Online World Education Conference - Tony Wagner's Keynote

Yesterday, I attended Tony Wagner's keynote for the Online World Education Conference.

He's the founder of the Change Leadership Group at Harvard University.

He stressed on the need to prepare learners for PROFESSIONAL life rather than testing them on concepts.

As he says,

"The world doesn't care about how much you know, what the world cares about is what you can do with what you know" 

I totally agree. I've seen my classmates who were gold medalists/above 3.5 GPAs having no VISION in their lives. They probably knew more than I did, however, they never used it to anyone's advantage. 

He also talked about 7 survival skills that children need to learn to be successful in any profession.


In the 21st century, the learners need to know how to make a difference in the community/world, have a vision, have empathy, realise the importance of collaboration rather than ace tests.

He repeatedly talked about how tests show little if anything about a child's capabilities.

His session had me thinking:

How can I change the standardized assessments we are taking every month?
And if i change them, how do i counsel parents to accept the change?

I think i'm going to try to get his book "Creating innovators"
might get some answers there.

3 day weekend

Teachers should get a three-day weekend.

 I feel I can plan better when I have a 3-day weekend. It allows time for thorough research, helps a teacher work on his/her chosen areas of development.

This time we got a Friday as a National Holiday. 
After lazing around all day on Friday, I automatically kept getting ideas on how to improve my classroom practice on Saturday.
I watched a professional development video on building professional learning community within school and read two articles

I plan to share them with my teachers later this month (right now they're working on differentiation)

Usually on a 2-day weekend, you end up lazing around on saturday and are too pressed for time on sunday to plan appropriately.

yea so, 3 day weekend it should be!
better planning will take lesser time in the classroom!

Testing Urdu

کیا میں اردو بلاگ بنا سکتی ہون؟

میرا نام حراہے۔ 

So next step: Running an Urdu school blog!

Diploma in Teaching with ICT as an observer

I completed my diploma in teaching with ICT in September. The whole course was a breeze and a lot of learning in terms of how to manage use of ICT in the classroom. I used to feel that the time we got for activities was a little too much and that the course was being dragged...

Recently, me along with 4 other colleagues were taken in as observers for the new batch of participants.

These people are mostly Heads in their schools and with average to no ICT skills.

Now i realise that the time allowed is absolutely okay!

it was just the batch we were, mostly trained in educational technology by beaconhouse that it took lesser time.

Being on the course as an observer is great learning! I realise that i'm highly privileged to be working in a school with most of the possible ICT facilities required.

Today at circle time, one of the participants talked about how children pretended the board marker to be a mic while recording something

and I wondered why they'd be pretending to do that...

later while discussing with a colleague I realised their school did not have a mic.

Must be a challenge planning with limited ICT resources.

Progress as a School Coordinator

Its been a year and 2 months since I became coordinator. I've been training teachers since then. It took a lot of hardwork and reading in bringing them to the level they are at.

I can proudly say my teachers are dynamic!

the best part is, they keep coming to me to ask for workshops on various topics. I love their eagerness to learn.

Recently, I noticed they need little help with teaching strategies.

So I decided to take them further
I gave them some reading material on differentiation for homework along with a planning task.

I know some of them have been applying it consciously or unconsciously in their classes.
However, it isn't always structured or with a valid purpose.

i'll be sharing their lessons and their evaluations here.

My focus is to work on differentiation and differentiation through ICT for the next year.

goodluck to me !

Learning 2.0 Virtual Conference

Even though our timings with the learning conference don't match, I've asked my teachers to attend the session on "Taking your classroom global". 

Because we recently did an activity on using blogs in the classroom. I think this session might help them streamline their understanding of using web 2.0 tools to create a learning community better.

I'll be posting my thoughts on the session as soon as it finishes :D
Excited!

managing different abilities

This year, I have a child with hearing disability. He can read lips very well. Even though he gives me results when I present him with a task sheet, there are times I forget to face the class when i'm speaking.

I'm going to look for strategies to keep him an active participant of the class.



Nov 8 2012

I think i'm starting to understand him.
He is extremely intelligent.
I was earlier giving him books below his ability to read and analyse.

Some days later, I talked to him one-on-one
about what he liked to do etc
he told me he loved the harry potter series
i was dumbstruck

the child was reading harry potters at home
and i was giving him grade 4 books because i thought he couldn't comprehend.
that day in the library period i asked him to write a book review for harry potter (using the template i gave him)
and I got to know that he hadn't just read the book but had understood it quite well too

he's enjoying story writing and is keeping pace with the class. the only extras i give him are a couple of graphic organizers that guide him through his tasks

Blogging in the Classroom workshop for teachers

Yesterday, I did the same starter blogging activity for teachers in my school. However, I did not discuss the e-safety side of it. I feel teachers who are not so internet savvy would get confused with so much of details. so I let it be. I will be doing an e-safety workshop separately so they can transfer it to their children too. Like the children, the teachers thoroughly enjoyed the activity.

Apart from the starter activity, I gave them blogs to browse. I feel I should have differentiated here and given them blogs related to their subject, as Urdu and Math teachers were confused on how to use it in their subjects. I've searched for blogs and will be soon sharing it with them to discuss how they are being used.

I've given them homework to run personal blogs. I think I will keep it to personal blogs until they are comfortable with using them in the classroom.

Here's my lesson plan for the workshop:

for some reason i'm not comfortable with trainer notes
i prefer using the lesson plan format for trainings too

Objective: 
Identify use of blogs for personal and academic use
Create a blog and make atleast one post.

Starter

• Give each learner post it notes in two different colors.
• Have each learner to write down what they're feeling at the moment in 50-60 words on the bigger postit.
• ask them to display it anywhere in the room
• ask learners to go around the room reading others posts and comment.
• Tell them they are allowed to revisit their own posts and reply to the comments

Ask to get back to their seats.

individually, ask them to do task 1 of the workbook.

then, discuss in table groups.

As a whole class, discuss what they enjoyed about the activity and what they learnt.

development:

·         group teachers in trios

·         assign task 2

·         As a whole class, discuss how learners have put the blogs totheir personal and academic use.

·         in the same groups, assign task 3.

·         take a whole class feedback.

regroup teachers.

ask to do task 4.

ask them to use the internet if they want for research

individually, ask learners to do activity 5.

share the webs in pairs.

do activity 6 in the same pairs. Use the computer one by one to create a blog for themselves.

conclusion:

as a whole class , discuss what they learnt

and ask each what they will take from the days workshop to the class.

Project on Earning a Living

My learners are really excited about the new project Earning to Live.

They'll be running business in and outside school for a month.

the objectives are:

understanding the economic structure
calculating profit and loss
writing business plans
and pursuasive speeches

I've started the project with discussion of primary, secondary and tertiary activities. However, i feel i should have first asked them to identify a business they would have liked to do 
and then moved on to the technical terms for it.