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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.

Hi Elanur Hoca, thank you for sharing this news with us. I agree to many things written in this news. 1. I agree that students are unhappy in school. Anybody who have teaching experience must have seen that when the last bell rings and the classes end, the students begin running to escape from school. The body never lies. 2. I agree that "non-academic factors" such as resilience, grit and empathy can have a profound impact on young people" and their ability to succeed. 3. I also agree that person's wellbeing, and overall life outcomes and success in life is affected by much more than academic grades. They are affected by their character attributes, and their social and emotional skills.

Hocam, I think this guy has an introvert personality. If he doesn't, perhaps he took a course from a teacher who made him feel fed up with pair and group work activities :-)) I have read the comments of other people under the article and I liked the one made by Doug. As Doug stated, Donald Clark compares different perspectives in a linear manner, but these thinkers represent different developmental periods of the theory. So he should have made comparisons considering the development of the theory to be more plausible. For his overall comments at the end of his article, I can say that what he mentions ("Those with good digital literacy, literacy, numeracy and other skills will have the social support, especially at home") is not something peculiar to the results of this theory. We used to have more segragations in the societies when former theories were dominant. So his comment doesn't seem logical to me. He also mentions that some learners like studying alone, which is not supported by this theory. Of course sometimes we need some isolation to think, analyze and synthesize, but this doesn't make us forget about the advantages of peer learning. There is a saying, "two heads are better than one". As we discussed in the classroom, we learn better when we are cognitively engaged and in my opinion, "engagement" requires contradictory or contributory comments made by other members of the society. It doesn't take place without interactions. To sum up, the theory may have some limitations, but I prefer it to the older ones :-)

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.

and they have different interests.

The inherent curiosity in human beings is well explained, science education is kind of lucky in that sense maybe, one of our essentials is already here for us.

I exactly agree this sentence. there is a drawing related to this issue..:D http://mommacommaphd.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/facebook_460632723.jpg

I totally agree, children manage to see the things from so different perspective from us that I always surprised with their way of thinking in my practice classess. I think every children born with the instinction of curiosity which is a gift for human beings. As a teacher we should trigger that force instead of putting barriers front of fit.

I also follow that blog, so interesting publishes she has. For this one, Children have no idea about their environment for the first sight. So they wonder, explore, make sense of it and try to get into use. Isn't it similar with the process of scientists? And they are maybe even more creative than those. Wish we keep the child in ourselves as long as possible:)

Kids like technology for certain reasons like entartainment or searching data. Altough it sounds a good idea to insert some info into games, I observe that children all over the world like games related to killing, stealing or car racing.

The scandinavian pioneering role in school reforms has a long tradition. It is not only the comprehensive-school-system which makes Finnland a top-performer. Many countries are trying to emulate Finland and more equal opportunities in education can be a good progress. But why is Finnland a top-performer? In my opinion it could be PISA which is responsible for the comparison of school systems. PISA is criticized by many researchers, so first we have to scrutinize whether Finland can be a prototype.

According to the latest scores of PISA, it seems like we all start to search how China and South Corea is doing in their education systems. As for the question why Finland is a top-performer, there are several aspects to explain it. I think, initially, teacher education comes first and equality and equity in education follow this. Therefore they show up as top thanks to PISA. Their school tradition, history of both economics and education, population and mentality of learning could be obstacles to make it as a prototype and compare with some countries.

My aim was not to call Finland as a top-performer into question. I want to criticize PISA and their purposes. For example the test-structure are determining the results, so if sth. would be changed, another country will be the top-performer. I found an interesting critique: http://www.univie.ac.at/pisaaccordingtopisa/pisazufolgepisa.pdf But maybe I failed the original topic, because that article doesn't discuss PISA.

We had the same conversation here with my colleagues from Belgium and Netherlands the outcomes that PISA is measuring. It is after all measuring certain outcomes that OECD wants to measure. We also have to be careful in taking Finland as a model and such comparative approach just like mentioned in a series of reports that Christian shared.

PISA is a big goal for policy makers. They want to success even they don't believe, because it makes country popular as seen above:) We have to focus on real indicators like development... And here is an infographic about Finland's educational system: http://slowrobot.com/i/43651#

In my oppinion, we couldnot seek the other countries' educational systems, at the begining of possible educational reform process. Before this, students profile and the reasons behind the problems have to be analysed; such as economic and social problems, teacher's competencies, subject matter, schools' physical equipments, etc. As I mentioned, before analysing other countries systems, we have to analyse our educational systems indetail and clearly. From that point, solutions can be seeked and useful after determination fo the problems..

Now I understand your point, Christian. Thanks for sharing that pdf, I think that is related with the article since it discusses the whole structure of PISA which is showed as a scale. And for sure,that might happen that another country would be top according to another kind of testing but still there is a hard fact about Finland and their school culture. I have seen that infographic before but I feel the need to correct some issues there according to my stay in Finland. For instance, it says that there are no seperate classrooms for accelerated learning or special education but there are many of them. As for homeworks, this saying of having rarely homework is not actually reflecting the reality. They do have homeworks but the definiton of it might cause misunderstandings;)

Thank you Sinem for correcting the infographic's assumptions. I would like to hear more about your experiences in Finland.

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.

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."

First time I watched about these kind of programs and efectiveness in education i had some questionmarks in my mind. Because according to the documentary, it was not as effective as going to school and it was not so much fun to take an online course. That is why drop-outs of school was pretty high at that time. But this looks more effective and more suitable for learning for sure! thanks for sharing!

What if teachers understood how to reach students so well that children feel included? It would be wonderful to find out the answer of this question, because the sense of isolation ibs the biggest barrier between students and teachers and it is really difficult to overcome.

I also present a brief paper on this method. You can download it clicking on the link below: http://www.williamsburgmontessori.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/The_Montessori_Method.pdf