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.
Hi friend!
ReplyDeleteI was sorry because I only send the link for week3 assignments I forgot to attach any of the project reports!
you seem to be a hard working teacher and truely learn from you the pleasure to discover internet over and over again!
bye!
khaled, Tunisia.
Good Job with your blog Jigme!!
ReplyDeleteReally good reflection by Bennett & Rolheiser, it is certainly true that there should be action and reflection , not only one of them, there should be a connection otherwise our job with students will be incomplete.
I also feel so confident since we can access to a large range of materials in the web to help students to develop their listening, reading, speaking and pronunciation skills. I like that you mention the necessity of looking for different resources like the ones we are studying now, and not only use the teacher's manual. We have to teach according to the global education system and it great to count on the web sites which provide videos, conversations, listening activities and others to be successful with our students.
As well as you I also find very convenient to browse and find the needed information in decilious, this is a practical way to keep all the sites in an organized way.
I can see that you, me and maybe the rest of our colleagues have something in common with the rest of projects and they are going to help, direct and give us some ideas to keep writing our project steps. Despite of some of the difficulties we have when teaching English we have to be positive since we have a useful tool to teach and help students to motivate and learn English which is the search engines and web sites we have shared.
Best
Mory-Ecuador
Great blog. I hope you get more computers so you can realise your project.
ReplyDeleteThis e course has come to enlighten us on how to use the web more conveniently by using the right tools such as websearch engines and the like.
We never should stick to the teacher´s manual, but instead we ought to expand (by using the web) where the manual falls short.
As we get more tools and learn the ropes, we are defenitely paving our way to success.
Keep up the good work.
Jerry, Honduras
Hello Jigme
ReplyDeleteYour idea of the reflective mirror is spot on for the purpose of the blog in this class. Blogs of course can have many different purposes, but here we are truly trying to use it as a reflective tool, in order to be mindful teachers. Spot on!
I too hope you have success lobbying for more computers. You and your students deserve it.
Robert