A First Time Teaching-Mommy: 5 Ways to Engage the Reluctant Student

A First Time Teaching-Mommy: 5 Ways to Engage the Reluctant Student:          

Every teacher has that student. The student who spends the whole period with their head down. The student who never turns anyt...

My F2F students are not for online learning. I have been asking them since I started my online experience. My colleagues from the Wroclaw University of Technology, Foreign Languages Department and Department of Polish for Foreigners are not even familiar with online education. They sometimes use Moodle, but not incredibly often. On the other hand, recently I have to fight for a computer laboratory to give my lectures. At present, I would not be able to carry lectures in English on Polish History and Culture for students from all over the world, without access to the internet. Using new technologies is the MUST for me.

Are my students engaged?

Video 4

I have been teaching languages for over 40 years.

I taught Polish as a foreign language in traditional settings at the Wroclaw University of Technology for about 41 years. I have been teaching English to speakers of other languages for over 25 years.

In 2000, I became an American Citizen.

In 2010, I started my online adventure mainly on WizIQ. Since that time I have been using technology in my classes.

I have been training in both face-to-face and blended learning arrangements.

Overview

Are you unsatisfied with your level of Spoken  English?

Do you want to become a forward-thinking speaker and reach to a great extent fluency?

Is joining English meetings very challenging? Is it difficult to participate and communicate efficiently?

If so, my course is for you!

Target Students

·       Are you nervous about communicating in English with foreign colleagues?

·       Do you have a good command of English, but feel like your flexibility may be lacking?

·       Would you like to learn how to sound more natural when making small talk and discussing problems?

·       Do you feel the need to improve your conversational skills?

The Elephant, The Rider and the Path

A commonly held belief is that human behavior is the result of rational decision making based on available information. A closer look into the science of behavior reveals the powerful role our emotions play in our decision making process. In this animated video we look at the behavior change process using Jonathan Haidt’s analogy of an elephant, a rider, and a path.

Join me on Edmodo

www.edmodo.com/halinabaza/referral

LEARNING AND TEACHING ONLINE

LEARNING AND TEACHING ONLINE

by Halina Ostankowicz-Bazan 

There are numerous definitions of online learning in the literature, definitions that reflect the diversity of practice and associated technologies. Carliner (1999) defines online learning as educational material that is presented on a computer. Khan (1997) defines online instruction as an innovative approach to delivering instruction to a remote audience, using the Web as the medium.

However, online learning involves more than just the presentation and distribution of the materials using the Web: the learner and the learning process should be the focus of online learning.

Teaching face-to-face and teaching online are both teaching, but they are qualitatively different.Online education starts when faculty move from the traditional classroom to the online classroom. There are some things that the two have in common, but there are also plenty of differences.

1. The online teacher plays the role of guiding students through one or more online learning experiences. These experiences are every so often designed and planned long before the course starts so that the teacher can devote more time to guiding the students and less time preparing lessons. Within this role, the teacher directs and redirects the attention of learners toward fundamental concepts and ideas.
2. Learning is hard work and studying online can sometimes feel isolating, confusing, or discouraging without the guide.

As a result, the effective online teacher makes intentional efforts to communicate precise encouraging messages to individual learners and the group as a whole. Moreover, even when providing constructive feedback, the teacher as supporter finds a way to promote positive messages alongside the critiques. Encouragement and welcoming support are an important approach to maintaining an overall positive morale in the class. At times, learners may fall into negative comments about themselves, the class, or their classmates (even the instructor, on occasion). The coach makes every effort to find ways to listen, respect the learner’s frustrations, but also to help them reframe the situation in a manner that students are more active and creative.

3. Many people focus on the role of the teacher as role model, and that is valuable. However, the role of the coach is just as important, even more, important if we want learners to develop high levels of competence and confidence. The online teacher must move beyond just modeling a depth motivation for the subject and personal skill with the content. The mentor needs to find ways to hand the matter over to the students to do something with it. Applied projects and papers work well for this, and it gives the teacher an opportunity to be a coach and advisor.
4. Learners need some feedback about their work. How are they doing? Are they getting closer to meeting the learning objectives or not? The effective online teacher finds ways to give thoughtful feedback to individual learners and, when appropriate, groups of students.
5. Without intentional efforts to build a positive social environment, online learning can feel lonely and impersonal. As a result, the online teacher must serve as an encouraging host, facilitating introductions, using discussion starters to enable conversations among students, and taking the time to get to know students and referencing that knowledge in interactions with them.
6. The whole thing is documented in an online course. The teacher can tell when and how many times a student logs into the course, what pages were viewed or not, how many discussions posts the student contributed, and much more. This data can be abused, but it can also be used to make adjustments and informed decisions by an online teacher. If a student is not logging in or failing to visit pages in the course with the direct instructions, the coach points that out to the learners or reorganizes the content so that it is easier to find.
7. Online courses are rich with content and sometimes students can get lost in all that content. The teacher as regulator intentionally releases content in chunks that are appropriate for students. Sometimes this comes in the form of only publishing content one week at a time. Other times, the teacher releases it all at once but directs students only to focus on individual parts at a time. Another key is to break content into smaller segments. Rather than a twenty-page document of instructions, it is better to consider breaking it into ten two-page documents.
8. Good teachers are lifelong learners, and they can model that learning for their students in a variety of ways in the online classroom. The teacher can be active (but not too active or it will silence students) participant in online discussions, sharing what they are learning about the subject, and even complete all or fragments of some assignments, sharing their work with the students. The procedure goes a long way in building an exciting and dynamic online learning community where one and all in the community commits to exemplifying the qualities of a lifelong learner.

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/eight-roles-of-an-effective-online-teacher/

 

 

Restoring Humanity to Teaching, and Delight to Our Classrooms - Education Week

Restoring Humanity to Teaching, and Delight to Our Classrooms - Education Week

I have resolved to put less self worth into my students’ test scores, and more into the degree of excitement and curiosity I see in their faces each day.

I have made time to find out what my students like about our class, what they don’t, and why. One of the simplest ways to do this is the “Stoplight” activity, where students write one thing they want you to keep doing, one thing they want you to stop doing, and one thing they want you to start doing.
As a result, I took down the behavior chart this year. I have found ways to teach my students to work hard and be kind to one another without resorting to punishments or prizes. Being a teacher is harder now, but it’s better, too.

I love Philip Pullman’s line that “Responsibility and delight can co-exist.”

Challenges involved in learning online?

 

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges for teachers is to deliver a consistent experience to a large and varied general populations.

Teachers and students should not carry through device management. Their priorities should be placed on learning.

Technology is not the creator. Substantial belief in innovation is less important than the requirements of students and teachers.

Teachers have a well-defined responsibility with implementing, and identifying, the best combination of digital learning tools for each student.

Different approaches to learning, such as project-based learning,  effective education, game-based learning, and more, is a part of personalized blended learning models. Consequently, such innovations will call for demonstration how their package improves learning outcomes.

Most challenges have to do with the procedures, but they have nothing to do with the teaching itself. To make it simple, if you know how to teach, all you need to do is learn about the elementary online tools available for online teaching, and begin using them.

As mentioned earlier, teaching an online class can be time-consuming. Also, developing an online class can be overwhelming. Learning and becoming proficient using an LMS takes time, and uploading materials to the online environment is also demanding and takes much time. Once you learn how to use the LMS, you need to get to teach students through it.

The time required to generate a new class can be a problem with developing online classes.

The instructor should be able to take care of the subject matter rather than spend

countless time is managing difficulties connected with the technology.

One of the most recommended ways to cope with the additional time required for teaching online classes is to decrease the class size.

Students also regularly run into technological problems and they need support with technology issues.

Navigating the Unique Challenges of Online Teaching. (n.d.). Retrieved from  

http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/ptacc/online-teaching.pdf