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Showing posts with label moocs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moocs. Show all posts

Friday, November 20, 2015

What is pair teaching? What are its benefits and drawbacks?



 Index Terms—Pair teaching, pair lecturing, team teaching, reflective practice, reflection-in-action, constructive alignment, teacher development.
Pair lecturing enables a more thorough reflection-on-action since the teaching experience is shared with a pair professor. It also allows deeper reflection-in-action, incorporating student interaction into the lecture plan while keeping the assessment methods and the teaching activities affiliated with the course objectives.
A quick search on the phrase “pair teaching “using Google or Scholar gives many definitions.

According to Pair Teaching – an eXtreme Teaching Practice by Roy Andersson and Lars Bendix 

https://www.lth.se/fileadmin/lth/genombrottet/konferens2006/Insp06-final.pdf

Pair Teaching, is working with a partner who can help and support you during some or all of four fundamental values: Feedback, Communication, Respect, and Courage.
Pair Teaching is highly repetitious or frequentative and covers some specific practices. The objective of cooperation is to support the improvement of student learning.
The partner is supposed to help verify the whole process of going through all of the stages of the learning cycle – and carry on doing it.
In the general remarks, we read about the eXtreme Programming concept.
The Pair Programming practice of eXtreme Programming uses the model of a driver, who does the work and takes care of the details, and a navigator, who observes, comments, asks questions, makes suggestions and, in general, takes care of the big picture. Additionally, it recommends switching between the roles of driver and navigator within a pair. There is also the suggestion that taking turns should apply to the practice of Pair Teaching.
The considerable standard definitions of Pair Teaching have absolutely nothing to do with the real setting of teaching in pairs (some of the hits deals with teaching pairs). Pair Teaching is not a well-known and well-defined concept. Searching instead for “team|group|collaborative teaching” gives the impression that these are the words or phrases that are frequently used because of its recurrence popularity.
However, by insisting on the use of Pair, we want to stress the difference between two people solving a task and a group of people building a product (student learning) and for which they might make use of PT or collaborative teaching.
The cost-effectiveness of Pair Programming is observable, in part, because the two activities (writing the code and reviewing the code) are carried out in parallel. In point of fact that there is no tradition of accurate reflection on teaching in PT, we have to rely more on the benefits to justify the added costs of two people presence. Furthermore, the pair will also be able to take care of larger groups than one person.
Teaching a course together seems to have more benefits than drawbacks.
In conclusion, teaching should not be a solitaire activity, but something that is done in pairs. Done the right way, Pair Teaching can bring many benefits that compensate the additional costs.
Some of these benefits are immediate and explicit – like having someone to brainstorm with, someone who can help “sort out” your ideas, the possibility to handle larger groups of students and the ability to step in for each other in the case of absence. However, most paybacks are more long-term benefits.
Alternatively, “hidden” glitches – like communicating information, assuring quality aspects, educating colleagues are significant. It is important to put an accurate value also to these benefits when judging if Pair Teaching is cost-effective or not.
REFERENCES
  • Andersson, R., Bendix, L., eXtreme Teaching, in proceedings of 3: ePedagogiska Inspirationskonferensen, LTH, Lund, May 31, 2005.
  • Andersson, R., Bendix, L., Towards a Set of eXtreme Teaching Practices, in proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Science Education, Koli, Finland, November 17-20, 2005.
  • Andersson, R., Bendix, L., eXtreme Teaching – a Framework for Continuous Improvement, to appear in Journal of Computer Science Education, 2006.
  • Beck, K.: Extreme Programming Explained – Embrace Change,  Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2005.
  • Boyer, E., L., Scholarship Reconsidered. Priorities of the Professoriate, The Carnegie Foundation, 1990.
  • Hedin, G., Bendix, L., Magnusson, B., Teaching eXtreme Programming to Large Groups of Students, Journal of Systems and Software, January 2005.
  • Kolb, D. A., Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning, Prentice-Hall, 1984.
  • Pair teaching in preservice teacher education P Medgyes, E Nyilasi - Foreign Language Annals, 1997 - Wiley Online Library
  • Medgyes, P. and Nyilasi, E. (1997), Pair Teaching in Preservice Teacher Education. Foreign Language Annals, 30: 352–368. doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.1997.tb02358.x

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Back to the Basics.Online or Not Online...


http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Technology-Will-Never-Fix/230185/


"How many of you have ever tried to take a free course on the Internet?" 
Over half the class raised their hands.
"And how many completed it?" 
All the hands went down.

Friday, January 30, 2015

eBook News

I've always felt that anything that attracts kids to reading it a good thing. From getting them to read books about movies that th...
 
Do you use eBooks?
Are you for paper books or eBooks?
What is the future of reading books?
Although the want for e-book services in libraries has grown, and so the number of people with e-readers, some difficulties still keep libraries from being able to provide the popular technology. Just recently have most big publishers agreed to sell e-books to libraries for public use. It has taken many years but publishers of electronic books now realize that libraries providing an e-book to patrons can be a huge opportunity for advertising and usually results in patrons becoming customers.

Monday, January 26, 2015

Course Feeds Connecting Online for Instruction and Learning Conference (CO15)



Online Conference CO15
Connecting Online for Instruction and Learning Conference (CO15)
Connecting Online for Instruction and Learning is a free 3-day Massive Open Online Conference (MOOC) on the first weekend of February. The conference started in 2009 with CO09. CO15 is the 6th annual event and is scheduled for February 6-8, 2015.
WizIq has been sponsoring the event since 2009. Participants will be able to access the webinars using the WizIQ desktop on a Windows Operating System and the WizIQ, Inc apps on their iPads and iPhones. Get the Apps for free.
The theme of the current free conference is connecting online for collaborative work. The topics will include learning, research, instruction, book authoring, and online teaching and learning in the public and the private sector.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Connected Educators 2014

Swipe Copy

 Connected Educator Month: Those who do, teach. Own it, worldwide. October 2014.
A celebration of community, with educators at all levels, from all disciplines, moving towards a fully connected and collaborative profession. Convened by the connected education community, with the full support of the U.S. Department of Education, building on the success of previous years with hundreds of new events and activities from dozens of organizations and communities. We’ll be working together, in October and beyond, with all stakeholders, leaving no device unturned, no country or learning environment unexplored. Get involved at connectededucators.org.

About Connected Educator Month

Millions of educators and others around the world have participated in hundreds of professional development opportunities as part of Connected Educator Month (CEM) the past two years. Originally developed by the U.S. Department of Education and its partners as part of the Connected Educators initiative, CEM offers highly distributed, diverse, and engaging activities to educators at all levels. Based on its success in 2012 and 2013, the initiative is poised to reach even more educators in 2014, through expanded partnerships and enhanced programming.
Highlights of CEM 2013 included:
  • More than 300 major education organizations, companies, or communities officially participating, including, for the first time, entire states and districts
  • More than 600 national events and activities conducted officially (on the CEM calendar), many more conducted independently
  • More than 1 million web pages and other online locations referencing, promoting, or discussing the event (a 300% increase over CEM 2012)
  • More than 14 million educators and others reached around the world via Twitter alone (more than triple the reach of 2012)
  • Recognition as one of the top educational technology news stories of both 2012 and 2013 
For more information about the first two years of CEM, see our reports on the 2012 and 2013 events, and/or this post and video by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (who hosted his first Twitter chat as part of the 2013 celebration). Connected Educator Month in 2012 and 2013 was convened by the American Institutes for Research and its partners in the Connected Educators project (2010-2014), on behalf of the Office of Educational Technology of the United States Department of Education.

CEM 2014

As successful as CEM 2013 was, there are still educators who are not connected, and many more who are not yet taking full advantage of the opportunities connected education affords. More broadly, the field of connected education itself is still in need of further stimulation and development. Based on participant feedback, we hope to:
  • Make the event more fully global, to better incorporate learnings from around the world, supporting multiple countries in the development of full event slates as part of the celebration
  • Make the celebration more fully mobile and blended, in reflection of trends in educational practice and educator use
  • Provide a greater emphasis on collaboration in our planning, tools, and activities, as the logical next step beyond connection, and address participants’ desire for a more action-oriented approach (2x+ as many events were collaborative in 2013)
  • Launch a series of ongoing connected education initiatives during the month (our own and others) to keep momentum building throughout the year, as well as develop more year-round resources (like 2013’s district toolkit)
  • Include more events/activities that pull in other education stakeholders—parents, students, whole school communities, policymakers—to magnify the event’s creative impact We also expect to enhance CEM’s editorial programming and infrastructure to keep the event fully accessible as it continues to grow, as well as engage in more extensive capacity-building to empower the broader community to take more ownership of the celebration.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Online Evolution and Predictions

It is known that HarvardX and other institutions continue to create new massive open online courses (MOOCs; see the current list at harvardx.harvard.edu/modules-courses).But with hundreds of offerings available on edX, Coursera, and emerging platforms (such as the Business School’s HBX; see harvardmag.com/hbx-14), emphasis is now shifting to research on applications and assessments.


One promising avenue is the “blended” or “flipped” course, in which content such as recorded lectures is made available to students, like a multimedia textbook, before they meet with teachers in the classroom. Gordon McKay professor of computer science Harry R. Lewis described how he reengineered a course this way, with low-tech recordings costing a tiny fraction of the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in a full-scale HarvardX offering, in “Reinventing the Classroom” (September-October 2012, page 54).


Such courses appeal for two very different reasons. They may deepen learning, if class time formerly spent on lecturing is used instead to grapple with difficult concepts or work through problem sets with fellow students. They can also be an avenue toward efficiency and economy as more students, in effect, share a lecturer.

Online Evolution

Monday, August 4, 2014

My online MMVC14 presentation





Moreover, this progress in technology not only puts an emotional impact on the users who directly have access to information, but also generates countless access to education around the world.
Teaching resources are now reachable virtually to everyone very often for no fee.
Does existing know-how use the human touch or education has just become a technical structure?

Friday, June 27, 2014

Learn to Blend & Flip with Technology

http://www.wiziq.com/course/14339-blogging-reflective-learning

Course Description
Many teachers feel alone. They wish they could share information and ideas with other teachers around the globe. This course provides teachers with opportunities to collaborate with other teachers on how to blend and flip their classes with technology.

This is a free hands-on professional development course for educators and/or anyone who wants to share information in a socially meaningful way. The course includes live online classes (with recordings), content (via the courseware), discussions (via the course feed), and hands-on activities.

Participants will learn how to create videos using Webcams via WizIQ classes, screencast-o-matic, PowerPoint presentations, and Google drive. They will upload the video files to Youtube and Vimeo for blended learning, the flipped class, and to market their online courses. Participants will learn how to teach with web technologies such as blogs, wikis, google drive, badges, the WizIQ live class, Moodle, social networks, and videos.