Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and
follow.
Chinese Proverb
This well-known Chinese proverb is one of the most
enchanting one which shaped my career as a teacher. I belive that teachers are
the leaders with a lot of responsibilities. As being the leader of the learning
environment, the responsibilities of a teacher has increased especially in the
last decade. Having a good “subject-matter knowledge” is not enough for a
successful teaching anymore. Being a teacher means a lot more than that in
these days. Teachers should give inspiration to their students by the way they
do things. Teachers cannot fall behind their students.
Having such ideas in my mind, I found myself falling
behind my students in using Web tools. I had to do something, so I am here as a
part of the “Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web" (Web
Skills) course with the American English Institute in the Linguistics Department
at the University of Oregon (UO AEI).
It is going to be a 10 week course and during this
course, I am going to publish my reflections about the course in a blog that I
have created. Creating this reflective blog is one of the first week tasks. Every
week I am going to write my reflections about that specific week.
The first week of our journey started with excitement and curiosity. When I
got the first task, I felt nervous as blogging was something new for me.
Although I was very well supported by our trainers, still I had to do some
extra research and reading about how to create a blog. I also visited many blog
pages including the ones which were created by my coursemates.
One other task in our first week was to get as much information about the course
as possible, so I also had to do online research about the course and do other
related readings.
To be honest creating a new blog wasn’t as difficult as I thought. I have
lots of other things that I have to learn but I am very positive about being creative
on the studies I will be conducting during this course.
Hi Hülya: Your blog looks great as a first start, and I think you can slowly add to it over time. By the end of ten weeks I know you will be an expert blogger.
ReplyDeleteRobert
Thanks Robert, I am very much motivated with your words. You can be sure that I will do my best to be an expert by the end of this period.
DeleteHello
ReplyDeleteHulya,
I like the way you have written the reflection with proverb. Yes, we were able to create the blog, especially, with encouragement and guidance of Elliott. Your blog will be source for learning. Thanks.
From,
Melodious Maheshwor
Dear Maheshwor, I would like to thank you for your nice words. I am really happy to share this platform with you.
DeleteHi again Hülya: I think the students will always know more about the latest gadgets then their teachers. There was a time when I was ahead on that, but everything is now changing so fast it will never be like that again I think. Instead, we as teachers have to know about "academic uses of technology," that is where we should have an easier time keeping an edge over our students. For example, students know google, but rarely do they know how to do a specific search or how to critically think about the hits that turn up. -Robert
ReplyDeleteHi Robert, Thanks for the comment.. I completely agree with you about guiding our students with the "academic uses of technology". When we take the issue from that point of view, things might look a bit more promising for me as a teacher.
ReplyDeleteHi, Hulia,
ReplyDeleteit was interesting to read your reflection of Week 1 that you described in such a detailed way. I guess most of the participants went (and still go)through the same challenges like you. Now, that we started Week 2, my fears in Week 1 seem ungounded and unreasonable. I guess weekly assignments will be getting more and more complicated... :)
Well, good luck!
Irada Samadova from neighboring Azerbaijan
Hi Hulya,
ReplyDeleteYou are the most welcome dear, am glad to share my time with you in this course.I think it's fundamentally important for teachers from time to time to get to know about what is going on in his colleagues classes.
Yes I agree with Robert that one need to be an edge over students' level to feel a teacher.
We still can keep our confidence of teacher even when using tools the students may master better than us.As long as we make pedagogical use of these tools in order to accompany them improve in their learning.
I also share Irada concerns about weekly tasks, I do recognize am kind of red neck in regard of every task until I fill it out.
Take care,
Mariam