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I liked this source too much. As the role of the teacher: "The instructor's role moves from providing and structuring the information and knowledge through lectures and presentations to modeling, coaching, and scaffolding learners as they use information and create knowledge to solve contextual real-life problems". I ask myself: To what extent, I create such authentic environments in my classes.

That is such an inevitable and reasonable concern; the extent we imply authentic environments in our classrooms. Sometimes it is for the sake of applying without including the essential elements of authentic learning. Time concerns or motivation and knowledge levels of teachers might be some issues related.

I will start first :) The best motivation why I want to hold a Phd is I like learning. So, I think that the more I learn, the more I will teach others.

but mine sounds same as yours :) learning more and more in the fields I enjoy and meeting different people and discovering their repertoire and stories are my main motivations.

I agree, one must be really really really motivated take such a daunting task. This is hard work, a journey with ups and downs, yet always rewarding during and at the end of the process. My main motivation for doing a PhD was discovering my own "self" and simply "the world". The more I try to uncover some unknowns about the world the more I give meaning to my existence.

When I had my undergrduate degree I was planning to work all my life long but I realized that spending a year without learning in an academic environment was a disaster. I come from another city and travel on buses just to learn and make my life, job and environment understandable and meaningful. I am doing this as I can inspire, inform, help teachers and my students with what I gain through PhD as it helps me broaden my vision.

I think we all, Phd sts, are crazy people :-)) We have such intrinsic motivation that we can spend hours and hours on reading, writing, searching etc. People around me are always asking me how I can handle all these stuff and I sometimes ask myself the same question...And the only answer I come up with is that we all have the feeling of hunger for knowledge and nothing feeds it.

I agree with Şermin that we are really crazy though I am not in PhD level. People around me keep saying that "Are you mad? Why are you doing this?" It depends according to situations but I believe that (as you do) this is a voluntary work. We want to learn something, explore different disciplines and so on. It is a bit a part of self-actualization, I think.

This is a very helpful and rich source for us, thank you for sharing it. Especially the situated documentary idea is very interesting I think. Making use of technology, simulations, games are such effective ways for solving the mismatch between classrooms and real-world situations.

I really liked the use of situated learning genres to make some theoretical concepts more concrete via real world experiences and scenarios. These genres can be integrated with classroom practices depending upon the specific requirements of the subject area, learner group and curricula to be implemented. While watching the video I thought that the situated documentary would help me while learning history when I was at high school. I had difficult times trying to learn history by reading dull history books.

As you mentioned Pınar, the videos on the website helped me to get the theory very well because of some concrete examples. And also the video "field research" provides a good example for science and vocabulary teaching, I think.

I deeply believe the power of motivation to learn and classroom technology can be used to enhance students' motivation in learning of the specific content. Still, it is open to debate effective use of technology in classrooms, especially in our country. To deal with this inefficiency of classroom technology, we need to focus on teachers' technology literacy and try to develop this literacy.

Hi Özlem Hoca, BBC news you shared with us is very advisable to our friends. (1) I agree that computers may have the possibility to be distractors for learning and they may be abused by some students. Students may prefer to use computers for activities other than for school activities. When I was an intern teacher, I wanted to show how a literature search is performed to my 20, 9th grade "Project" (noncredit course) students in 2006, I ended up running from one student to another because as I leave him/her with his/her search, s/he began to sign in facebook and their emails. (2) I also agree that plagiarism may occur in homeworks due to internet resources. (3) Another interesting opinion in this news is that "We're training the students to use technology which hasn't yet been invented." We are training the students to the future that is not defined, not yet clear.

I think integrating technology in classrooms is inevitable as computers have been being used in lots of areas in the world and it is a little bit optimistic to assume that education will escape from this "invasion". Today's students live with technology and indeed, technology can enhance the representation of a topic, communication among learners, eliminate time and space limitations in reaching information, etc. The article says that "frequent" use of computers in schools is more likely to be associated with lower results. Instead of frequent use, one should know how one can healthily get benefit from computers, when to use it, how to use it, when not to use it, etc. Those questions are still major questions in modern educational science research. Findings from such research can enhance the positive impact of technology in classrooms.

Having read this week's reading assignment, a part of which focuses on this particular result, I felt the need to comment on your share Özlem hocam. It is mentioned in Chapter 1: Introduction that "in the 1980s, cognitive scientists like Roger Schank and Seymour Papert made claims that computers would transform the schools and learning. This was a rather radical claim and it helped form a strong consensus among parents, bussiness community, politicians that getting computers into schools was a must. During 1990s, installing computers and the Internet in schools was a major trend. By 2003, 95% of all the schools in the US had their computers and were connected to the Internet. However, the impact of this huge investment was highly disappointing. Studies had shown computer use was not correlated with improved student performance. When the reserachers began to study to find the reason, they found out that the computer use in schools was not based on learning sciences; instead, they were being used as an extension of instructional classroom. By this I mean, bringing technology to the classrooms was not enough without changing the structure of instruction. Educational software has been based on instructionist theories, with the computer performing roles that are traditionally performed by the teacher. Teachers and students were not aware of how to use those computers efficiently. Students read the texts on the computers instead of reading them on books.Learning scientists continue to emphasize the powerful role that computers can play in transforming all learning. But they reject instructionalism and behaviorism. Instead, they present a new vision of computers in schools. They suggest that computer should take on a more facilitating role, helping learners have the kind of experiences that lead to deep learning."

I like very much this kind of schools, Erdem. Thank you for sharing this video with us. Unfortunately, the current generation's parents are so nurturing/protectionist on their children. As a result, children cannot take risks, or they are afraid of trying something. I think that children can learn better by touching/seeing/observing the concepts. I see lots of private kindergardens around, which are wire-clothed like a "prison" and children are trying to learn something. In such schools showed in video, students also can more easily learn the meaning of abstract things such as "freedom, love of nature, and independence".

This school seems so intresting and enyable and I think that children can learn much more thing they learn in ordinary kindergardens. But, I agree with the Yasin's comment on parents. Parents are so protectionist and they can not allow children especially in this age group shown in the video to participate in such an activity . They prefer prison like kindergarden to this forest schools. Therfore, I think that teachers first should teach parents that being too protectionist is giving greater harm to child.

Social media is mainly for entertainment and socializing. Altough it can assist the classroom subjects in different ways, I am not sure if using social networking as the main tool in the classroom is a great idea.

Of course social media shouldn't be the main tool. But I think excluding it as it is done in most of the schools is not up-to-date. Social media is part of our modern world and we have to discuss, if it may could be included in our learning environment. So what we are doing now (using diigo or twitter in our course) is the try to learn referring to social media.