MY REFLECTION ABOUT EDUCATION, SOCIETY AND CULTURE
After checking some of the entries posted by my colleagues I find out that teaching implies many things but the most important in the actual changing world are motivation, solution problems education and a knowledge of information technologies.
As teacher Zoe Weil says in her speach in Glasgow, if you learn from a very young age how to solve problems, kids could have a beter idea of how to live and they could work and live in different enviroments. In Colombia that is one of the biggest problems and that's why our students have a very low score in the international tests. Now how can we teach students to solve problems, just giving them problems to solve, a way to that is working as we are doing in the SENA, but getting good traning proccess like the one we have with Matti, on Problem Base Learning.
There is another aspect and it is motivation, and we can motivate students making they concentrate in the class or in the assignment, also we have to give them relevance to what they learn, if they find it meaninful they will be motivated and finally they have to understant that what they are studying is going to be useful in their future. How can we do that? just doing a good class plan, and also giving them real situations to work with. As professor Peter Gärdenfors we must think in three very important aspects that influence motivation: Curiosity, contro and cooperation. As a living beings we all have a natural sence of curiosity so as a teacher we have to keep this up. If we have control over what we are learnig is going to be good because we can see our goals.and finally cooperation we learn with other and from others all the time.
A good knowledge of technology is very important and we need to get involved in IT´s in my personal case I have a real hard time trying to get on time with my assignments because even that I believed that I was good, I couldn´t do very well trying to update the blog. So my lack of knowledge makes me feel bad. And one of my goals in this course is to improve this aspect because as I said before I had a hard time.
Thank you for your entry Carlos! No need to feel bad about your IT skills. At least the blog is there and you've been able to add some items without any further help !. I haven't read your PDP yet, but I believe the use of IT tools is one area where you could set some developmental goals for instance by introducing new tools in your courses. During the programme, you will have the opportunity to continue blogging and discover new IT tools. By gaining more confidence in using them yourself, you will be more convinced of their relevance with your own students. Learning by experiencing!
ResponderEliminarMotivation is indeed an important factor impacting learning. Not only student's motivation but also the teacer's motivation to learn new things and in turn motivate their own students. I'm sure this is a topic that we will address next year. And by the way, I'm glad you seem to have been inspired by Matti's PBL session. It was a great coincidence that he happened to be in Bogota during the second intensive week. Have you already thought of using some patterns of the PBL approach with your students ? Would it be possible in your center to use this approach at the curriculum level ? Bw David