Final Reflection: Bridging the Digital and Physical Worlds

The course of New Technologies helped us re-envision our language classrooms of the era of digital world. The shifts that we are experiencing now are having a profound effect on our traditional beliefs about learning, teaching, and schooling in general. While the technology is developing, our kids continue to outpace our own use of these tools. We, educators, need to take the responsibility not only for modeling and teaching the safe, effective, and ethical use of all the Internet has to offer, but also for equipping the students with the new literacies that are quickly defining our world. Due to this course, I had the greatest opportunity to take on this responsibility having gained the necessary knowledge, skills, experience, and confidence, for which I want to express my sincere gratitude to my instructor. Thus, I am ready and it’s high time to complement traditional teaching by implementing new technological tools before they become too recreational tools to be refused being used as pedagogical tools.

Knowing about these tools is not enough for making learning and teaching more effective. It is no less important to know how and why these tools are implemented. I found the educational benefits of blogs, podcasts, wikis, digital storytelling, digital video production, learning management systems, and Google for education really attractive and I am going to use them in my classroom to enable the students to practice the four new dimensions of literacy, to complement learning strategies, to support active learning, which forms the basis of constructivism, to provide anywhere-anytime access, and to foster learner autonomy. We need to be responsive to these innovations to bridge the growing divide between the physical and digital worlds.

                With the help of blogs I will bring my learners from knowledge-based to higher levels of thinking as blogs increase students’ awareness of their language learning process, foster reflective learning and collaboration, reinforce students’ confidence and motivation in learning, and develop learners’ sense of the importance of English. Moreover, the research shows that blogs serve as a new reason to enjoy reading and writing, increase the impact and quality of writing skills, encourage a lot of pre-class reading and post-class reflection, and enable students to recycle vocabulary.  

            Podcasts and podcasting will serve my students as a new source of inspiration, a fresh start to arouse interest in learning and exciting tools to improve listening skills, to provide exposure to native speakers, to add a dimension of immediacy to listening practice, to develop learners’ skills of selecting and evaluating listening materials, to solve the problem of unproductive use of learning time, and to improve speaking skills.

            I will definitely use wikis in my classroom as they can serve as an engaging platform for interactive activities and present course information. They can be ideal for building communities, collaboration, easy participation, valuable content, and evolution over time. Like blogs, wikis provide a new reason for reading and writing, hence a new technique to improve these skills.

With the help of digital storytelling and video production, I will empower my students to create products that are different than just papers and worksheets. Besides, developing technology skills, this creative work can enable the learners to synthesize a number of skills, including researching, assessing, organizing, problem-solving, presenting, and writing their own voice.

My hands-on project gave me a lot of practical experience in using the Moodle, as a learning management system, from the teacher’s perspective. I am going to use this online environment because it fosters active learning where learners are engaged in making meaning, analyzing, investigating, collaborating, sharing, building, and generating. This online space will help me organize the teaching and learning content related to both the traditional and new technological tools.

Regarding the mobile-assisted learning, I may or may not use it at this point, although I know about the twenty uses and benefits of its application. If we could achieve top quality education through open education resources and distance learning, this would establish education as a fundamental human right, would enable lifelong learning and a wave of innovation. I would like to see the results of the experimentation of education analytics which will open a new door to understanding the behavior of learning and assist in improving our own practices.

I am looking forward to the teaching opportunity where I will provide the learners with more flexible ways of supporting learning, using new technological tools in an appropriate way as supplementing approaches to the existing pedagogy.  This course allowed me not only to learn about the above mentioned tools, but also to experience the educational benefits myself and to answer how I can incorporate the best-known principles about teaching and learning using technology as a tool for innovation.

 

Google for Education

Googling for education is a wonderful alternative to learning and teaching. The reasons are numerous. It enables Ls to extend their learning outside the classroom. It serves the various needs, preferences, and learning styles of Ls. They can get thousands of results by one search and find the answer to their question in an instant. It allows for anywhere-anytime approach to learning, increases engagement, communication and collaboration among and between Ts, LS, and parents to make sure that Ls take the ownership for their learning. Using technology prepares Ls for future career as almost all fields of life require skills of using technology. Ls become not only consumers but also creative producers.

To be able to create this stimulating environment we need to choose the appropriate tools which are free. Google offers apps for education which include Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Groups, Talk, Sites, Blogger, Maps, Google News, Analytics, etc. For example, science projects can be formed using google sheets, assessments can be administered using Google Forms, guests can be invited using Google Talks, and so on. It is no surprise that this rich environment can increase Ls’ engagement rate.

Security and privacy have always been an issue in education. With the help of Google’s Cloud, the institution can guarantee scalability, security and efficiency. Besides, all the data is in our control.

If we want to get started, we need to go to www.google.com/a/edu and sigh up. I found the support provided by the help center 24/7/365.25 really necessary and helpful. We can even stay up to date about the new features through Google Apps Release Calender. The introduction of chrombooks is also a great idea as they are easy to scale, customize and manage. There is also the possibility to connect with other schools, colleges, and universities using Google tools. The online training center will help to acquire skills for using the core tools in the classroom. Moreover, Google provides training for educators who are passionate about implementing new technologies in education.

Human mind is developing so fast, more than ever before, that it is challenging to manage to adapt to all these developments. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my instructor Dr. Madyarov for providing this fast array of educational opportunities which added a new platform to my teaching philosophy, hence to my teaching practice.

 

Cloud Computing

I got to realize how cloud computing can change the entire computer industry. By loading one application businesses will allow workers to log into a Web-based service which hosts all the programs the user would need to do his or her job. The network of computers that make up the cloud handles all the running of applications starting from the e-mail to complex data analysis programs. 

Businesses are running all kinds of apps in a cloud these days including custom-built apps. Moreover, you don’t’ need to pay for all the people, products and facilities to run them. They are more scalable, more secure, and more reliable, and cost less. You don’t buy anything as it is all in your monthly subscription. I read that Google and Amazon already have most of their IT resources in the cloud.

The flexibility that eliminates the constraints of traditional computing environment in terms of time, space, power, and cost, attracts not only businesses but also educational institutions.

The second youtube material provided an efficient way of using software and IT in education. The fact is that our expectations from IT have changed as we want it to work on a wider array of devices. These needs demand more improved IT services. The idea is that if we use on-premises software developed uniquely for our educational community, we will be concerned about the security and flexibility of its use, as the needs are evolving and resources are shrinking. On the other hand, if we use software delivered over the Internet, that is cloud computing, we will have worries about the protection, storage, and management of data. Also, we may not tailor the Internet services to meet our specific educational requirements. Thus, the solution is to combine the on-premises software and Internet cloud services because the limitations of one can serve as the strengths of the other and vice versa. This way we can achieve flexibility and choice which are very necessary to meet our ever evolving needs in this era of technology.

Analytics in Learning and Education

The article Analytics in Learning and Education opened a new perspective for me to look at the process of learning and teaching. It is likely to establish a new platform on which the future of the higher education will be based. Big data or analytics, as new tools of observation, will enable us to watch the educational processes from a new dimension which has never been revealed before, and gather an astonishing array of data that will have the greatest impact on higher education.

Every click, every update, every social interaction as also mentioned by Daphne Koller in the video material, can leave a digital footprint. I had a chance to examine this footprint in the file posted in the Moodle. I immediately started thinking about correlational studies which could find the relationships between a number of variables. This kind of learner-produced data will give us new insights in teaching and learning and transform our practice from ‘clinical’ to ‘evidence-based’ practice, as in medicine.

The difference between academic analytics and learning analytics is that the former focuses on data analysis at an institutional level, whereas the latter focuses on a specific environment in which learning takes place. Both can bring valuable impact on understanding the learning process. One of the biggest values that I could observe is that analytics can help us identify Ls at risk and provide immediate intervention to assist him in his educational success.

I strongly agree that the most crucial factor is not just the transformation of our perceptions or concepts about what is actually happening in the learning process, but the corrective transformation of processes connected with teaching and learning.

It was interesting to find out about the implications of the learning analytics, and one that I found, in the article is that assessment is no longer end-of-course activity, and each L can find learning content relevant to his background.

The same conviction was put forth by Daphne Koller in the video material who presented that the content of online courses they provide worldwide for free is divided into modules for different Ss with different backgrounds which allows Ss to follow much more personalized curriculum where every single S has to get engaged with the material.

She also presented the way they graded the Ss’ assignments. The solution is peer-grading or self-grading which very well correlated with the T’s grading. I believe this solution is also a useful strategy for Ss to learn from their learning experiences where there is a lot of collaboration. One interesting fact about feedback was the finding of the study that a S who would pose a question at 3 am was likely to receive a response within 22 minutes. I am quite sure that the ability to interact actively and receive immediate feedback or be told when or where you are right or wrong is really essential.

Technology allows not only for personalized feedback based for example on the distribution of wrong answers on the map but also solves the 30-year old problem connected with personalized curriculum.

Mark Twain’s words help me describe Armenian universities as a typical example of providing lecture-based format of education where “a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the Ss’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either”.

We need active learning, interactive learning, and the learner performance will increase in all parameters.