My will to bring to kansalaisopisto more...

Lately I have been thinking to use Skype to practice Italian with my intermediate group of students.
I found 3 hours ago through Pinterest this address https://education.skype.com/projects  and I contacted one Italian teacher in Honduras University. I hope we can arrange a lesson when the students can break the ice and introducing themselves in Italian. In fact the Italian will be the only language that they are going to use. It will be a big step for them in order to win the shyness. I have been thinking also to (re)motivate myself using more technology in my job. I think in kansalaisopisto the language learning is still too much in old fashion way. We have talented and devoted teachers. They are smart, they master their subjects (like languages) but they are not using enough other learning methods than book and games. In my opinion, to use platform as skype as a learning resource is one  of the most useful way to learn a language, a culture and built a net.
I have heard comments from my colleagues like this "The students in kansalaisopisto are there just for the company and fun not for real learning, especially languages. They want to learn how to order a beer or buy a postcards". Maybe for most of them this is true. But I know that there are others (maybe a minority) that they want to learn more than that. I know that I need to give them always something new and different. I can propose them stories, games, videos and much more learning exercises. However - to be a teacher means for me to give my students the best opportunities at the moment available. Why? because they deserve that. They choose to take part to my course and I want to give them the best service that they can have it. This includes all learning methods and resources that can be used to improve their language skills and build their self confident to use the language.
I think that - as a kansalaisopisto teacher -I should honor my students just for fact that they choose me as their facilitator. That´s the reason why I want to give them the best service as possible, 360 degrees way of learning Italian language, culture,food, people.Using all the material out there, having always in mind 2 things:
1) what is the best for their learning
2) having fun during the learning
Amen.  

The ideal classroom - Educational Science closing seminar

What is the ideal classroom settings and place arrangement in 21 century?
In order to answer that question I think we should consider several aspects.
1) age of the group and size
2) material and space what a teacher would need
3) the activities that a teacher would be doing in that space.

The exercise was fun. Pity that we had only 10´ to produce something but now that I have time I think that having the perfect learning environment is almost impossible to have. In our presentations we all of us had this teacher center classroom instead of students. Many time classroom are arranged that way: I work in 7 different schools and most of them have (what I call) the top 3:
teacher, board (On the teacher side) and desk (Better if individual desks).

In my ideal classroom I wanted to have a round table built from singles one. In this way is easier to separate them during test time for instance. The round table will help the collaborative learning.
Each desk surfice is made by a screen touch computer connected with the screen touch teacher computer. People don´t need to look at the board they have only to look down. In every station there headphones where students can listen as much as they need dialogues if they are learning languages.

In a corner of the class is going to be an inside garden (preferably) next to the big window. All the material is done with ecological material.
At the end of the class there is an area with big pillows and a library shelf with the classics of international literature. This idea comes from my experience with some adult students that actually they didn´t read at school any classic. I think it´s time to introduce that kind of aspect in Finnish school system.

In one wall is going to be an interactive window where every day come different art pictures from all over the word (Picasso, Leonardo and many others) in order to let the students to get to know a bit about art.

So actually my class is a language/culture lab that can be used with adult and young students that need to learn a foreigner language. Educational Science course was well organized and the today session very useful. The second block of the session was "try to guess to which theorist a classroom drawing belong to". I did miss in the first drawing the TV (small and in the corner) so my guess Montessori was wrong.
The second drawing I was correct. The third and fourth Skinner and Piaget.
Between all these theorists probably what I am bringing with me the idea of how important is the collaborative learning. I also enjoyed very much the idea of teaching video and comments there. I was looking for that kind of experiences when I started these studies and so I did.

In here some pictures of my ideal classroom.

Global and Culture Competence - task 2 - 2nd part

Task: In pakistan your will be working in a school with a group of students who aspire to pursue studeis in states or similar countries in the west. How will you plan your course to help them to acclimate into the culture?

I would organize a training of 6 meetings where students can express themsleves and if it´s necessary share with others their feelings about different cultures. I would choose working in small groups, discussions, sharing own personal experience. I would choose traditional presentation for giving practical information about working policies of different countries, case studies for deeping a specific situation, role play and simulation for processing identification in real life situation and personal limits in different contest. I would add energizers (to build the group) and creatives activites to stimulate also other communicative ways of approaching.

1st lesson: Working on getting to know each other, presentation about the course methodology, the programme and definition of the time, the way and the work places. Expectation about the course.

2nd lesson: Starting from students ideas: where would you like to go to work and why? Differences and similarities on those ideas. The role of a foreigner worker in west countries and working policies of the chosen west countries/states.

3rd lesson: what do you think will be your working day? comparison with the expectation and real day routine. Reflections of moving abroad.

4th lesson: Comparison and exchange on culture peculiarities of home country and west countries/states.
Why the dialogue is important in different cultures. Prejudices and Stereotypes. Why differences in culture are positive.

5th lesson: Tollerance and integration: reflection on own membership and nationality (in this case Pakistan)
Case study: analyse a concrete situation and different modalities of adaptation and integration.

6th and last lesson: analyse of the real opportunities on western markets. Reflection on ideas, projects, organizations and evaluation of own idea. Looking for already implement projects and analyse them from the culture point of view.

Sharing some thoughts after winter holidays

This evening I had opportunity to watch a video by Daphne Koller, co founder of Cursera about the potential of e-learning and what we're learning from online education. The video was really inspiring so I went to look what courses they have to offer and it seems that I found a couple of them which interested me.
Lately I have been thinking quite much at the potential of the e-learning and how I could use my skills in that field of education: the reality is that there is not a school ib Oulu area ready to take me on board. I have to make a move and start to dance according to the music. Nowadays is not the world what they were teaching me at school and that's the problem of my country. We should start to look around us and go to looking for opportunities. I won't have perhaps ever a permanent job from 8-16 5 days a week so I have to organize myself with the plan B. I have the biggest motivation sleeping in the next room and I will never let him down. I will provide for him opportunities to have an education, possibilities and choices. Those that I never had.
The potential of e-learning is extremely wide: is quite democratic cause everybody could access to the courses, it supports collaborative learning and last but not the least give a chance to re-invent your entire career if it is necessary. I find this last aspect very positive: I define myself as a person that could always change like a chameleon and give me the possibilities to become someone else (in potential) is like giving to an hungry animal food.
Here is the link to the speech:
Ted Daphne Koller What we are learning from online education

Make the move video

Our assignment was to watch a video about substanbility. Many pictures that cover different themes. Some of them were for me clear what you meant and other not. (for instance...Colosseum) but I will try to share my thoughts while watching the video (is this what you asked right?)
The youth unemployement rates are scary and is one of the biggest reason why I moved here. In my home country there are not jobs available so I was "forced" to seek opportunities somewhere else too. To favourite mobility should be more programes that let people go abroad for working or studies. I don´t know how many they are out there, but when I was studying, we had only Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci and Comenius and they are NOT for everybody. (meaning that in Italy to parteciapate in one of them you need to be good in school... ;) )
How balancing social economic and environment for the future generations?I read in internet few days ago that most of the ideas to save the world seems to be quite tecnological: sun shelter for instance is one of them(more in here http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/ten-ideas-to-save-the-world.html)
but I am thinking something more practical and why not? more fun.
First of all we should give to solving the world problems a lot of time in terms of hours per week and change the attitude: we should have exactly the attitude to achieve the goal, ready to take all the risks that a mission would include... it´s the same attitude that we have when we play games. I have been inspire from this video that actually give us an idea how to save the world using games:  http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html .
Now in here she used the World of Warcraft but think about to transfer this kind of games in normal day situations starting from kindergarden: simulation activities with young children, youngsters and so on. Starting with a tasks that you and only you can solve (the others give you a task and they trust you in saving the world): the task is suitable for you capability and you are able to achieve it with some effors and go to the second level and so on. What about using simulations on line games to support the collaborative aspects and help the future generations to litlle by little making the gap smaller and smaller?
Similuation games can be done also in real life not only on line: starting with the youngest generations:in kindergarden why we don´t   for instance play games according to the children´s age, personalities that helps to saving the world?
Giving children/youngsters tasks in the game that they think is reasonable for them and they can solve. This will give them motivation to go on until they can get the goals. Playing a game together is also give the player the feelings that the other players won´t leave the game until the end. They will be there playing with us until the goal.

Would it be enough as crazy ideas?

Edusci Day part 2

The edusci day was really intresting and surprising fun. Unfortunately I wasn´t able to attend to the debate session but I joined the group later in the afternoon.
Blair (out tutor) came out with the wheel of assessment: we supposed to complete some tasks in certain period of time (30´) and in the meanwhile rotating in order to work with the most people as possible.
We had different tasks: lesson plan, comment, personal study plan and blended lesson arrangments.
He pointed out quite practical thing:sometimes we can be in situation where we need to come up with an effective lesson. Even in 30´! Well I was surprised about myself cause I could came out with something in so short time. I have done something similar with vocabulary exercise and I know that for the students sound scary but at the end of the day they are proud of themself how they managed.
I could apply the same tecnique for instance with Social Worker students: they have a certain period of time to do a task or exercise. I should organize the logistic and figure out the proper way to do it.
At the end of the day we spoke again about the CSCL and Balir wanted us to think who is behind the elearning enviroment, who put some kind of information and why the put in certain way.
We ended up with a quite debate: it´s unbelivable how missunderstandings can be when we don´t speak our mother tongue.

Teaching training journal: Working on communication

Picture from:http://www.keyidea.it/servizi-offerti-professionali-competenze/comunicazione-aziendale/ 

Lesson number 2:  16.01.13

 "I am a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they´re interested in."  

(Gates B., Digital Dividends Conference, Seattle, Oct. 18, 2000 This quotes is retrieved on : http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9101838/The_quotable_Bill_Gates_In_his_own_words

The importance of communication in Social Services fields is one of the topic of today´s lesson. 
Learning outcomes of the lessons: 
- students will be able to spell their names and practice the listening of spelling of foreigner names and ordinal numbers.
- students will learn how to ask personal details in polite way. 
- students will be able to understand what is effective interpersonal communication and what is not.
Activities:
- Energizer in pair. 5´
- group of 3: list the possible clients that would need Social Services. 
- in pair:choose one client and make a background. Ask your partner the basic personal information in order to fill a form
- exercise on spelling and numbers individually (dictation from me)
- Communication activity: in pair the students are sitting back to back. Student A describes to student B a picture as precise as possible. Student B draws as precise as possible.
At the end of the activity students compare the original picture with the drawing.
- Discussion in plenum based on these questions: 1) where the biggest mistakes occured? 2) how an interpersonal communication should work to be effective? 

Method: 
group work, pair work, individual work and discussion in plenum. 

About the teaching training open seminar

The teaching seminar started in smoothly way: we answered yes or no to the following statements:

- Teaching is easy for me
- I often participate the lessons of another teacher and we develop our work together 

- I get a lot of feedback from my colleagues 

- I plan my lessons several hours 

- I want to control the time of use my teaching very exactly

These statements gave me also what kind of experiences my classmates had. I don´t have high expectation about my teaching training but as far as I know I should:
- write my core plan by the 7.1.13
- write the work contract
-write my everyday diary in here
- read the teacher guide

In add of that I should read the material that Ari (my tutor in Diak) gave me.

What I would like to do there:
- learn the general system of the school not only my class/student
- get feedback from my tutor in order to improve my work
- get new ideas of making a lesson
- establish a new work network with my tutor in order to continue future work together.
- establish also good relationship with the group and give them what they need...

This path is full of obstacles: first of all I have to teach English for those student that will work in welfare field, so I am going to face different English what I use everyday. So I have just to study and study and study.
An other worries is that my work timetable will be crazy: working also 2 Saturdays per month. You will see how I will manage all of this: voc 2, teaching training and basic of educational science.

Let´s listen some music....it will help not to think about it.
yet. I will survive - Gloria Gaynor

Virtual session 3 Evaluating learning and competences

In my previous post I was really waiting to see, how the discussion about assessing the learning during the 21 century will end.
Yesterday we had a virtual session (we start really to own Adobe Connect and it feels soooo nice) about Evaluating learning and competences.
One first challenge in our presentation was to use Prezi. A new, but quite interactive program, which stimulates at least our creativity. Creativity in my opinion has to be part of teaching, so I don´t regret of choosing Prezi as a tool. I have in any case some concerns about our video about SOLO taxonomy. My concerns regard the vocational point of view. I think for the next presentation we should take care about the vocational point of view (when putting a video there). 
You can check our work following this link: How to assess learning
The other groups spoke about:
What are the central features of competence based qualifications and vocational skills demonstrations?and What is the role of the student's self-evaluation in vocational education?



Competence based qualifications were new things for me: it seems also that in our break session only one had experiences with specialist in competence basic qualification.
The pro in CbQ is that it prepares people straight for labor market (even though the students are adults) and the con is actually the really short training period that students are going to get. The students have to be demonstrated during a practical exam. So candidates are evaluated with a scale from 1-3 and the candidate gives also a self -evaluation.
I found that really strange: does each student need an evaluation? And what kind of evaluation? We spoke in our presentation about this: we read quite much academic material about how to assess learning. I found the material good in theory but not so effective, when they were speaking for example about the different kind of tests you could give to a large or small class,
Assessment in learning is important both for teachers and students:  Students need to be evaluated all the time, but we should use correct tools. Teachers need to be monitored during the whole process. Portfolio is a good thing to use, and now that I am writing one it seems to have logic. 
Through this teachers and other students can read, comment, give feedbacks. So the students are actually stimulated all the time and willing to learn. The motivation is also really a big factor in self-evaluation and we all agree that self-evaluation is not always easy when we speak about teenagers who don´t know how they feel about something they made. So, sometimes it´s just a matter of methodology.  Through games you might reach them and they might evaluate what they have learnt. 
Self-evaluation anyway requires suitable method and should be qualitative: I couldn´t agree more that self-evaluation is really a big part of of the job learning. It motivates the students and lets them to find the strength and - why not - the passion to go on. 
I should also do my own self-evaluation, editing my personal study plan. Read it again and laugh aloud and write  over and over. 

During the session I found very useful to go through this: we need to evaluate ourselves and others in order to learn together, in order to be ready to the labor market in practical issues.

This is really lifelong learning.


References:
- Biggs J., Teaching for Quality Learning at the University,  Formulating and clarifying curriculum objectives, Open Univ Pr; November 2007 edition, Society for Research Into Higher Education. 
- Jarvis P., Adult Education & Lifelong Learning abstract Assessing and Evaluation Routledge Falmer 2004 
-Wankat P., Oreoviz F. Teaching Engineering, chapter 11 Testing, Homework and Grading 
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ChE/AboutUs/Publications/TeachingEng/chapter11.pdf

VS 2: All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn´t hurt!

I find myself eating a piece of chocolate while writing reflections on VS2.

GIVE: I think me and Peter  handled pretty well the session. We were in schedule, we gave possibility to everybody to share opinions and we acted as active listener. We supported each other.

GET: My expectations for the VS2 were pretty much the same as for VS1 with one exception: this time we were going to be a chair group. So I was prepared for the worst....To be a chair group is not as easy as it looks like: you have to be careful in many small details including the tecnical problems (and last time we indeed had them).
Team Earth opened the session. Even though there wasn´t so much to learn in their video, it was absolutely funny and a relaxing way to open the session. After that I was really full of energy and relaxed.
They presented the theme using popplets: what PI (Progressive Inquiry) and PL (Project learning) mean? They were using beforehand material. It was useful for me to have a little back up and during the session the same sand box where to make the castle. It was pity that my computer crashed...in the middle of everything. Based on this experience with planet Earth I am definitely going to insert popplets wherever it is possible and try to fix my computer...I still don´t understand why this machine doesn´t let me in the popplet page.
Team Jupiter present reaaaalllly delicious theme: they choose practical example to speak about how the skills of PI and PLE can be taught - They taught us how to make chocolate. Their presentation went also really well. It was important for me to see the differences in practical ways between PI and PL. The theories are pretty similar in many ways but Jupiterians gave me better ideas.
Saturn: the last but not the least. They chose to show us a video and also a blog:  How lecturing can be enriched in virtual learning? In the blog there were videos that showed how to use google drive (for instance). I believe lecturing in virtual learning is possible in all fields - also for those who are really hard to believe that technology can be used in all kind of levels. If you are studying to become a farmer - where do you need technology? Well for example using iPad to track some animals like reindeer for example or to make some video which teaches the younger ones how to drive a tractor.
So from all presentations I have got something and from some, how can I see the big picture step by step. I am almost tempted to write down again my Personal Study Plan from the beginning.

What was really usefull for me was that all groups gave practicial examples. This is probably what I haven´t noticed in my previous virtual sessions.

I am still thinking pros and cons of PI and PL. Does it depend from the group in front of me what am I going to use? Which methods are suitable for my actual students? They both seem to be working.

AVOID: for the future sessions I would avoid watching videos. We definetly can do that beforehand and use our time in building and learning something new. If pre material has to be studied, I suggest to give at least one week’s time to the people to read it.
If we are using popplets we must be sure that everybody is invited.
Using popplets instead of writing a chat is faster.
One must definitely use three different sessions instead of that one with three breakouts.
If someone isn´t able to come (for really, really good reason) to the session give him/her extra material that can also be visualized in Optima so that others can also find ideas and learn new things.


Of course while you are reading at this post you could also listen to: 
All you need is love (Beatles)

from Espoo to Oulu

I create this qr code few minutes ago and I am still working on it.

My first experience in these studies and taking ´"a class" was  in Espoo last week.
One thing that it really impressived me about the course was how much technologies could be used for learning. I noticed that until now I haven´t use so much technologies during my teaching (I use mostly games and group/pair work) and I think that some platforms could be used very well in some of my classes. Of course it would be the best if one day I could teach history to a class of youngsters and apply all these technologies for learning purpose. Using these tecnologies suplies were important to me because I could find a way to be in touch with youngsters and get them involve and engage into the learning. As an adult teacher it was also important to me notice that some of most platforms it requires time and a big effors for those who don´t know what facebook is or an i-pad.
The experience in Espoo I liked a t all: I found very important for me sharing experience with other people, discuss with them and try to find solutions together.
I found also very inspring the Monday class: Group dynamics. Most of the activities what we did in the class I tried already with my students. Me stressed the importance of comunication (so important in a group) and also the role of leader. Me as a leader for a group (what kind of leader I am) make me think quite much. Jana, the teacher from Lubjana sent us her PPT. Now they are also available in my Google Drive folder.  If you are intrested to read those please feel free to ask.

Blackboard: things to keep in mind

While I am preparing myself for Espoo days I read throught the threee thnigs that we supposed to.
I focused my attentition on  Oivallus Final Report. I found there again things that I should keep in mind for my future career and to be a better learner. I really want to do my part to do things better. 

-Working in groups, learning from others and refining the ideas of others are skills
that need practicing. They are not current strengths in Finland. That is why
they need to be emphasised in educational institutions more systematically than is currently being done.
-Learning is about studying and practicing.Very few people are natural talents.Learning is not always nice and easy; sometimes it is downright uncomfortable. However, it is always rewarding.
-The culture of one correct answer should be abolished. It is completely wrong to guide learners
to reach for never being wrong.
- If we wish to raise pupils to adopt a collaborative working culture, they need to see teachers acting according to that culture.
- Included in social skills is for example the ability to form contacts with people in multicultural networks, to discuss, to understand the viewpoints of others and to listen. Because these skills
are really needed in work (and in life generally) developing them into natural tools requires long-term practice.