Group items tagged

The link to the pool that has been prepared for technology based educational materials for FATİH project. In this pool, teachers and students can send several educational materials that they created or they were using in classroom environment. They aim to extend the content with contributions of people who are actively in education in Turkey. However, it is obvious that the project needs professional e-content materials. Videos, pdf's are ok but multimedia based tools are needed.

Erdem, I wonder if there is any section on the website that include resources/guidelines for teachers. E.g. how to integrate those simulations in the classrooms.

Canan, I hope it will help, thank you, Hocam, there are just materials in the pool. I downloaded 10th grade math teacher guidelines released by Ministry of Education and started to read some sections. I saw that they offer recommendations like "using a dynamic math software, students do...". However, I don't know if they will handle the learning and usage of such software in in-service trainings. I wish I could bring more information about the system but they have not answered my CV and my sample work yet,

This is great! I can use some of these resources in my educational psychology course. Thanks for sharing.

Some useful explanations and examples for humanistic environment in a school regarding curriculum, methods and facilities

Burcu, thank you for sharing. I must confess that I did not understand the difference between humanism and neo humanism:). They seemed almost the same to me. In the movie, children are running in the environment, observing the world, helping people, establishing love and trust with peers and etc. And their ages are small. I support the idea that small children should be made aware of their uniqueness. However, when they grow up, we will have to show them science, math, history and etc. The bulk of knowledge in the world and in our education might unable school to continue humanism in education. Actually, it means that especially for higher graders, we should use humanism as an element in classrooms, not a whole teaching strategy since as wee from the video, creating humanistic classroom is not feasible at all and may not be affordable for higher number of students. In the video they said that firstly they "choose" students. It means that, it is a private school. For private school, one can create almost % 100 percent humanistic environment. However, in public schools, teachers have to integrate humanistic elements into predetermined educational environments.

Massive Open Online Courses might seem like best way to use the Internet to open up education, but you're thinking too small. Technology can turn our entire lives into learning experiences.

Dincer, interesting! While I am in favor of open education and massive open online courses, I recently started thinking about the cultural and social impact of such initiatives. For instance, the Moocs are recently being offered from the west because we assume or accept that they have the high quality content and courses. One might say that this could cause a kind of cultural imperialism, countries importing ideas from the west that may not necessarily fit to their context.

I found this website while looking at Dr. Ana Paula Correia's several work. The website includes lots of technologies that can be used for educational purposes. It looks like an inventory that you can use for enriching your education with technology. One suggestion is that explanation for each technology should be increased, and the website might have several links for tutorials and etc.

Erdem, Thanks for sharing. We are going to do a similar website (wiki) in the class that I will be teaching next semester, with your suggestions taken into considerations of course.

"We are reinventing education," declares Agarwal. "This will change the world."

Dinçer, thanks for sharing. I support the idea that traditional schools should be supported by technology. However, in my opinion, technology should not be used as a total substitute of traditional campus-based education. By stating that, I do not support idea that technology can not offer the effectiveness of content transfer to students. Rather, it offers a wide range of opportunities to enhance learning. However, in my opinion, we should not separate people from each other anywhere in the world. The long term effects of technology and mass city life is not clear yet. At least, we know about depressions and diseases because of long term stress crises. Thus, today's schools should also reteach people to be together. To put it differently, we should use technology for "better learning together".

First, there should be simple changes in the classroom. Then more complex ones will be taken into consideration. What I mean is that for example most of the studies are nearly screaming that main problems of the education system, lack of teachers, lack of space which is suitable for learning, lack of classrooms. I can not say anything about their intent of refreshing the education system, but can't understand the ignorance of such physical problems. Maslow pyramid..

The system has not recognized that the curricula is not a seat that we can change constantly. They are also not aware that it is not easy to implement it with a sudden change.

A useful website including examples of learning and teaching materials about humanism.

Gamze, thanks for sharing. Especially I liked the "humanist perspectives" part since a teacher might not have difficulty in implementing a pre-planned curriculum, however, s/he might have hardship while creating a humanistic classroom. Because, in education, what is a humanistic element is and what is not is not so clear as traditional views. Remember what Ana said, "It seems some of you think that humanism means freeing yourselves or the educational environment. Humanism means enabling students to set a goal and work together to achieve that goal." Ana tries to say that we should not let learning occurs just by chance. That is not humanism. Humanistic teacher just should allow students what they want to do and teach them considering their way of learning and interests. That's why I found humanist perspectives part really useful. To illustrate, to touch on environmental issues in the classroom, you can read the related part for grasping the idea of how a humanistic teacher should behave while teaching this issue.

"if students can receive similar or better outcomes by taking courses online for free, why step foot into a classroom at all?"

Since the beginning of the trend, one of the most controversial issues is the question of whether free online courses by the Ivy league universities will cause the decline of "other" universities and how will this affect students' choice and higher education in the next years.

This for sure giving us some indications about where higher education is going and how should universities respond to this change. Perhaps, new accreditation systems, different degree forms. As a country with a very big number of young population, we better act on it fast, instead of being the observers of these trends around us.

A movie that has so much fun. It provides some lessons to be learnt by educators as well. Recommended.

I watched this. Fun!

A text that I found while searching for something else. It was fun to read it.

A friend of mine has been in Finland as a teacher. I will share the anecdote she told us. While she was in her first weeks, she gave homework since it is holiday tomorrow, I think she exaggerated the giving homework. Classroom teacher came near to her and said Seçil, what are you doing? Tomorrow is holiday, they need to rest. That's why I am very interested in.

Sinem, thanks for sharing. This is also another related article on Finnish Educational system http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/46581035.pdf

Another video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwD1v73O4VI

My best choice of educational metaphor among the slides: http://goo.gl/clcMR (Just click) Not just because of the "bike" :) But because of 1- Advice for instructor to control his/her power: Use your knowledge power in favor of the student not just for your ego! 2- Let him do it! By the way i like bikes also :D

I like the one which teachers cultivate the feeds of knowledge, they plant within their students. Teaching is the long process and requires more effort from both teacher and student. And also suitable land is te essential one in order to constitute knowledge.

The tenth slight is interesting for me. "Teaching is like crossing borders..." I think that we can associate the border with instruction or kinds of instructional methods or theories because on one side there is the individual who learns and on the other side there is the individual who teachs. Therefore the "border" can refer to the instruction as an instrument between the teaching and learning processes.

You are invited to the conference held in TEDU next Thursday (11.04.2013). I will be happy if you inform me before coming so that I can meet you at the very beginning. http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/ekonomi/22593138.asp

Sinem, I wasn't able to attend to this conference but I am curious to hear about your insights. Anything interesting?

I wanted to see all group members in this conference. It was a second episode of our visit for " Seven Schools in Finland" exhibition in Cermodern. There was a model school design with its learning hubs conducted by Canon design and Koç University. It is very unique in Turkey will be finished in 2014. All the learning environments were designed according to the students' learning. Most of the learning hubs, not classrooms, are not square or rectangle they are curvic. Outside of the school were built with the glasses in order to take advantage of the sunlight properly. School is in the area of 7000 m2 in Beykoz, İstanbul. Teachers who will be work in the school have been trained within the framework of nature of the model school, student-centered approach. As you remembered, in Cermodern I could not find the answer to the learning environment of Finland schools. This conference let me go one step further to imagine what constructivist learning environment is. The emphasis on importance of "Educational Architecture" is another issue I was enlightened. Maybe, we can attend the openning of the Model School. Thank you for your concern.

This is a lesson plan I prepared during my last year of college while I was taking school experience course and attending a public school as an intern. My proffessor Jale Çakıroğlu also liked this lesson plan very much and published it in her book named "Bilimin Doğası ve Öğretimi". Moreover, I also implemented it this semester with preservice teachers at METU. I took activity from http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/gr.fs.fd.html and adapted it into Turkish. I also made some changes to make it more appropriate for 6th graders. In this activity, students are active all the time. The teacher only provides them the required materials and answer their quesions to guide them. The students work in small groups to learn the nature of science aspects with an acitivity where they act as they are scientists. The evaluation is process based not product based and this is clearly explained to the students. Since I prepared this lesson plan, actually implemented it and saw that it worked perfectly I would not change anything, but I always welcome your suggestions. :))

Gamze, thanks for sharing the lesson plan. This is an exemplary lesson plan and let's talk about it in class.

Hope to see a similar result for Fatih project.

Here I think the most important phrase is "when used properly". "Peggy Johnson, Qualcomm's president of global market development, believes that the improvement comes because students using smartphones have easier access to information at any time of day or night. They are also able to keep in contact with their classmates and even their teachers, which helps them stay on top of everything that goes on in school." When students have enough motivation to allocate more time to use these devices for such activities stated above, the finding that their learning is increased can be supported. Here again we reach the conclusion: How to use technology is important, since it is just a tool, and can well be used as a toy instead of educational material.

Is this a case of learning or transfering the existing information without assimilating or accommodating into the classroom environment via technology? I think the meaning of learning is also changing. In near future, there will be no learning like we do I guess.

Several applications of Advance Organizers in one video. I really needed that since I had not be able to understand what is the real purpose of AOs since teacher activities about them had seemed to me that they do not converge. However, after watching the video, I think that advance organizers includes key components that students should know for using it to deepen their knowledge about a specific topic. To illustrate, in one practice, students ranked several telecommunication devices in terms of their importance before designing their own device. They first learned/remembered the key components of available devices and their importance and their use, and using this initial knowledge, they started to design a new device. Without examining prior devices (without looking at how telecommunication devices look like or how they function or what are their similarities or differences), it would be harder to think of a new device.