METU EDS 544

This is one of Dembo's book about motivation and learning strategies for college success. I wish I found the book earlier in the beginning of my undergraduate degree :). Nonetheless, I think it can be still useful for future academic career.

Thanks for your sharing. I will print this as soon as possible.

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

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.

The interaction between the student and the teacher should be manipulated according to the content of the lesson, objectives, materials and instruments as shown in the video. Making the class more engaging requires effective conversation and good communication between the teacher and student.

Great video for classroom management lessons. :)

This is a good way forcreating active learning enviroment. Also it includes more alternatives like individual or group working. But it seems good for small class size.

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

I really liked it and I wanted to share with you

I have always hated the concept of the "guarding teacher". They do not let students enjoy their break.

I know this is reality but I dont want to believe this..

This is an interesting website hich incleudes different web connections in it. All connections include different sources and web pages which is related to educational development both students and teacher. You can check all pages, I could not check all of them, because they are too much :). ı suggest this webside.

A great collection. Thank you for sharing!

It is difficult to keep up with all new technologies that can be used for learning and techning. However, this is a good compilation of different tools

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.

"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.

Because of the recent changes in educational system, many teachers suffer from being redundant. Some of them are also paid less than the cleaning staff!

I think oral incentives such as "You Can Do It!" are the part of class dynamics.

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.

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 can find the story of this system at that page and also photos from the old schools in America. Also it gives information about student profile, evaluation system, philosophers' names, etc.

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".

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.