Seven Reasons Teachers Should Blog

I have been blogging since 2007. And since then, I have found myself in numerous discussions and debates on the benefits of blogging, especially in teaching and education. Most of the time,it makes me wonder am I the only one who is questioning my own self for what I am doing and why I like doing it and why must I continue doing it and also why am I so very much interested in getting my students and friends, especially those in teaching career to blog ?

I met Steve Wheeler in LYICT International Conference for the Net Generation in 2008.He was in my focus group and a very kind and knowledgeable man. And I did'nt know that he is a very important and influential man in education until I followed him on Twitter and then became his friend in Facebook, a few weeks later after we came back from the conference.

I have been following his blog and I also have been learning so much from it. Tonight, I want to share what I have read , and which I have agreed, are the answers to all the questions I had asked myself earlier in this article.

Please Read : Seven Reasons Teachers Should Blog

Something I Read Today

Could an iPad replace a teacher's laptop ?

We have about 10 iPads in our English lab now and they're free to be used by all , starting January 2012.
A teacher asked me, what can we use those gadgets for, other than typing and browsing the internet. Why can't we stick to the old ways, use the PC and laptops, iPads are hard to handle. Curiosity will make it harder
to keep these toys in one place. Are we doing this to replace the existing laptops. Well , I found this article from my favourite bookmarks .. hoping I could enlighten that friend of mine with some of the points written :-)

http://blog.core-ed.org/blog/2011/11/ipad-review-could-the-ipad-replace-a-teachers-laptop.html

I would have said the same things too, I guess.
Technology is good in its own way and how you plan to use it.
But again, always remember, it's the teacher that matters most NOT the technology. It's how you
embrace it and pass it on to your kids. Si ? si .. perfecto ..

Effective Teacher = Effective Teaching = Effective Learning

What are makes an effective teacher?

This particular list of characteristics appears in an excellent book that is all but unknown in the states, Learning to Teach in Higher Education, by noted scholar Paul Ramsden.

1: Interest and explanation – “When our interest is aroused in something, whether it is an academic subject or a hobby, we enjoy working hard at it. We come to feel that we can in some way own it and use it to make sense of the world around us.” (p. 98). Coupled with the need to establish the relevance of content, instructors need to craft explanations that enable students to understand the material. This involves knowing what students understand and then forging connections between what is known and what is new.

2: Concern and respect for students and student learning – Ramsden starts with the negative about which he is assertive and unequivocal. “Truly awful teaching in higher education is most often revealed by a sheer lack of interest in and compassion for students and student learning. It repeatedly displays the classic symptom of making a subject seem more demanding than it actually is. Some people may get pleasure from this kind of masquerade. They are teaching very badly if they do. Good teaching is nothing to do with making things hard. It is nothing to do with frightening students. It is everything to do with benevolence and humility; it always tries to help students feel that a subject can be mastered; it encourages them to try things out for themselves and succeed at something quickly.” (p. 98)

3: Appropriate assessment and feedback – This principle involves using a variety of assessment techniques and allowing students to demonstrate their mastery of the material in different ways. It avoids those assessment methods that encourage students to memorize and regurgitate. It recognizes the power of feedback to motivate more effort to learn.

4: Clear goals and intellectual challenge – Effective teachers set high standards for students. They also articulate clear goals. Students should know up front what they will learn and what they will be expected to do with what they know.

5: Independence, control and active engagement – “Good teaching fosters [a] sense of student control over learning and interest in the subject matter.” (p. 100). Good teachers create learning tasks appropriate to the student’s level of understanding. They also recognize the uniqueness of individual learners and avoid the temptation to impose “mass production” standards that treat all learners as if they were exactly the same. “It is worth stressing that we know that students who experience teaching of the kind that permits control by the learner not only learn better, but that they enjoy learning more.” (p. 102)

6: Learning from students – “Effective teaching refuses to take its effect on students for granted. It sees the relation between teaching and learning as problematic, uncertain and relative. Good teaching is open to change: it involves constantly trying to find out what the effects of instruction are on learning, and modifying the instruction in the light of the evidence collected.” (p. 102)

Reference: Ramsden, P. (1992). Learning to Teach in Higher Education. New York: Routledge.

Excerpted from Effective Teaching: Six Keys to Success, The Teaching Professor, March 2006.

Teaching IS Definitely NOT Simple

This is an article that I would to share with teachers in Malaysia especially. I read this from a blog of a good friend, who I have known for almost 5 years now but still haven't had the chance to see her in person. She is one of the people in my wish list that I wish to meet for real. Well, let's hope that day will come soon. 


She is sharing the final keynote of one of the conferences she attended, by Graeme Aitken, the Dean of Education from the University of Auckland..

The title of Graeme's talk is - Teaching what matters and selecting content and pedagogy.

Questions raised during the session were : 'How do you decide what to teach? How do you decide how to teach that content?' We need to do more things that matter and do them well.

And these are the discussion : 


The role of school leaders in teaching:

1. Modeling effective teaching
2. Creating the conditions for effectiveness
3. Providing feedback about effective teaching to others - not just as part of the appraisal process but it is part of the ongoing process of being in and out of classrooms
4. Helping to identify and resolve teaching problems
5. Recognising effectiveness in selection - thinking about the criteria you use in selecting new teachers to determine effectiveness.

There is no one right way to be effective.

What are teachers obligated to be?
efficient, organised, in control, warm, enthusiastic, empathetic, interesting, humorous ...

What are teachers obligated to do?
overviews at the start, group work, cooperative learning, open ended questions, inquiry learning, use visuals, storytelling, whole class instruction ... This list is long and disputed when you look at what research states teachers are obligated to do.

But

What are teachers obligated to cause?
Successful learning, greater interest, greater confidence ...

To what extent are you 'causing' what is valued in teaching? It is effective to focus on what you need to cause, and how what you should be or do influences that. 

There is a critical interaction between 'be' 'do' and 'cause'

Being ineffective is where students experience misalignment, lack of engagement and lack of success. This includes duplication, confusion, busy work, waiting. Graham Nuthall found in his research that a significant number of intermediate students already knew the content the teacher was presenting.

Being effective means giving students more time to be engaged and learning about things that matter.

We should be proud of the effort that teachers are putting in to engage and help students learn. Effective teaching is the effort that goes in to create learning environments and learning students. Teaching as inquiry in the NZC is a model that supports effective teaching. This model asks you to consider what is important and therefore worth spending time on given where your students are at before engaging in teaching and learning activities.

So what does Graeme consider are teachers' obligations?

• Focus on outcomes that matter - desired results.
• Cause students to appreciate the value of the desired results

We need 'student sensitive' learning, but maybe not 'student centred' learning. We don't always have to start with something that students are interested in. They don't know what they don't know. It is up to us to spark the imaginations of students.

Wiggans and McTigue (Understanding by design) discuss the twin sins of design - Coverage focused teaching and Activity focused teaching.

Important questions to ask are ...

Why does this learning matter for these students at this time?

and

What is the best way of teaching this?

In choosing content that matters there has to be some sense of standard against which you are measuring.

Then there is the tough task of appreciation - how can I help students appreciate the value of this learning?

How will we know when we have caused engagement and success?

If what you are doing is not working ... Then try something else!

What are some of the things we can look at to look for engagement and success beyond the obvious standardised tests?

For example:

• observe the responses of the students over a period of time in a systematic way to ascertain engagement?
• Ask students to rate activities - challenge, skill, importance, interest, success, relax, self-esteem. Choose one or two of these elements and genuinely ask students their opinions, not necessarily a tick box activity.
• Ask students to report or explain what they are doing, why they are doing it, how it will help them, how it fits with previous learning and how will they know when they have learned?
• At the end of a lesson - the one minute response to what is the most important thing you have learned - where did you get the most lost or confused today.

Be prepared to make changes when you identify what is not working, and what is working well. You cannot be effective unless you are curious enough to embark on finding out what works. Be open minded to new possibilities and understanding student experiences, observe your own practice and suspend judgment. Have the wisdom to be conscious of your own ignorance and have a sense of OPTIMISM.

Graeme's last statement :

Wise use of time, wise action, wise use of evidence leads to a profession of wise people.