Its my first time to attend an internet class.
When my other classmates, who belong to different parts of the world, discuss about their class population, audience and the facilities available to them; I could not help but draw comparisons.
I have had the opportunity of studying and teaching for a limited time in the UK and on coming home I tried to improvise in my teaching methodologies to make the learners more independent. I always encouraged them to rely more on resources like (library, internet etc) other than on teachers alone.
Today, I feel the IT facilities that they do not have access to.
Most of them do not have net access at their home.
Ours is a Government run college with very limited funds. There is no IT center available for the use of all the students. The computer lab is there, but only for the students whose elective subject is computer sciences.
Even if the teachers are well- qualified and up-to-date, they need the resources to inculcate the web skills in their lessons.
I keep on thinking that I will work on a small group of students and take my laptop for the projects of this E-Teaching course.
I do take my laptop and USB Internet to college usually and that helps in lesson preparation for the topics new to me.
Its a teacher's resource for me.
I wish to make the ;earners more resourceful too.
Hi Yusra:
ReplyDeleteI think comparing is a natural activity of human beings. However, comparing is not necessarily a bad habit or something that should be avoided at all cost. Comparing ourselves and our learning environments can definitively provide a great learning opportunity for us and our classes. I truly admire the honest and straight forward post you wrote for the second week.
On your introduction in nicenet.org, you mentioned that you were looking forward to "learning and adapting the new tools according to my classroom environment". I am positive that this is precisely one of the main goals of the course: adapting and making the most out of the interactive web, in the place we work, with the resources that we have available.
This broad variety of geographical contexts implies that our planning and even our objectives will be totally different. We cannot just assume that a student in Mexico is in exactly at the same situation as a student from Pakistan, France, Australia... Therefore, when we think of and write our ABCD objectives , the audience, the behavior, the conditions and the degree are going to be diverse... sometimes poles apart... like Mexico and Pakistan are geographically :)
Keep up the good work!
Dear David,
DeleteMany thanks for your words of encouragement.
Yes, Mexico and Pakistan are poles apart-geographically. Still we are interacting and attending the same class:).
Its the miracle of technology!
In our country there are many universities have all the modern faciltiies, IT laboratories etc. But they cost a lot of fee too which is not affordable for each and every one.
Mine is a public college. Here is the needs and demands of an average student differ than those studying in top Universities.
And yes,I have to think and adapt accordingly.
Once again many thanks David, for your comments.
Dear Yusra!
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you are talking about. I work for two places at the same time, one is private university and the other university is public. The first one is very well equipped with whatever comes to a teacher's mind, but on the other hand the public one and unfortunately is not equipped at all and sometimes students cannot find enough seats to attend lectures.
But regarding of all the difficulties we face we as teachers do our best to help our students and this course is designed for that reason. Hope you and us all get something from each that we can add to our experience.