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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.

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,

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.

Here is another critique on MI. Interesting insights are presented here. 

The author contrasts the MI intelligence with single intelligence and says that single intelligence is not educable, rather it is an innate capacity. As an educator, this criticism for MI is useful for me only because I remember to be critical to the theory and begin to search for weakness of it. Otherwise the authors view of single intelligence (non-educable and innate) shows me, as an educator, no direction about my teaching. So I find the Gardner's view (though it may not be a theory) more compelling than the authors view even if I agree that there are problems with Gardner's word choices. Rather than "multiple intelligence theory" he could use "practices of multiple abilities".

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.

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.

"FATIH PROJECT Turkey has initiated FATIH Project with the aim enabling equal opportunities in education and improving technology in our schools for the efficient usage of ICT tools in the learning-teaching processes by appealing to more sense organs in all 620.000 schools that are in the preschool education, the primary education and the secondary education through providing tablets and LCD Smart Boards.

We will be using this group extensively this semester for the grad course that i will be teaching. I am inviting you to join this group, Your insights on learning and instruction will be valuable for the class.

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.

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.

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.

This is video is generally about the time perception of people and its effects on human life. The first five minutes give background info, then it talks about the effects of time perception on educational processes. I found it very interesting, I hope will, too.

There are so many interesting metaphors. I liked them. The associations between educational concepts and time perception are very interesting in this video.

This is another film about education. In this Turkish film, a western teacher goes to an eastern (kurdish) village to teach 1,2,3,4,5th grades together. It will surely provoke you to think about education in Turkey as well as daily lives of eastern people.

I have watched this film and I was really influenced, Thank your giving it as an example for us.

I also watched the movie couple times. Very touching and forces us to think about the current situation that teachers face in Eastern part of Turkey. Thanks for sharing.

"a small library of nine valuable books that will help Ph.D. students do serious work-as well as helping supervisors do a solid job in supervising… These books can help to teach and develop good research habits, habits of mind and habits of behavior."

Dincer, I am glad you shared these resources here. They definitely help grad students to make this challenging journey an enjoyable one. I plan to give a workshop on "how to survive in graduate school" in the near future if I manage to find some time to do so.

I'll be the first one to join that workshop :)

Teaching is not always lectures, papers or even presentations. A good example just after our constructivist session.

Ok, I have been trying to explain how I approach teaching in higher education. This explains it clearly. Indeed, I do have very high expectations from my students and I believe high expectations bring greater achievement.

Funny idea about how to show the main principles of Humanistic Education. The Good will always wins :)

7 schools from Finland.

Görüşmek üzere.

Just a moment from todays meeting: https://plus.google.com/photos/100618985435009225362/albums/5856011792223337681?authkey=CIzX7f7dxuvPMw