EDUCATE 'EM ALL

Image retreived from Pexels under  CC0 licence  by Tookapic „Change is the end result of all true learning” Leo Buscaglia I’ve changed during the ONL course and I really feel I’ve learnt A LOT! Everything is so fresh, so it’s hard to say what was the most important, but let’s try to sum up some reflections… First, I have to say that I started with almost 10 years of experience in teaching, but it was restricted to classroom teaching only, although my digital literacy happened to be not bad (that was encouraging at the beginning of the course, that I wasn’t lost with the tools etc.). Before the ONL I didn’t actually participate in any online course, so the whole experience was very new for me. I’m really happy, that my first online course was so well-designed and great, so my attitude towards online learning is very positive now.  Actually, when thinking of our FOCUS courses that we are going to create next year, I feel sorry that we probably won’t be abl...

Image retreived from Pixabay under  CC0   licence The topic 4 from ONL course raised up lively discussion in our PBL13 group. All of us had some slightly different ideas of what blended learning actually is. Similarly, if we look through the literature, we can find many ambiguous definitions. The one that appealed to me the most, was quoted by Driscoll (2002): blended learning is - “To combine various pedagogical approaches…to produce an optimal learning outcome…”. So, the cycle of blended learning does not necessarily incorporate digital tools, however, web-based technology is often inseparably identified with this way of learning. That was the first surprise. I guess the other was, that when we took a look at our teaching methods used so far, it turned out that all of us use different models of blended learning! We just didn’t know that at the time. I don’t need being convinced, that blended learning is beneficial. But for the doubtful ones I gathered tw...

Image retreived from Pixabay under  CC0   licence From very early days of our life we are learning…we are learning independently by trials and errors. I cannot count how many times I’ve heard from my 2-years old son „no, no, no, don’t help me, I want to do it by myself”. By learning from others, by getting ready-made solutions, I guess we lost some part of our innate creativity. But there is no other way. By living in society, small children start to absorb  information at an exponential rate. So we, as the teachers, must learn how to teach wisely to protect/strengthen our students critical thinking and how to show our students that balanced collaboration can be so powerful. A key issue to start with is the importance of getting to know each other, when working in the group. I noticed that that in standard classroom, Students are really sensitive on whether I remember all of their names. Sometimes it’s hard with large groups, but it’s worth to find a way t...

Image retreived from MaxPixel under CC0 licence Among many important issues that we have considered under the topic 2 (ONL Course) , my particular interest was raised by Open Educational Resources (OER) of which I had a very vague idea before. What are OER: "teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation and distribution" [1]. I like this idea very much. Why...? Something that stayed in my mind after revising this topic, are our Moderator's words: How much from what you wrote/created during your work was actually made only of your original thoughts? Well, very little...so why not to share? Of course, like with every breakthrough concept, there are some controversies, sensitive problems (e.g. whether to share someone's "know how", how to protect materials from improper/dishonest usage, the quality of prepared materials, credibility issues). ...

Digital literacy - the term i didn’t even know before joining ONLcourse will be the keynote of my first post. Since I perceive myself as a rather analytical mind I pretty much like this definition: “ digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement ” [1] During the first weeks of the course i've also learnt about different theories on how people are able to develop their digital literacies and behave in the digital world. I must say that until now, i had been an involuntary follower of M. Prensky theory [2]. After deeper reflection, the idea of digital natives , who absorb digital technologies all their lives and theoretically should be better in using them, seem irrelevant to me. Some studies showed that the concept of digital native has no direct translation to higher education, since e.g. students born after 1984 use digital technologies, but only few from the wide range of possibilities [3]. The theory of visitors and residents ...

Hi! My name is Ania. I work at the University of Gdańsk (Poland) as a part time teacher/part time scientist in the field of marine microbiology/biotechnology.  I’m a rookie in the blogosphere. I’ve started this blog, because this month i joined the ONL course. I hope that my blog will be the place for me to stop and reflect on digital world of teaching and learning, in this crazy, fast reality. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by Sarcasmo  Flickr Image at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sarcasmo/21719467