It might be a bit late in posting about my graduation, but I was overwhelmed with many things since I completed my MA program. It was a wonderful but challenging program that took me three years to complete from the University of Manchester. Taking the decision to make this program via distance learning mode in the Middle East might seem weird since many Arab countries still don’t accredit such kind of programs. However, I felt that it might be absurd that this is still the situation. It is becoming obvious that many Universities and academic institutions around the world invest so much in such type of learning and hence, it has to form a new dimension of today’s learning and educational systems.
In my final dissertation, I discussed the effect of online learning/ education on the current economical recession as well as other world crisis (e.g. H1N1 flu) in forming a solution to learner’s access to education. I also introduce Moodle as a friendly VLE in forming new ways of learning in the Secondary education. If you need further details regarding this study, please email me or add a comment. These are photos of my graduation, too. 
This post is a suggested topic to include in the edtech chat series. I just would like to move a bit from discussing or debating the advantages/ disadvantages of technology to the actual implementation of it in the classroom. I would love to hear people talking from the field and sharing their real life and classroom practices.
Tags: #edtech, implementation, technology, twitter
I should confess it has been so long since I last visited this blog. Working on my dissertation took almost all my time. My initial plan was to use this blog for major parts of my research work. However, things turned to be very stressful at some points that I couldn’t stick to this. I should also confess that rely on technology could be very risky sometimes. May be that is why they say if you do not have three copies of your electronic files in three different places, then they don’t exist! I always needed backups of my files and writings sometimes newer versions on daily or weekly basis. Things are much better now and I think I should release some more time for this blog. Finally, it is nice to use it between classes and reflect on some my personal teaching context.
Ever wondered how some presenters manipulate data to show them in an impressive manner that attracts poeple’s attention. I came across this TED video which shows an amazing new initiative from the UK. The new service is based on the collaboration of some educators and programmers to integrate the use of powerpoint, flash, animation, and some other applications to produce amazing animated graphs and charts. You better enjoy watching this video yourself and think about the video of data analysis and interpretation in relation to this..
It is amazing what technology might look like in the future. Thinking about the possibilities and potentials of applied technologies for accessibility and life might drive one’s crazy. After all, what seemed to be a dream 10 years ago is now a simple reality because of technology! I leave you with this interesting introduction of the 6th sense of technology..
Tags: 6th sense, technology, visual
In one of the threaded discussions of the curernt IATEFL conference, Cardiff online 2009, a teacher about about websites that could be used to automatically grade students’ essays. Although it might look like a dream for busy teachers, I found quite few helpful responses on that thread. One of which mentioned using Moodle for peer marking where learners could anonymously grade their peers’ writings. This is an amazing option I have never tried in moodle. It gives moodle, as a VLE, a lot more power and encourage better use for writing practices and collaboration among learners. I hope to be able to share more findings on this regard latter.
Today I found monitor talents which is based on monitoring and interviewing some of the talented figures in several fields and share some of their ideas and perceptions about the future.
Access to Minds is a new trailer video where these leaders talk about innovation and the future. They describe it as
“Monitor Talent represents a wide range of the most provocative thought leaders shaping the agenda in business, science, and society today.
We invite the network to gather and share their thinking with one another. This year, we asked them to tell us something unexpected about the future of an area they know a lot about. We’ve collected some of the highlights.”
Some of the ideas I liked in that video is related to the spread of technology and networking solutions or ’social media’ even amongst those who always thought it is not for them. In other words, it became part of our daily life. They are also used by ‘everyone’ not just teenagers and so “we can’t ignore them any longer.” - Li. Another speaker, Kao, addresses the issue of innovation and its current capabilities in what he describes as ‘dispersed innovation’ and the change of global values.
The other good point Zuckerman shared is that there is a strong interaction among cultures, languages, and interests among social media users. This has created ‘citizen media’ as he describes it. He is also thinking about an answer to the question of ‘how you listen to other people’ in that big context? Perhaps it is a question we should all start thinking about. In fact, here are many questions and phenomena that we need to address and monitor nowadays when it comes to technology, innovation, marketing, education, and economy. In other words, we could say that the world is completely ‘changing’ into a new world. I think we will need more time before we be able to fully describe it or identify its characteristics.
Find more ideas or perhaps share your own here. Their youtube video channel is here, too.
This presentation give a nice simple clarification of the iphone potentials for educaiton. It was presented by Andy Rush and Jim groom. It starts with a nice summary of the different features that teachers and educators may use. You can download an audio recording of the presentation from here.
With the expansion of tweeter in many social networks, more users and educators are getting into twitter and use it for several networking purposes. This has led to the spread of many hundreds of widgets, applications, and partner websites that serve this tweeting idea. One of these is suppose to link itself to your blog page, sitetweet. I had some troubles configure it in my blog, but still thinking more about the best way to use from my portal. This page will be updated with any findings..
Last week I presented this topic for TESOL-Arabia. The participants were interested in the nature of task design and implementation. The presentation also gave participants an opportunity to explore and discuss ways for developing new language tasks to be implemented in synchronous mode using modern technology. See the abstract and other details below..
“With the expansion in technologies and wide adaptation of teaching and learning online approaches, there is a need to review and assess the current ways of educational task design and implementation. This presentation discussed examples of alternative synchronous tasks for EFL classes and learners’ self-access purposes. Klapper’s (2003) definition of teaching tasks as meaning-based and related to the actual communicative needs of real-world situations, urge’s today’s teachers and curriculum developers to reconsider the whole process of designing tasks with synchronous components.
A definition and rationale for using synchronous tasks in online or blended teaching contexts will be presented. A review of literature related to Computer-Medicated Communication and its role in SLA will be discussed, Lee (2002). Issues and concerns related to task design in accordance with the construction and negotiation of meaning and the types of tasks in a synchronous online situation will be discussed based on practice and the literature. This will be done in consensus with two sample models; where tasks are oriented towards goals, (Pica et al 1993) and the model of lexical negotiation for Varonis and Gass (1985).
The question of whether our current tasks and practices should be replaced or ‘virtualized’ will be discussed where findings and action plans will be developed. Finally, a demonstration of sample synchronous activities will be presented for further clarification.”
Tags: design, online, synchronous, task, Teaching
I received this list of resources for researchers for teaching writing from ELTECS. I thought it is worth to be shared here..
Resources for researchers
This database is for teachers and researchers who would like to download and
/ or read full-text articles. If you want to get full-text documents, choose
Advanced Search and then write your key words but do not forget to tick
“Show only results with free full text directly from ERIC”. I did and got
8568 articles as a result to the following two key words: ‘teaching’
‘writing’. Obviously, please notice that you can refine your search
according to level of instruction, type of publication, and date of
publication.
You can also consult abstracts of many articles and other publications if
you run a Basic Search. Highly recommended.
The Bedford Researcher
http://bedfordresearcher.com
This site is a good place for MA / doctoral students who are writing their
theses. It takes them through many tutorials on how to write, present,
report, etc. research findings. It also contains a tutorial on plagiarism
and how to avoid it. There are many payable options on this site but the
freebies are very interesting too.
The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing
http://bedfordstmartins.com/bb
This one is really my favourite! It contains a book of annotated
bibliography of different areas related to writing and composing. There is a
total of 704 documents. A major advantage of the online version is that it
contains hyperlinks for cross-references and it is easy to spot the
reference you are looking for.
The Research Exchange
http://wac.colostate.edu/research/
This is a plce where you can create an account for free in order to discuss
findings in research reports by researchers. Or else, you can use this site
as a starting point to navigate the findings of the reports in their
respective sites or to ask for the findings from the researchers.
Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives
edited by Charles Bazerman and David R. Russell (2003)
http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/
This site contains a book for free. You can download it as one file or as
separate articles (chapters). The themes of the book cover three major
areas: “the role of writing in producing work and the economy; the role of
writing in creating, maintaining, and transforming socially located selves
and communities; and the role of writing formal education.” (in their own
words). There are more books here:
http://wac.colostate.edu/books/reference_guides.cfm
Please expect more interesting resources in an upcoming posting on: Journals
and periodicals.
*Selected and annotated by Abdelmajid
I came across this presentation which I find really interesting and referring to the type of skills needed for our students nowadays. The internet, as a learning ocean, provides many opportunities to fulfill most of the goals and requirements mentioned in these slides. However, it needs to be used with some control or observation in order not to lose connection to the real world and to keep that balance between what is virtual and what is real. Thanks to <a href=”http://mscofino.edublogs.org/” target=”_blank”>Kim </a>for putting this work together.The 21st Century Learner
In response to a recent short article published today, I wrote the following. I would appreciate your comments about that and what you personally think regarding this subject.
There is a recent stereotype that I keep hearing these days in the UAE context that learning English will definitely lead to acquiring knowledge and skills needed for the workplace. As a teacher of ‘English’, I don’t really think so. A fact that I may argue about here is that many learners in UAE and the Arab world, are not fluent in their ‘native’ language, Arabic. You go to any school or approach a teenager in the street and ask him to say or explain the structure of a single Arabic sentence and you will be astonished with the result..
Moving to other very basic subjects will not make any big difference that what I mentioned before. I personally think it is not a language issue on the first place. I should also convey a personal and a crucial concern regarding the recent obsession with certifications and assessment in this same context where students are requested to sit for language, ICT, or other proficiency tests (i.e. IELTS, TOEFL, CEPA, IC3, SAT, etc..) The fact is that these new requirements are turning our institutions and organizations into entities that are completely structured as exam-oriented without providing a ‘friendly’ environment for ‘experiencing learning’ before we call it ‘learning’. In other words, we need to help our learners be involved in real-life situations before we expect them to ’study’ or ‘learn’.
In conclusion, we should not pin-point a single factor, (e.g. the teacher, curriculum, textbooks, a certain methodology, or a benchmark exam). Rather, we need to provide a practical, goal-oriented, motivating, and early-structured educational system that involves its counterparts from KG-12 in a ‘consistent’ educational philosophy. This vision or philosophy should be made clear to everybody involved. It should also consider all its partners as very important factors including those poor teachers who struggle with students. Maintaining loyalty, sense of belonging from learners and teachers, dedication, and stability to the educational system would evolve more talents and achievements. A final word is to keep a single vision, even if it is not completely ‘perfect’, keep it, review it, plan it ahead, pilot it, repilot and reassess it and maintain it before you keep it out of service to guarantee long-term stability and durability that lead to development.
Is it possible for today’s principles and other decision makers to agree with Perlman and Maynard who are discussing the role web 2.0 plays in shaping the future in their article, “Working in Wiki”? I think the answer could be true in some regions, but unfortunately it is not the same in many others. The examples they used of having a collaborative staff wiki for brainstorming and contributing to decision making could be ’scary’ in some cultures where the top-down structure is still the only dominating source of ‘life’ and management!
Anyhow, teachers, it is still your duty to keep learning and exploring new skills and solutions for development and improvement. You might face moments of frustration and disappointment, but you still need to explore new changes in teaching and technologies. The outcomes are always beneficial for both you and your students. Although some managers or school principles may disagree with that, it is still does not matter how much they may agree since it is your main duty as an educator and facilitator of learning to explore all possible options to provide the best possible help you could give to your learners.
So, my final word is to all who ‘care’. Keep doing what you are doing, but think of ways to do it better by continuous growth approaches and ongoing development and learning.
Tags: Teaching, technologies, web 2.0, wiki
I should confess that I sometimes forget or ignore students’ input on certain aspects assuming that there is no time or that they are not ‘mature’ enough. Today, I felt that this should not be the case. After reading the few comments I received on a studnets’ questionnaire I conducted, I felt that I was wrong. One of the ideas suggested was having more ‘games’ and more ‘fun’ activities on the VLE system. I think this is a point I never thought of myself. I am glad I am learning from my students.
Tags: activities, fun, games, vle
A colleague from Brazil asks of the ways to develop help teaching to have more interesting classes. She wants to improve her teaching experience and students’ impression about her teaching. I found this question intriguing as it challenges most teachers including myself. Therefore, I wrote her this response which you can read below..
I can see how honest and simple your question is. In fact, this is the question the majority of us - juniors and seniors - ask everyday. There are many things that could affect a group of students. If you are asking how to develop your teaching skills, you may start with personal and professional development experiences. Networking with other colleagues through local communities, communities of practice, online list-serves could all help on that aspect. We should not also forget the secret our ancestors had, which is ‘reading’. It is that missing key to knowledge, experiences, motivation, and aspiration.
The second aspect would be your students population or as Holliday (1994 &1999) describes it as a “small culture” rather than a big group that belongs to a certain culture or nationality. I personally experience differences in students’ attitude and learning experiences from day to day, or sometimes from an hour to the other, according to many factors. For example, understanding students needs and interests could help a lot. Building on their motivation and understanding their differences also make it easier to interact together in meaningful learning situations. You should also remember that there is no ‘best’ or most effective way of teaching as some people like to call it. Instead, you better think of what works for your classes at a certain time. Planning your lessons, brainstorming, and adding some collaborative activities that foster autonomy and independent learning are all good starting points. Don’t forget to observe and ask people to observe your teaching. Students feedback through surveys or interviews could be useful tools for your use as well. The most important thing is to always ask yourself, how to relate what I do/ teach to meaning and more contextual situations in students’ real life. I think that is one thing we try to do through project-based learning and other similar class initiatives.
I hope these simple ideas might help as a starting point. However, I myself can’t deny that I sometimes ask myself the same question..
Tags: Improvment, Perceptions, Teachers, Teaching
Sometimes, I feel sorry for my students who are experiencing VLE environments in a very primitive manner. They feel confused when they first touch
the keyboard, try to register or create emails or even deal with the VLE activities. This has taught me to keep realistic goals and plan when considering these issues.
There are many students who are not well oriented to modern technologies or how to deal with the internet. Moodle or other similar platforms are completely brand new concepts for some regions of the world including the ME. In my context, I have seen students who struggle with email set up or even typing a short paragraph.
In contrary, I found some of the low-achievers or shy students became more involved and more motivated to participate. An example of this is one student who came to me today to check his written ideas before sending them to the other colleagues. This same student tended to be quiet in class and not willing to participate, especially in a writing activity. However, he was seeking help for a well-informed and thoughtfully written authentic piece. This incident, and other similar once, usually give me the support and help me regain my trust in these technology solutions which are there but are waiting for the learners who can handle them properly. A third group of few students who have already tried similar platforms in other earlier studies were comfortable dealing with the system and responding to different tasks.
In all cases, one of the most interesting facts I found when dealing with VLE activities, e.g. writing discussions and tasks is that students tend to be serious about their contributions and the content of what they write. They understand that there is a real audience of other students who may read their work. They also know that this work is not documented or ‘published’ and therefore it is out of their control. Some others may compete with their colleagues about their abilities and competences in responding to activities. Perhaps these could be possible advantages for using VLEs for learning.
In conclusion, I think training and further practice are the best solutions for teachers willing to integrate modern technologies in their teaching. Students can no longer count only on traditional learning media and techniques. Busy teachers, and students, need to find better alternatives and supplementary opportunities for independence and autonomy in learning.
Tags: autonomy, learning, motivation, vle
I can understand that some countries have their own proxy systems for main reasons related to identity, culture, or the appropriacy of content. However, what I can’t understand is having internal school proxies. This could be appropriate in some business companies like banks, etc.. where employees need to stick to certain processes or help ‘customers’. The way this works in educational institutions is completely the other way. Helping customers in this context means opening windows and providing opportunities to access ‘knowledge’ in many forms and types. Unfortunately, we experience the same challenge now where our school started applying this system. We are no longer able to download media files, streaming, even pdf files.. At the same time, we are ‘encouraged’ to be resourceful and help our students using “modern technologies”!! I think the issue is self-explanatory. Therefore, we are waiting for some open-minded educational decisions against those ’strict-IT’ policies that would hinder our main role as teachers.. 
In an earlier definition for Lave and Wenger, (1991: 53 & 98) they consider a CoP as a part of systems of relations that support learning; “… as a set of relations among persons, activity and the world, over time, in relation with other tangential and overlapping CoPs.” In a refined definition, Wenger (2001:2) describes it as “a group of people who share an interest in a domain of human endeavor and engage in a process of collective learning that creates bonds between them.” He explains that many groups are considered communities, but not all are CoPs. He therefore states three crucial characteristics to form a functional CoP; a common domain and shared interest, the community where members share activities and discussions, and the practice where community members develop “a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, etc..”
In summary, using different aspects discussed in the literature, we may describe it as “a natural process of learning, sharing and interaction among a group of professionals who are informally bound together in social and professional relations (Wenger: 1998a). They have a common sense of purpose and work in real world, Seely et al (2007). They always collaborate and keep learning from each other Stewart (1996). Eventually, they evolve new and more creative practices, Gongla et al (2001). These practices enable interdisciplinary knowledge and practice while promoting learning via communication among its members, Johnson (2001). Finally, these members are not just sharing or benefiting from each other, but they show more commitment, sense of responsibility and belonging, (Pór 2001 & Slaouti 2007: 
towards their participation. Hence, more opportunities for professional development arise for teachers.
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