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Showing posts with label connection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label connection. Show all posts

Monday, October 9, 2017

#LearnLAP

The Twitterchat I chose to attend to #LearnLAP at 8p.m. on Oct. 9, Monday. This was a totally new experience to me; however, I found it was good to know what others educators and teachers think and  do in their classroom across the world. The followings I would like to share the main points of this Twitterchat and my thoughts about how this chat could influence my professional development.

The Twitterchat #LearnLAP provided insights on practices, tools and methods which can help students' learning. The first question asked in this chat was "what are you passionate about outside teaching?" When seeing this question at first sight, I had no idea about why this question was asked. However, as I interacting with other participants and seeing more questions, I finally realized the reasons for raising the first question-- because the chat went deeper to discuss about what and how teachers bring their passion to class, and what factors hold teachers back from showing their passion in classroom.

Though I do not have much teaching experience, I found the comments made by participants truly open my eyes. For example, principles and parents may wonder why teachers teach using comic and movie in their classroom. They may not feel pleasant about it due to the fact that they may not see the benefits of incorporating them in lessons. Also, there are other factors that prevent teachers from showing their passion to their class, such as time and budget constraints. All of those comments and questions got me prepared for the problems that I might face in my future teaching. For me, one of the key takeaways from this chat was that teachers should not be afraid of sharing their failure with students-- which was rarely seen in my educational experience. I believe through sharing failure with students, students and teachers can build stronger connections with each other and, most importantly, students will not feel alone when they get lost on their learning process.

I do believe this Twitterchat can definitely benefit my professional development. It provides a platform for educators around the world to share their thoughts about education. Sometimes it allows us to step back and listen to others educators voices, and to see things from the different perspectives. Twitterchat provides different ideas from educators, which allows me to gain deeper and diverse insights with regard to education.

Monday, September 25, 2017

"A learner is like a..."

It takes long time to think about the analogy to describe the learner of today. After reading the article and watching those videos, I think learner of today is like a leaf on a tree. Leaf cannot stay healthy and strong without helps from others, such as sun, water, and branch. Similar to learners of today, hardly can they gain knowledge without building connections with each other. In other words, learning can only happen when learners form network with others.

Likewise, Siemen (2005) gives an insight into learners' learning nowadays. According to Siemen (2005) Connectivism: A Learning Theory for Digital Age, "Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within in an organization or database), is focused on connecting on specialized information sets, and the connections that make us to learn are more important than our current state of knowing." The term connectivism can explain learning is not an individualistic activity anymore but a collaboration and connections with each other.

Also, one of the videos from Siemen, the changing nature of knowledge, clearly illustrates that due to the fact that knowledge is being changed so rapidly, it would be difficult for us to learn it merely from books. To gain this fast-changed knowledge, Siemen considers both internal and external networks as critical elements for learners of today. Internal network is defined as how learners' mind create learning itself. As for external network, it emphasizes when learners form and make connections with each other, knowledge exists external to the individuals. In short, knowledge cannot be gained if learners fail to make connections with others but when learners form networks with others.

To conclude, back to the analogy: A learner is like a leaf. A learner cannot gain knowledge (as a leaf which needs soil, water, sun, branches) if he or she fails to make connections with each other. How can a tree grow healthily without connecting to soil, getting close to water and sun, and having strong branches?