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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 have no positive attitude towards this application, children at school age always, especially in middle schools, have tendencies to criticize their friends according to their different appearance, different accents they use etc. Clothing is one of them. Now, equal opportunity for education is diminished. children who even can not afford to pay school fee or price for textbooks may not want to come to school. What about Japanese culture.They still use uniform in schools, they are successfull. I think government tries to change the daily hot topics of Turkey.

I completely agree. I think dressing children like they are in military and having strict rules is wrong but with this new system so many new problems come up. I think -as always- this change have not been thought well.

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.

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.

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

There must be a balance between private & government schools!

Since I started my school education,I have witnessed this problem. Unfortunately it is getting worse. How come a government cannot provide satisfactory education and instruction to its people and children? How dare to push them to pay more and fulfill their own education? Turning the private courses into private schools do not change anything. And as usual, teachers and the students are worst affected from th situation.

Changing dershanes to private schools is not a solution to provide better education to society for free. The only change is that you can go to private schools with bursary or half-bursary. It means that they just moderated the money transaction. In addition, they will make teachers take exams throughout their careers which is actually not related to the conversion process. Therefore, the attempt to make dershanes extinct is a starting move that can be supported but these private schools should be converted to public schools in order to provide a high-quality education to all children for free. That is one of the most primary duties of the governments.

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.

TEGV and ilk-yar topluluğu in METU have been sharing the nearly same vision with what Kiran Bir Sethi is doing. They are quietly helping not only children but families and community.

Sinem, do you have any resources on TEGV and METU that you can share with us? I want to learn more about the project.

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,

When I was skimming through a magazine, I ran across an article about discovery learning ability of children. Especially the example of toys that was hidden in lines were interesting to read.