Fostering a professional learning community in Qatar and beyond
"Create the Future" at Qatar Academy
We are really pleased to welcome Kim Cofino, 21st Century Literacy specialist from International School Bangkok, to Qatar Academy again. This time Kim is working with the Senior School on a 2-day professional development initiative to "create the future" with a focus on using 1:1 laptops in the classrooms and online learning including Web 2.0 tools.
This opportunity for teachers to workshop, discuss, confront, explore, create, collaborate etc is about empowerment of learners, it is about meeting the challenge of 21st century teaching and learning head on and making a conscious decision that new tools with value-added educational practice will make a difference to our students.
Effective change within an educational environment is difficult. The change that we are looking for with the E-Learning for Life initiative and now this "create the future" idea is confronting, challenging, confusing, controversial, and probably many other 'c' words that I can't think of right now.........The message that Kim and supporting QA personnel are sharing is multi-faceted but essentially comes down to one essential idea: teaching and learning as we have known it for the past how ever many decades is being transformed at a rapid rate by emerging digital tools and associated methods that continue to value the 'teacher' as a facilitator as well as strengthen the ability of the learner to be independent and self-serving.
It does not matter if you agree or not with the research, ideas, evidence that young people think and learn differently now because of stimulus from a digital environment; it does matter however that you take steps towards embracing new ideas and modes of working that will improve student engagement and learning, for their sake as well as your own.
After one day of sessions, let's hear what YOU are going to do to 'change' what you teach and how you teach, or what you do and how you do it as a professional educator.
Resources for the PD can be found on the professional development wiki.
I look forwards to reading your responses to this blog post!
This opportunity for teachers to workshop, discuss, confront, explore, create, collaborate etc is about empowerment of learners, it is about meeting the challenge of 21st century teaching and learning head on and making a conscious decision that new tools with value-added educational practice will make a difference to our students.
Effective change within an educational environment is difficult. The change that we are looking for with the E-Learning for Life initiative and now this "create the future" idea is confronting, challenging, confusing, controversial, and probably many other 'c' words that I can't think of right now.........The message that Kim and supporting QA personnel are sharing is multi-faceted but essentially comes down to one essential idea: teaching and learning as we have known it for the past how ever many decades is being transformed at a rapid rate by emerging digital tools and associated methods that continue to value the 'teacher' as a facilitator as well as strengthen the ability of the learner to be independent and self-serving.
It does not matter if you agree or not with the research, ideas, evidence that young people think and learn differently now because of stimulus from a digital environment; it does matter however that you take steps towards embracing new ideas and modes of working that will improve student engagement and learning, for their sake as well as your own.
After one day of sessions, let's hear what YOU are going to do to 'change' what you teach and how you teach, or what you do and how you do it as a professional educator.
Resources for the PD can be found on the professional development wiki.
I look forwards to reading your responses to this blog post!
Comment
-
Comment by Julie Lindsay on February 19, 2009 at 9:38am
-
Claire, yes! we need to try and build into the school week a structure for departments to have time to work on this. I know the school is restructuring the timetable next year.....
Rebecca, thanks for your candid comments. We are lucky to have you at QA as you are ready to get in there and do it, however we deliberately chose to add theory and philosophy so that everyone can be on the same page and not have major doubts or questions as to WHY we are moving into 1:1 and Web 2.0 areas.
-
Comment by Rebecca Hennard on February 19, 2009 at 8:11am -
I like the structure of today better. Listening to the philosophy of others, when you have no real disagreement with it, is a little hard to bear. The profile of many of our learners is not a very good fit with what is appearing on all these videos and inspirational snippets. It's a good thing this staff is so talented as we have a lot of challenges in the implementation of Web2.0 tools. Being a dab hand at texting does not equate to a desire to learn, even if that learning involves using desirable technology.
Actually DOING things is going to make the day better.
-
Comment by Claire Rimmer on February 19, 2009 at 8:09am - I can see the benefit of many the things I have been shown so far-I now need the time to learn, explore and implement with support to fall back on.
About
Latest Activity
From the Gift Store
In support of increasing teacher awareness I have been developing a set of short software skills sheets that can be used for teacher learning and/or in classroom projects. They can be found at http://elearning.qataracademy.wikispaces.net/Software_Sk…
Working with teachers on introducing 1:1 laptops. Yr 8 English task creating a poster using Art to create graphics. We decided that we shouldn't 'replace' with DTP software as task already had strong 21stC learning (creativity, HOTs) as well as cros…
Teachers at Qatar Academy in Doha and beyond use this Ning to share ideas and resources to do with learning and curriculum.
Badge
© 2009 Created by Julie Lindsay on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
You need to be a member of E-Learning For Life to add comments!
Join this Ning Network