My Webinar Experience!

On November 15th, 2011, I attended a webinar hosted by Sloan-C Institute. The topic mentioned on the website of Collaborate was:  “Using Collaboration Technologies to Engage Students of All Ages and Experience.” The conference was given by two presenters: Mr. Nicholas Dean from Marshall University and Mrs. Kristen Palson from Babson College. It was a live webinar and 56 persons were attending this webinar. The first part was given by Mr. Dean. He talked about Wimba, which is a product you can use in classroom context. He had a PowerPoint presentation about different style of learning and also cited that not only Generation X wanted to learn about technology, but all generations.

The second part, hosted by Mrs. Palson, was about how Babson College integrated Eluminate Technology (now called Blackboard Collaborate). For example, Babson College is situated in Massachusetts and some of their students are coming from Arizona. Instead of flying to Wellesley, MA, those students were able to attend the class by videoconference via Collaborate. They created a room where the teacher could move and being filmed at the same time. This is giving the impression to give a real face-to-face class and the student can follow the teacher walking around like if they were in class.

Although the second part was not research content but more marketing content (they were selling the Collaborate products) it was an interesting webinar to see how far technology can bring us. There were a lot of questions from the participants to the presenters. The only negative point would be that the first part should have been longer and Mr. Dean should have passed more time on his presentation because it was really interesting. The topic he was talking about was one of the main reasons why we should include Collaborate in our future so the content should have been more detailed. I have to admit that the idea of using Collaborate at university level is really interesting because, living far from the university; it could be great to be able to attend the class from home.

A Way to Connect Students to the World

This week video is about Mrs. Vicki Davis who incorporated new technologies in her class. She developed many projects that brought her around the world to give conferences. Mrs. Davis uses technologies to make students learn by themselves. Students get more confidence in themselves because they learn how to learn so at home if they need information, they will know how to get the information as their as used to do this in classes. Also, in Mrs. Davis classes, she incorporated some projects where her students communicate with other students all around the world. This way, students are more open to other culture and it can be funnier to learn about what’s happening somewhere else, than by reading newspapers or articles.

New technologies have its place in classrooms and one part of this technology is to be able to communicate with other all around the world. It can be really interesting to collaborate with other schools in many classes such as geography, French, English, Spanish, art, etc. You can learn so much more with the different cultures all around the world and this way you can be more open-minded about all the current issues happening in the world.

In an ESL class, you can collaborate with other students and talk about many subjects, the point is only to practice your English. This gives a lot of opportunities to students to discuss things that they like with students of their age. It is so difficult to find a topic that interests them so if they can choose what they want and practice their English…why not?

Media also brings another side of teaching ESL. You can use all the tools available over the Internet to open your students’ eyes about what’s happening in the world. You can watch recent videos talking about current issues and have great discussion in class. It is sure that this is more for secondary level students, but with elementary level, you can have an active board and create a lot of activities on this. In my opinion…be it elementary or secondary level, they are both attracted with technologies, so if you include this in your class, you have more chances for them to be more attentive and participate in your class.

Implication of Medias in Teaching and Learning Process

This week video was introducing Mr. Henry Jenkins, USC media professor. He talked about the implication of media in teaching and learning. In general, he discuss about how school are regressing and not evolving in the technology direction. He says so because most of school have blocked a lot of information available throughout the Internet. He gave the example of Mobidic who’s blocked because it contains the word “dic” in it. He also mentioned that most of the school has blocked the website YouTube.com and this shouldn’t be so because as teacher, YouTube is a great source of information to pass videos in your class. Mr. Jenkins also stated that community are saying to students that what they learn outside school should remain out of school, so students are making the link that…what is learn in school should remain only in school but this is not the case. Our generation is all about technology so even though you’re a teaching without skills in technology, you should let your student teach you. There is also another problem with technology; the schools are not ready to give control to students, families or teachers. They need to control everything so in order to experience fully the new technologies; we need a school supportive with these tools. Within the learning process, teachers (and other person) should include an interactive way to integrate the knowledge of “plagiarism” and “authorship.” With all the information accessible over the Internet, students must understand that this stuff is copyrighted and does not belong to them.

After watching the video, I am perplexed about what Mr. Jenkins said about some topics. The major point is that school should have complete access to the Internet and also YouTube. I have to admit that as a teacher, YouTube is primordial, but for the teacher only. Students shouldn’t be allowed to go on the YouTube because I am pretty sure that they will check other things than what you want them to listen…and we all want them to watch the new video of LMFAO when they are walking around in speedos! Also, I don’t think students are mature enough to give them total access to the information on the Internet; yes it is quite shocking that you cannot access information about Mobidic, but this is better than knowing that your students are learning about other kind of “dick”!

 

Even though I don’t agree with part, I totally agree with the rest of the video. Students should teach teachers about new technology. There is a way to do it without losing the control of your class. Although today we are up to date with technology, this is a growing environment and at one point we won’t be up to date anymore so we should let our future students teach us about this. This way we keep track on technology and at the same time students could feel valorized.

Peer Teaching via Wikis

After watching a video about the Vail School District in Arizona about collaborative wikis I trully think this project is amazing. The basic project was to make materials available for the teachers within the school, then the city, the state and maybe more. So they developed a project called Beyond Texbook which allows teacher t have access to online material for their courses; links, power point presentation, lesson plans, etc. Beyond textbook is a tool for collaboration so teachers are able to help each other and also to make students feel that they are part of a bigger community (for example, the other kids in other schools learn the same thing as you are!).

As I mentioned, I think this kind of collborative work is totally fascinating! It is great to create lesson plans but it can ben better if we could share all of our ideas. In a way, we are all profesionnals so the material should be reliable. But if not, the collaborative work means to share our opinions and ideas and then, we would be able to correct what's not in this specific lesson plan. However, liked cited by Kovacic, Bubas & Zlatovic (2007): "the use of a wiki in ESP courses required careful planning and preparation, monitoring and modaratinf of students' work." Here it won't be about students, but about teachers. It is great to be part of this kind of collaborative work, but we need to be implicated because if we're not, well the project doesn't mean anything anymore!

New Technologies and Education

In class we had the chance to view a video from Howard Gardner who's talking about "Digital Youth".

He talks about one of his project called “Good Play Project”. This project is to inform young student to learn about ethical issues in new technologies. They pinpoint 5 ethical problems: identity, privacy, trustworthiness, honour ship, credibility. They are teaching what is to participate in a community.

To be part of an Internet community is much more than only your family and friends. Over the Internet it is easy to create new identity and to pretend to be someone else. This practise is normal over the Internet but as educator we need to make sure no one is harmed in the process.

Talking about educators, M. Gardner specifies that “new challenges arise with new technologies.” As future teacher we need to “understand and not being dictated about what’s right.”  Teacher’s will eventually be able to be more present in students’ life and act more as role model because the didactic part will take less place in our schedule if you use properly the new technologies.
 
Overall the interview with M. Gardner is really interesting and brings questions that we can ask ourselves and reflect on how we could integrate ethical issues in classes with new technologies.