Jan meeting
I have been quite blown away today. After attending training on the new standards unit materials then going to our AR meeting, it has really struck me how wonderfully creative we are in the classroom.
I have come home and read through the blog. The first 2 posts took me to some student blogs, firstly Beth's L2 class, then Tina's new E3 evening group. The L2 blog has demonstrated how the Ss have embrassed this medium of communication. There is a real mixture of posts and comments. I can see why Beth says there has been a coup in her class - they seem to have really embrassed the idea of taking a lead in their own teaching. Tina's class blog is very new, but already there has been so much work done. The response from her posted questions is quite fantastic, I'm so impressed by them. Some of their answers were more insightful than some teachers i know!
There are 2 things i would like to say about the meeting today: about the peer obs forms and the individual projects.
After much (internal) deliberation I'm glad that we decided not to give the proformas first, but to brainstorm ideas. The two groups approached it from different angles, and although their finsihed products looked different i think they really did the same thing. We got a little bogged down with 'observation'- thinking about what was needed, but once clarified that this was for no-one but ourselves there were some great ideas. I'm very excited about being able to observe different people and hope to start with Beth on Monday. It also became clear to me in this session that the form had to be developed for the tutors, not for our evaluation. If there is any useful data on the forms i think this will be a bonus, but the forms shouldn;t have been developed from the evaluation perspective.
i know i had said that i wouldn;t be doing a project myself as i have enough to do already - but i really can;t resist. I don;t have it fully formed in my head, but i would like to try something similar with my E3 grp that i did with the L1 grp - getting the Ss to think about what they will cover in the classes. What has been great about this is that Beth took this idea to her L2 grp who have embrassed the whole idea and given her a great project.
FMC was the final person to talk about her project, which has been going since Nov. so she had a couple of great stories to report back - that one student has been writing stories at home to bring to class and another (new to IT) emailed her from home on sunday evening this week! As one of her aims was to encourage indepedant learning, and learning outside the classroom, these 2 events are really positive signs. We also talked a little about why the students may have embrassed this technology so much - is it the tech. itself, is it the way she introduced it (by explaining about the project and giving them 2 networks to choose from, ie giving them some ownership), or something else? it would be really interesting to find out.
She also talked though some of the things she has been doing with the social network - one of them being quizzes - which Beth and I agreed would link in really well to her L2 class (which i will teach CALL to from this Thurs) and i was just thinkng about how great it is that the network has created this link. I talk to Beth a lot about teaching, and FMC, but rarely do the three of us chat. If i end up using social networks with the Ss it will be down to the network.
everyone is doing such great things, i would just love it now if they would blog it!
I have come home and read through the blog. The first 2 posts took me to some student blogs, firstly Beth's L2 class, then Tina's new E3 evening group. The L2 blog has demonstrated how the Ss have embrassed this medium of communication. There is a real mixture of posts and comments. I can see why Beth says there has been a coup in her class - they seem to have really embrassed the idea of taking a lead in their own teaching. Tina's class blog is very new, but already there has been so much work done. The response from her posted questions is quite fantastic, I'm so impressed by them. Some of their answers were more insightful than some teachers i know!
There are 2 things i would like to say about the meeting today: about the peer obs forms and the individual projects.
After much (internal) deliberation I'm glad that we decided not to give the proformas first, but to brainstorm ideas. The two groups approached it from different angles, and although their finsihed products looked different i think they really did the same thing. We got a little bogged down with 'observation'- thinking about what was needed, but once clarified that this was for no-one but ourselves there were some great ideas. I'm very excited about being able to observe different people and hope to start with Beth on Monday. It also became clear to me in this session that the form had to be developed for the tutors, not for our evaluation. If there is any useful data on the forms i think this will be a bonus, but the forms shouldn;t have been developed from the evaluation perspective.
i know i had said that i wouldn;t be doing a project myself as i have enough to do already - but i really can;t resist. I don;t have it fully formed in my head, but i would like to try something similar with my E3 grp that i did with the L1 grp - getting the Ss to think about what they will cover in the classes. What has been great about this is that Beth took this idea to her L2 grp who have embrassed the whole idea and given her a great project.
FMC was the final person to talk about her project, which has been going since Nov. so she had a couple of great stories to report back - that one student has been writing stories at home to bring to class and another (new to IT) emailed her from home on sunday evening this week! As one of her aims was to encourage indepedant learning, and learning outside the classroom, these 2 events are really positive signs. We also talked a little about why the students may have embrassed this technology so much - is it the tech. itself, is it the way she introduced it (by explaining about the project and giving them 2 networks to choose from, ie giving them some ownership), or something else? it would be really interesting to find out.
She also talked though some of the things she has been doing with the social network - one of them being quizzes - which Beth and I agreed would link in really well to her L2 class (which i will teach CALL to from this Thurs) and i was just thinkng about how great it is that the network has created this link. I talk to Beth a lot about teaching, and FMC, but rarely do the three of us chat. If i end up using social networks with the Ss it will be down to the network.
everyone is doing such great things, i would just love it now if they would blog it!
posted by Quiet Dancer @ 7:42 pm
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