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Looking from the MI side to KPSS, it looks rather awkward, anyway. But this latest news make content knowledge upper front, pedagogical knowledge is the next. However, there is no place for pedagogical content knowledge to evaluate, which is also important knowledge type that a teacher should have.

Good point raised here Sinem. Knowing the content is not enough to teach a subject and that is why PCK has been implemented in the teacher education programs since 1980s. This particular knowledge, yet, is complex and cannot be measured with tests like KPSS.

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.

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.

Clusty is a search engine which makes clusters of your search. It provide easiness to students while making research on the internet. Based on keywords, the similar websites are categorized so that a more organized amount of knowledge is provided to learners. please try it by writing a keyword like "fotosentez".

"impact of technology" part made me think that using technology in education is not valuable without how to use it. The project FATİH is generally taken a big step of using technology in state schools. "What is the cost?" "Are they necessary?" "Will our teachers use it?" are most asked questions. However, "How to use it?" is rare. Here with the word "use" I don't refer to running the devices. I mean the way technology be used in accordance to the educational objectives. As Chomsky says, without knowing what to do, using educational technology effectively is difficult.

There were several points that got my attention in this video. The first one was Chomsky's sentence saying that education had a value in itself. The purpose of it was to create "better" human beings, not bigger human capital for money. At this point, he opposed to idea that all generations should be given enough knowledge about math and science in order to increase people with scientific knowledge that will lead to more money income. Rather, education should foster the ideas of being independent in thoughts, being creative, having the ability and willingness to pursue one's own interest, and learning to learn on one's own. The second one was the analogy that Chomsky used. He made an analogy between technology and a hammer. He said that with a hammer you can either construct a building or smash a school down. This is about how you use the hammer, and it is the same with technology. Thus, it is more important that for what purpose we will use the technology than simply how to use technology. The last one was about achievement tests. Chomsky said that tests do not have so much value. You can pass a test after studying hard for about 3 weeks. Nevertheless, it does not mean that you will remember even the names of the topics that was covered in the exam after 3 weeks of the exam. That's why exploration, self learning, project-based learning and formative assessment is much more important and promising compared to achievement tests.

Here is my constructivist environment example. In the past, I installed the second life software considering that it was a game. I roamed and roamed in worlds that already were created, chatted with people in another countries with my avatar. Then I thought that it was boring. It was just like sitting on Sunshine and talking with friends. Why I had to do this via my computer? This video shows us how Second Life Worlds can be used to create constructivist learning environments. In the video, a Second Life World that was prepared by a group of people called TELLS TEAM is presented. In this world, you can attend lectures, have group meetings for discussion, work on simulations and role plays whereever you are. All participants including the teacher has an avatar and walking, sitting, chatting as if they were in the same room. In this project, learners are active participants. They roam, talk, immediately can fly to role playing sessions and etc. Teacher is only responsible to present initial knowledge. I could not find how they evaluate the learners. However, it is up to you. This environment is just a tool. You can arrange your role plays, your simulations, and also your assesment. Also they have some guides to use the environment effectively on this web site: https://sites.google.com/site/secondlifeuwnshss/Home

The topic is about charter schools in US. It is not easy to understand what is charter school but it is like a publicly founded school where the "educational experience is qualitatively different". They just try different style of learning. "Charters were originally a progressive movement (called the "small schools" movement) started by University of Massachusetts professor Ray Budde and American Federation of Teachers leader, Al Shanker to explore best practices for education without bureaucracy." (wikipedia: charter school) Quote from the original text "Students taught by teachers with at least five years' experience outperformed students with less experienced teachers, regardless of the type of school attended, but charter school students with inexperienced teachers did significantly worse than students in traditional public schools with less experienced teachers. (The impact of this finding is compounded by the fact that charter schools are twice as likely as traditional public schools to employ inexperienced teachers.)" This means that experienced teachers are better than in experienced ones (Not suprised?) but more importantly it shows us that if you try something new it is better to have an experienced teacher :)

As far as I understand, if you have a brilliant idea about the ways that the education can be implemented, you can ask for being a charter school. As a charter school, you are free from governmental regulations and obligations. However, your performance is monitored closely. In that schools, new innovative methods are tried out, and apparently inexperienced teachers are not successful at all comparing to traditional ones. This is because the experience. I remember my internship time. As an intern teacher, I had difficulty even implementing techniques that I had been taught throughout my undergraduate career. It was because concrete experiences are much more hard to accomplish that abstract ones. And self-evidently being "concretely experienced" needs time. After years and years in active teaching, teachers naturally can have the ability to integrate innovative methods in their teaching. If the innovation is surprising (like technology integration while experienced teachers might not have enough knowledge), they at least have the ability not to confuse with the new innovation, they can resist and hold on their traditional experiences. New teachers may become confused with undergraduate knowledge and innovations since both of them are still not deeply got used to.

I wish we could add our contents in ocw@metu.edu.tr to their database. For education, the website has only 3 courses. I signed up for the course "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application" and "E-learning and Digital Cultures" which will be held on Jan 28th 2013 :). I will write here what I have learned from the courses. I think it will be an interesting experience to reach knowledge about "online education" via online education :)

Erdem, great to hear that you are signed up for MOOCs. I will be curious to hear from your learning experiences in these courses.

It says that children can learn with internet without any intervention from outside -like a teacher. When the topic is not defined, children can learn what they want. But for some specific topics, they at least need the very first idea -a question, sometimes even a pre-designed system of information and instruction. Are we too much interfering to students' learning process?

Such educational frameworks support the trend of shift from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness. In the past, when we need to ask something, we asked to our elders- in school, to teachers. Now, we have an additional elder, the internet. It can answer almost anything. In that sense, the impact of the technology can not be ignored. The idea of providing internet access to places that is scarce in terms of teachers is reasonable - which also supports the idea of distance education. Besides, bringing technology is easier and cheaper than bringing a teacher with resources. However, we still need teachers as -cliche but vital term- "facilitators" and regulators in self-learning process. It is necessary for constructivism as well as child-driven education or for any other self-learning methods. Someone is needed for wrapping-up the knowledge gained, for assessing the results, for remedying circumstances that obstruct the learning process, for deciding goals or organizing goals to be attained, and for secure and heuristic browsing on the internet. In that sense, I support the idea of "self organized learning environments" as Mitra offers, but also I contend that there should be teachers around these environments for facilitating. In short, we should not quit important elements of education while trying to make it better.

I believe although computers and instructional softwares are amazing to enhance the effectiveness of instruction, they are not enough. They are always limited. It is impossible to load them all possible questions of students and their responses. Moreover, none of the computers or softwares would be able to fulfill students' emotional and motivational needs. There is also the uniqueness of the students; not all of the students would enjoy a computer-based education. Lastly, as a science educator when I think for my area; it is never the same to make an experiment on computer and in a laboratory. Students learn better when they are actively engaged in an experiment and seethe results with their eyes.

I did such an experiment to my 2,5 year old cousin. I asked for his mother to bring 2 tea glasses with full of water and 2 water glasses one of which was wide and short and one of which was narrow and tall. Next, I asked my cousin if the water amount is the same in both tea glasses. She said "Yes". Then I said "now watch carefully" and slowly poured one of the tea glasses into the wide&short glass and poured the other one into the narrow&tall one. In narrow&tall glass, the level of water seems above from the wide&short one despite the fact that the amount of water is the same in both glasses. Then I asked if water amount of the glasses is the same. And she answered "No, there is much more water in the narrow&tall water (She was pointing to level of water in narrow&tall glass with her finger while telling it)" Then I asked for 6 biscuits from her mother and separated them into 2 groups each of which contain 3 biscuits. Then asked if they are the same and she said "Yes". After that, I took one of the group which contains 3 biscuits and divided each biscuits so that numerically they looks like there are 6 biscuits with half length. Now I had 2 groups one of which had 3 standard biscuits and the other one contained 6 biscuits pieces with half length of standard biscuits. Afterwards I asked her again if the amount of the biscuits are the same in each group and she says "No". When I ask "why" she said, " This one is much because it has more biscuits(by pointing out the group containing 6 biscuits pieces)" It was nice to see such an experiment. It means that children at a specific developmental stage process their observations in line with their own perceptions, not the ones adults have and as such it supports the idea that children build their own knowledge by making interpretations on what they see, on what they interact with the world.

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.

An article on Turkish National Eduactional Ideology

thank you for sharing this source

Bilge, thank you for the post. It was an interesting topic. I will consider to have the book. In Turkey, after military coup on September the 12th in 1980, the military government introduced some important changes about religious education. Before military government period, schools had offered Religion Lesson as elective and Moral Knowledge Lesson as compulsory. The military government combined the two lessons and decided to be taught in primary and secondary schools compulsorily. However, as it is mentioned in the article, this decision leaded to an Islamization of our education. In my opinion, religious education is important. However, instead of emphasizing only one religion, students should be made aware of other religions and cultures and be tolerant to all of them. They should be thought that having a different religion is not a dangerous phenomenon. Such thoughts have been more and more important after 11th September attack to World Trade Center in the USA.

President of Institute of Humane Education give a talk. Web page of the institute: http://www.humaneeducation.org/ From their web site: Humane education includes 4 elements: Providing accurate information (so we have the knowledge to face challenges); Fostering the 3C's: curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking (so we have the tools to meet challenges); Instilling the 3R's: reverence, respect, and responsibility (so we have the motivation to confront challenges); Offering positive choices and tools for problem solving (so we will be able to solve challenges).

in another talk about humanistic education ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxvMqhxt-SI ) the speaker gave credit to this talk so I wanted to share it with you.

In this link you can find brief information about the theories we reviewed so far, their comparison, weaknesses or strenghts, atomic theory as well as some brief knowledge about theorists. This may be useful for completing the table. :)))

The Harvard Graduate School of Education is pleased to announce its spring 2013 Askwith Forums, a series of public lectures dedicated to discussing challenges facing education, sharing new knowledge, and generating spirited conversation.

when ı watch this video, I realised that in little age we can create learning enviroment without losing motivation and active participation. You can find also kindergarten or higher level version of this video on youtube. Behaviorism signs can be seen in it. Because repetition of whole sentences is the learning way for this classroom. Thıs seems to be effective but another issue is the permanence of knowledge. I hope it is permanent that it seems very enjoyful class.

I also appreciate the class environment used in the video. Gestures, repetitions, practice on their own in pairs, materials were collaboratively used, which is very nice and especially very beneficiary for the 1. grade.

We can see a brief overview of these stages which used examples for each levels..

It is really weird to watch the reasonings and answers although we read that they are so. I was surprised once again.

Yes hatice, actually I can go on applying the theory to my cousin by hiding it from Yengem, it is unethical I know:). May be I should wait until I have my own children. I can give permission myself to apply Piaget's theory to my children, no problem:), I agree saime, in one ofthe video a little girl was shown a simple triangle and was asked to draw exactly what she saw, and she drew a different sketch and showed the corners of her triangle that was completely in different places. It was in the video that Evrim Hoca posted to Diigo, I guess.