and found out they are all important and relevant for our daily teaching. I have listed down the entire search engine and pasted on my wall where it is easily accessible. My excitement would have been doubled have I had the opportunity of having high speed internet.

Planning is an important part of teaching. As well as helping the flow and progression of an individual lesson. Planning a lesson is not done without writing objective(s). This week course, browsing through Pennsylvania State University’s ABCD method of writing objective, I had to give second thought whether we could implement in our school. So I called upon few English teacher and discussed with them, teachers said; our present practice of writing objective using ‘SMART’ (S- specific, M – measurable, R – Realistic, and T – timely) idea do not differ from ‘ABCD’ method. We finally came to conclusion that a good lesson plan does not teach the class, it is the teacher how he/she implement the plan. But the floor was also reminded that if we have good lesson objective teacher automatically teaches well.

Final project: describing a class and imagining how children would be benefited from making a technology-inspired change was the toughest activity I had. This activity wouldn’t have been the toughest if all of my present children have had an opportunity of having computer knowledge before. My children are yet to learn basic computer skills in years ahead. Any way I am confident that plans of our education ministry of providing IT class to all school going children do not go in vain.

Jigme Norbu

Week 1 : Getting to know our teaching Life

Teaching is to offer the best possible education to all children and young people. Because some fundamental human values are unchanging, there are aspects of school life and learning that remain the same from generation to generation. On the other hand, the world in which children and young people are growing up is constantly changing, creating challenges for each new generation. As such, aspect of teaching in the today’s classroom is subject to change in response to such new challenges. We as an educator must carry out this task “Using Technology for Teaching” and must move forward – preserving the good of the past, while meeting the Challenges of changing times!
We as an educator must seize this opportunity.

Thanks


Jigme Norbu

Experience creating a blog Week 1

 Creating a blog for oneself is an interesting experience. I never thought that we can avail lots of information and share using simple and free blog.

Of course, I had trouble creating one for myself, but now I think I can also share this idea amongst my colleague here and encourage them to create one for themselves.

Hope all of us here enjoy reading and share our ideas through the blog and learn many new things.

Thanks


Jigme Norbu