Introduction:
During my 8 weeks in the work-place, I have great experience with my Action Research Project in Al-Nouf Secondary School. This school is one of the modern schools in Sharjah. I mean by that it is developed by technology in both learning and teaching. Moreover, it is one of Al Ghaad Schools and the Ministry of Education focus on the learning development progress in the School.
Advantages:
There are many advantages in the school I have notice it. When I did the Interview with the principal note that she is interested in technology and she wants form her school to develop by being up-to- date with the technology and involving with her teacher to attend Professional Development session. Additionally, she is encouraging and helps teachers to learn better through integrating technologies in students learning. Furthermore, she is trying to be connected with her students in the school and she tries to solve their problems in learning. Furthermore, I knew the real life in the school environment. By using my prior knowledge to do professional development to the teachers, I gave them my experience in how to create power point games and put some examples of games on a CD.
Disadvantages:
There are some Disadvantages in the school. One drawback is that I have noticed some teachers are using traditional way in teaching. Students were bored and talking to each other because the teacher only talking and deliver the information by talking. Moreover, some teachers are using technology and deliver the lesson by using PowerPoint all the time. Students were fall as sleep and were lose attention to the lesson and therefore they will lose the information. In addition, one of the teachers were complaining of the extra works that the school giving them other than teaching with the same salary comparative with the government schools. Moreover, I faced other problems such as lack of time.
Conclusion:
To conclude, it was my real experience in the work-place that I face some difficulties but I learn from it much. I was very happy because the administration and the faculty in the school were pleased from my works and my attitude in the school. I showed them what is the role of Educational Technologist is in the education department which it is thing that I should be proud of it. I learned how to be more friendly and social with people and that helped me to be more confidence on myself and my work. In the future, I hope to be an assistant to the teacher or work in the administration of a school not as a teacher because I think that as I'm Educational Technologist I have to improve and develop the style of teaching and to share new ideas in the education.
Overall Reflection
After eight weeks in the UAQ Basic Education school (cycle 2), I realized that this was a rich learning experience for me. I was able to observe the learners in nature and how they are reacting according to their age and characters. I also learned that the new generation has a high intrinsic motivation toward use of technology if they are provided with the appropriate teaching/learning resources. I also noticed that learners react differently in each subject regarding if it’s their favorite subject or not or the teacher has a role in motivating them. Moreover, it was enjoyable to implement my action research with its new approach of teaching and learning in the school and seeing the productive results of my AR.
The school as a learning context:
The learning atmosphere in the school needs to be improved because I noticed that there is less focus on the learning and a lot of emphasis on unnecessary activities and events that have been hold in the school. I agree that some of the activities that some schools set can be related to student’s educational objectives. Unfortunately, I did not see any relevant educational events for student’s learning in UAQ Basic Education School. Therefore, I suggest that the school either rearrange the type of activities with its objectives that should hold for students or put more emphasis on the learning aspect because based on my observation in different classes with different grades I believe students are distracted with events in the school rather than focusing on their learning.
The ICT course:
I discussed the ICT course content issue from the first semester that I went to visit the school and observe ICT classes. I think the ICT course needs to be improved to meet the learner’s needs in the classroom because the CD is focusing on some themes of the ICT which basically the students learnt in earlier grade levels. I also believe that the CD cannot be counted as a curriculum to be taught; it is rather a supplementary resource that the teacher uses within the class resources.
The school administrators and teachers:
I learned about the administration work and how the organization is being runned by the principal. However, I felt the principal needs some counseling in her field to manage her school better and to focus more on the educational aspects rather than the reputation of the school. The fact that the principal is holding activities for the school reputation and inviting important people such as the UAQ Educational Zone director to see the attractive events will not improve the education or student’s learning.
Moreover, most of the teachers are stressed with the extra workload that the principal gave them to prepare for the school activities and take part in it made the teachers more dislikable to provide the appropriate learning support for their learners or even providing a constructivist learning environment.
Implementing my AR:
The blended learning approach aimed to engage the learners in the learning and introduce them into formal virtual learning environment where they can use discussion forums, blogs…etc as educational tools. Some of my findings at the end of my teaching practice are that students liked the idea of having an online and face-to-face learning environment more than the classroom based learning, students were able to express their thoughts through writing and they improved their writing and communication skills.
Myself as a learner:
As far my skills are concerned, I think I improved my problem solving skills when I tried to independent with my colleague Hayat in solving the challenges that we faced in the work environment such as extra work that we were given and classes to teach.
I also improved my communication skills when I communicated with the principal, my SST, the teachers in the school and the learners professionally. I also improved my thinking skills because most of the time I did reflective thinking with my colleague about the school and how should it be improved. Moreover, I feel working in teams make relationships stronger, sharing new ideas with others and learning from others as I did with my colleague.
To conclude, every work experience is valuable to me when I learn and construct my knowledge and improve my skills from this learning experience. This is the last work experience for me in my academic life in the Educational Technology program and I believe it is the start of my career and where I learnt a lot as a beginner researcher to do a small scale research within a school context. I learnt with my students as I taught them through understanding their interests, needs and abilities. I learnt that each individual learn differently than others and therefore I need to vary my teaching strategies to meet their needs. I also improved my communication skills through working in a professional environment.
This was the last week in our teaching practice in Umm Al Quwain Basic Education (cycle 2) School. I did some teaching for my target group and the shared group. I also created an assessment for Grade 7. Moreover I graded student’s performance in the class and their participation in the ICT lessons.
I observed the students using the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle. In the beginning when I implemented the Moodle project in the class and started using discussion forums with the students. I noticed that some of the students were not used to use this tool within a learning environment even if it was informally and on their own. I also noticed student’s mistakes in using discussion forums by posting a new discussion forum just to reply back to my questions. However, within the implementation time of Moodle in the classroom, I noticed students become familiar with the discussion forum and they learned how to reply back to their friends within the one post that they entered. The main purpose of using discussion forums in the classroom was to engage the learners to work in a collaborative learning setting where they can share their thoughts and discuss it with their peers. I succeeded to make the students work in collaborative learning environment where they worked as individuals and in group to do some class activities. However, now they value the group working atmosphere where they have to become partners in the learning instead of individuals.
In the first week of using Moodle, I found out that the students were exploring the different features of Moodle as viewed for them as students. One of the Moodle’s features that students were interested to use was Instant messaging. I realized that students were using instant messaging to communicate with each other and discuss any ideas or problems that they might have through texting their peers. I think instant messaging is a useful tool because students were able to ask me any questions that had about the lessons that I taught them and it was a direct tool between me and the learners in a virtual world to communicate and solve the problems.
I also used the glossary feature in Moodle to help the learners to know the new vocabulary of the lesson. I intended to put the new vocabulary of the lesson in Moodle before we take the lesson so the students can at least look at it and learn the meaning of the new words. I found an electronic version of the glossary very handy for my students because they were able to access it anytime they want to revise the vocabulary without having the problem of losing their papers.
To conclude, I think the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle has engaged the learners in and outside the classroom to use Moodle as a communication learning environment where they were able to share their thoughts and collaborate with each other to construct their knowledge.
This was the last week in our teaching practice in Umm Al Quwain Basic Education (cycle 2) School. I did some teaching for my target group and the shared group. I also created an assessment for Grade 7. Moreover I graded student’s performance in the class and their participation in the ICT lessons.
I observed the students using the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle. In the beginning when I implemented the Moodle project in the class and started using discussion forums with the students. I noticed that some of the students were not used to use this tool within a learning environment even if it was informally and on their own. I also noticed student’s mistakes in using discussion forums by posting a new discussion forum just to reply back to my questions. However, within the implementation time of Moodle in the classroom, I noticed students become familiar with the discussion forum and they learned how to reply back to their friends within the one post that they entered. The main purpose of using discussion forums in the classroom was to engage the learners to work in a collaborative learning setting where they can share their thoughts and discuss it with their peers. I succeeded to make the students work in collaborative learning environment where they worked as individuals and in group to do some class activities. However, now they value the group working atmosphere where they have to become partners in the learning instead of individuals.
In the first week of using Moodle, I found out that the students were exploring the different features of Moodle as viewed for them as students. One of the Moodle’s features that students were interested to use was Instant messaging. I realized that students were using instant messaging to communicate with each other and discuss any ideas or problems that they might have through texting their peers. I think instant messaging is a useful tool because students were able to ask me any questions that had about the lessons that I taught them and it was a direct tool between me and the learners in a virtual world to communicate and solve the problems.
I also used the glossary feature in Moodle to help the learners to know the new vocabulary of the lesson. I intended to put the new vocabulary of the lesson in Moodle before we take the lesson so the students can at least look at it and learn the meaning of the new words. I found an electronic version of the glossary very handy for my students because they were able to access it anytime they want to revise the vocabulary without having the problem of losing their papers.
To conclude, I think the discussion forums, instant messaging and glossary features in Moodle has engaged the learners in and outside the classroom to use Moodle as a communication learning environment where they were able to share their thoughts and collaborate with each other to construct their knowledge.
I observed my SMT in her ICT classes and I noticed that her teaching style has returned to become old fashioned and most of the time she did the talking in the classroom. I believe the change that I noticed in few weeks of my observations for her classes was just a trial show to test it. I asked her what do you think of using games in the classroom. She replied that creating interactive games takes effort and time that she cannot afford for her students and she prefers the traditional approach because it is easier to deliver in the classroom. I think if these old fashioned teachers do not have strong beliefs of change in the classroom; they would go on in teaching boring lessons for rest of their teaching career and the victims will be the generations who are involved in the learning in their classroom.
I observed the students using the blog feature in the Moodle. They were excited to write about their daily activities or events that happened in their lives in their blogs. I believe it is good to give the learners an opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings through writing. It will improve their writing skills. It will also improve student’s writing in English language and they can practice the English language outside of the English class. As one of the students stated “teacher, I like blogs because I can write in English and it will help me in my English writing.”
I noticed two indexes of motivation in student’s use of blogging which are their persistence and effort to write. The National Association of School Psychologists (n.d) defines persistence of learners on a task as “the ability to stay with a task for a reasonably long period of time.” I realized that the blogs feature has captured student’s attention and I noticed their interest through the amount of time students were putting to write their blogs on a daily basis. I also noticed that when I gave them time to write their blogs in the class; students were focused and took long time to write their blogs and read their friend’s blogs. I also found through my reading to student’s blogs that some of the learners has put more effort into their writing either the language was Arabic or English. Through my observations to student’s blogs I found out that they used the blogs as a communication tool among them and were sharing their ideas and thoughts about their daily routine or what happened in the class.
To conclude, I think the blog feature in Moodle has engaged the learners in and outside the classroom when they started writing their blogs at home. The learners enjoyed sharing their thoughts with their peers and what happened in their daily live.
Reference:
National Association of School Psychologists. (n.d.) Motivating Learning in Young Children. Retrieved January 10th, 2009, from, http://www.nasponline.org/resources/home_school/earlychildmotiv_ho.aspx
This week I was busy with Education Without Borders conference. I presented a paper “The Challenge of Teaching a Computer Literate Generation: Podcasting as a Tool in Educational Contexts”. The core of my paper was about our learners enjoy listening to audio materials.However, teachers are not providing any effective resources for them to learn from it. Therefore, I did a mini research and found out that teachers need training to be able to create and use podcasts in their classroom as an creative tool to engage their learners.My paper was one of the best papers presented in the conference which made me happy and proud of myself.
I learned a lot by attending this conference where I met different students from around the world and I attended some of their presentations. I was impressed with their thoughts and critical thinking and creative ideas that they came up with. I communicated with some of the students and shared some thoughts. I was glad to speak to English native student who picked up the Arabic language because he is studying in an Arab country which shows how the cultures can exchange knowledge and experience without any borders between them if we try to communicate and discover what other cultures are like.
Generally, it was a good experience in the Sharjah Model School to implement my final project which is the Action Research. They helped me a lot and collaborate with me as a member of them. However, there were many challenges that I have learnt a lot from at the beginning of my AR and in the middle.
First, when I started going to school I surprised that the SMT that I was working with last semester is not there in the school and she will be out for about more than 3 weeks because she have a new baby girl. The second thing was when I reached the implementation stage of my AR, many teachers registered to attend my sessions but very of them came, which made me sad and be flexible to the happened things. Also, they were not reading the posters that I was always hang on the school walls and on the announcement board to know my session’s time! I was calling them on their mobile phones or walking to the staff room to remind them before the sessions. As well, most of the teachers are not so familiar with the new version of Microsoft Office 2007 but they still did not come and pay attention to the importance of attending my session especially that it was about Word 2007 that they are using every day! Besides, some school teachers came to the computer lab (where I usually there) to ask me for doing extra things, such as: designs, certificates, saving things on a CD, printing and cutting stuff, teaching their students and even baby setting them. However, I like doing all of that but the amount of time that we have in the school is not quite enough to complete our AR by observing and meeting or implementing with doing the business projects and other things that we are suppose to do for the college work (Blogging, Moodle participation, Calendar editing, Moodle personal site, AR detailed plan and weekly reflections) which is fair enough to help those teachers with as much as I can and I was really happy that I could manage to do all of that things besides helping them, which adds a good experience for me.
On the other hand, I enjoyed my time being there in the Sharjah Model School because I build up a very nice relationships with nearly all of the school staff especially with my SMT and with the English teacher that I was working with and helping a lot in her competition, and I was glad to her when she wins and took the first place. Moreover, I liked there kindly dealing with me as a member of them and I appreciate that they collaborate with me even though they were overloaded with the school multiple work. Also, I felt the success when they attend my sessions and said the opposite opinion of the 2007 that is complicated, which means that they learnt a lot and I facilitate my session in a simple and good way to guide them using the software. Also, after the first session they started to walk out the lab and talk to their peers about what did they learnt and how did I teach them the PD session and some of them came to me afterwards to repeat the session and they asked me if they can imitate some of my teaching strategies that I used. For example, having the ice breakers and rewarding.
There is another thing that made me more comfortable and confident which is Miss Maryanne attendance (my CMT) because she really motivated me and she was pleased to see me while presenting the session very professionally and I was so happy when she commented: “Maryam, you are very confident about your skills and your session went smoothly and I learnt a lot of new things from you”. And I think that I will never forget my teacher’s words where she learnt from me while I am learning a lot from her, in and out of the college J
Additionally, in the last day my SMT asked me again if I would like to work with them in the school and she suggested if I can come and visit them again after the graduation for extra PD sessions on June where they will be no students and the teachers will have more free time to benefit from my knowledge. And I think that both of my SMT and CMT gave me an oral certificate about my professionalism and good work before I get the final grades from both of them.
I actually would like to work in a school as an educational technologist because I love my major and I do not want to be used in schools as a teacher because I believe that our schools are good but they needs to have someone who are always in the school and doing regular PD sessions in order to develop the teachers skills and I think that as an educational technologist I can do that and raise their awareness of integrating the technology in this information age with the digital natives generation.
During 8 weeks I had a great experience in the work placement in Sharjah Model School for girls. My plan in that work placement for my action research project was to prepare professional development sessions for the teachers who do not have ICDL certificate. So I used some data collections tools to collect some information’s about teacher’s skills in using computer. From the data collection tools I found that the teachers want a professional development sessions in PowerPoint and Excel 2007.
After that I found that the teachers do not want to have sessions about Excel because they prefer to learn about PowerPoint and Photoshop to develop their skills in presentation and in designing so this was my first challenging which is changing the topic. So in these eight weeks I prepared two professional development sessions for teachers. One of these sessions was about Photoshop. In this session I noticed that the teachers do not have any background about Photoshop. The teachers need to practice more on the Photoshop tools. From this session I developed my designing skills because I did many research about the tools and different effects. Also I learnt that if I want to present information about an exciting topic like Photoshop I should not allow the teachers or the audience to open the computers because it will distract them and it will distract me. The teachers or the audience will lose their attention while you are explaining and they will ask you questions about the previous points not about the point that you are explaining. Also I noticed that I should motivate them during the session so the teachers will focus with me and I will attract their attention. While I am preparing for my PD session about Photoshop i faced problem I noticed that there was not Photoshop software in the computer lab so I had to find a set up for Photoshop CS and download it in the computers but the set up that I found was trial for 30 days.
From my second PD session about PowerPoint I noticed that it is very hard to manage time for the sessions in the school for the teachers during their working time and this make for me a very serious problem. The teachers were not being able to attend the sessions because they are busy. I think the school should provide time for the teachers after the school to attend this kind of session because it will improve their skills in using computer so they will not depend on the computer teachers to do all their works such as printing and creating worksheets.
From this work placement I learnt how to be professional while I am presenting or being professional with the teachers and have good relationship. Also I learnt how to collaborate with other teachers and help them to do some works for them. When I was preparing for the PD sessions I used a registration sheets to register the teachers in the session so I will know how many teachers will attend my session. Also I used poster and invitation cards to announce the teachers about the time and the date the session will be in. I think these kinds of tools show the others how professional you are.
Another thing that I face in the school was dealing with students. The students were very noisy and I could not control them. My SMT was absent and I had to set with students all the time so I did not have time to finish my work because I had to monitor the students and manage that they are able to access the ICT program to learn. However, in this work placement I felt very confident about my abilities and I faced my nervous and fears from standing and presenting to the audience.
In conclusion, it was really great experience in Sharjah Model School I learnt a lot and the teachers developed their skills in Photoshop and PowerPoint and they get ideas about some tools that will help them in teaching. If I had chance to repeat this experience I will.
This week was hard working at the beginning and very sad at the end because in this week present my last PD session about PowerPoint and this week was the last week in my work placement in Sharjah Model School.
I planned with the vice principle to do my session on Monday, 13th of April 2009 at 10 O’clock. I hang my poster on the announcement board to allow the teachers to know when my session will be also I sent an invitation card to the teachers who register in my session and for Miss Maryanne. The teachers liked the invitation card design. 7 teachers attend my session but after 30 mints 5 of them left because they had classes.
In my PD session I used PowerPoint software to present the information and to explain all the tools to the teachers. Also I showed them an example of the PowerPoint games to give them ideas about what they can do in PowerPoint. Then I showed them the steps of how they can create this PowerPoint game.
The teachers like this games and they thought it will be useful for them. One of the teachers said that she need to learn more about PowerPoint games and who she can use it to create an interactive lesson for students because she started using the games as a tools in the classroom. In addition, I gave them a file with the worksheets, calendar, bookmark, appreciation letter, shortcut cards and pen but the teachers did not have time to do the worksheets to practice and I did not have time to show them the video that I created for the worksheets. After the session I noticed that the teachers found the PD session very professional and beneficial for them. I got a great feedback from the teachers about my PD session. Also I showed them a CD that they can buy it from the bookshop to learn more about PowerPoint. After the session some of the teachers who left the session early asked me to repeat the session for her and to show her how to create the PowerPoint game because one of the ministry of education will come and visit her class.
I think the school should manage time for the teachers to attend like this session because many teachers in the school had weak skills in using computer such as PowerPoint and Photoshop and they do not have time to participate in these sessions.
Furthermore, this week I helped my SMT by
downloading Photoshop in each computer in the lab because there is a design competition
between teachers in the school. I created some appreciation certificate for the
kid’s whisperer competition. The English teacher was very appreciating for my
work and she liked the certificate that I created for her so she asked me to
create more certificate for her.
Before I left I thought that it will be nice if I gave the teachers some gift to thank them for attending my session so I bought some candles and I stick on it some advices that can help them to create a PowerPoint presentation. Also I gave my SMT a nice gift to thank her because she helped us a lot.
Finally, this is the last work placement in the college I hope everybody had a great time.
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