Reflection on Assignment 1

I thoroughly enjoyed working on Assignment One.  It offered an excellent opportunity for me to sincerely reflect on my teaching practice through an analysis of the seven roles of the educator. In some instances, I measured up well, while in others I was found wanting.

The practical component of the assignment, though not difficult, provoked some thought while attempting to match the documents with the various roles.

SPREADSHEETS FOR ADMINISTRATIVE PURPOSES

Spreadsheets can be very useful in the classroom, and many of us can attest to their potential for economizing on time and effort.  Many years ago, recording and analyzing students' test scores were tedious affairs that one did not look forward to.  The spreadsheet brings an end to this and makes managing, analyzing and sharing data far less burdensome.  Its presentation capabilities through the creation of graphs and charts are also significant. 

Despite the fact that I have been using spreadsheets for several years, I still found Activity 4 somewhat challenging.  It was time consuming.  I had to work with formulas that were previously unfamiliar, which meant entering them several times in some instances in order to get the desired outcomes.  It was certainly an exercise in patience, but one from which I learned a lot.  The "new" formulas will definitely assist me in doing more detailed and meaningful analyses of students' scores.

The Word Processor as a Teaching/Learning Tool

As a Language Arts teacher, I find the word processor particularly useful in and out of my classroom.  It can be effectively used as a teaching tool and also for lesson preparation.  In my classroom it is used in creative writing as a thesaurus, spelling and grammar checker, for collaborative writing and publishing of finished work. Naturally, this brief list is not exhaustive, and there is much that I need to learn in order to maximize the use of this important tool.

The activity at hand, as a consequence of my frequent use of the word processor, was relatively simple.  Notwithstanding this, more thought than usual was put into planning the lesson. thus making the activity one that was quite reflective and meaningful.

The Seven Roles of the Educator

Undoubtedly, the seven roles of the educator are key ingredients in the teaching and learning process.  These functions essentially capture the essence of what is involved with being a teacher in the contemporary classroom.  

Having said that, it is important to note that some of the roles appear to contradict many of the traditional roles with which I had been exposed decades ago firstly as a student, and then as a young, bright-eyed teacher.  One case in point is the role of mediator, which, if not completely absent, was accomplished incidentally rather than that which was deliberately planned for. 

Although attempting to rank these roles in order of importance would be difficult and indeed futile, I am especially challenged by the roles of interpreter, scholar and learning specialist.  In my daily classroom practice, I attempt to reflect constantly on whether or not what I do adequately meets my students' needs.  Consequently, I am on a lifelong quest to re-tool and re-train myself to face the daily challenges that accompany the task of teaching this generation of students.

The Integrated Approach

As one who has training in Language Education, I have been long sold on the integrated approach as a method that is effective in classroom instruction. Consequently, when I again encountered it in this module, I had no problems seeing its value in the ICT enabled classroom.  

Despite its many benefits, there are challenges to be faced when seeking to use the integrated approach.  There is the issue of limited technological resources, lack of support from administrators and colleagues, lack of training, and problems with adapting the existing "old" curriculum to this new teaching approach.

What I however consider to be the greatest challenge in our Vincentian context, relates to the beliefs of our teachers re how teaching and learning should take place.  Ours is still a very traditional system, with a teacher-centered approach.  The integrated approach demands that the learner becomes the center of all that occurs in the classroom; hence there is a major conflict between the traditional and integrated approaches.  Success in using the latter would therefore require significant adjustments to one's philosophy of teaching.

I have personally been able to significantly adjust my method of operation in my classroom.  This did not happen overnight, nor was it easy.  In fact, it is still a work in progress. I do intend to continue to refine my classroom practice, all to the benefit of the students under my care. 

Minimally Invasive Education

The concept of Minimally Invasive Education is one that I find especially fascinating.  The basic premise of MIE is where a learning environment is created that is intended to generate the impetus that learners need to induce learning.  In short, it is educating learners with as little interference or intrusion as possible, and was borne out of experimental work conducted in India by Dr. Sugata Mitra. 

The results of Dr. Mitra’s “Hole in the Wall” experiments may cause one to wonder, as I did, whether the advancements in technology will one day eliminate the need for teachers.  While I do not believe that we will ever get to that place, what I do know is that the presence of technology has indeed brought about definite shifts in the way teaching and learning take place.  There is therefore much to learn from Mitra’s work. 

I believe that as teachers, we sometimes ignore the fact that our students are in possession of many of the skills - technological and otherwise - that they need to investigate and discover for themselves.  Consequently, we fail to tap into their potentials, and we lose them in the process. 

Thankfully, however, all is not lost, as we can work diligently towards changing the way we do things in order to maximize the use of ICT in our modern classrooms, bearing in mind the lessons learned from Mitra's experiments.

The Learners' Charter

The opportunity to participate in the creation of the Learners' Charter was a fulfilling experience for me. Being able to focus on the rights of learners to acquire quality education using ICT was a necessary perspective for me, as a class teacher, to have.  Completing the charter from the learners' perspective also added value to the experience.

Since it was my first time using MindMeister, I valued the activity even more, as it exposed me to yet another ICT tool that I can employ in my classroom.