This was today’s class if you couldn’t come or you couldn’t finish all the activities you can do them here.
Enjoy!
Archive for March, 2009
Final Exams - Prueba de certificación
They have published in Educastur some information concerning the exams you have to take at the end of the course. Remember that even though you are a student at the school you have to enrol for the test from May 4th to 15th.
Read the information carefully and if there’s anything you don’t understand, do ask me, and I’ll find out and tell you.
17th March
We had a good time with the Digital whiteboard and a new wireless keyboard and mouse that allows us to interact with the whiteboard from our seats!
Education and technology
This is an interesting video about how new technologies can be very important in the educational system by changing the way in which we have treated the information we give to our students. In the past -and even in the present- in most of the countries, education was conditioned by how our parents and ancestors learned by repeating the information written in the books. However, this is a boring task and frequently the individual work is not known by the rest of the students in the class or many times by the teacher either. Perhaps this doesn’t´t contribute to do education more attractive for many students who by his personality, his intelligence o by other reasons, have a free and creative way of working and thinking. And what to say about the enormous cost of printing every year millions of textbooks, not only economic but also environmental, contributing to cut thousands of trees we needed to maintain the life on the planet.
The revolution of technology and the standardization of PCs and internet in our homes allow us to work in the best and more relaxing possible way. So we don´t need to spend a lot of hours everyday going to class or searching for information in the biggest and heaviest books we can imagine, and so will have enough free time to do other things we need o we want, even for relaxing. Everything is in our hands and homes only by connecting the PC and clicking the mouse, immediately reading the information and sharing it with the mates and the teacher. And this occurs worldwide because you can get information from the whole earth increasing and sharing this information with everybody and everywhere. Is the miracle of 21 century, because technology will help to open the mind of many people in many places and this will increase, in a geometrical progression, human knowledge of of the past, the present and will prepare us better to deal with future problems. So I agree with the students in the video who express themselves in a free way unusual in Spain, but thanks to the internet we know their wills and proposals, many of them very interesting. The only thing we need is to make that technology less expensive so that other countries and people less rich than we are can afford to use it too. We can also learn many things from them because I think a good balance between traditional education and new technologies could be the best way for learning and living at the same time.
Education and learning nowadays
For it’s been some years now since I finished studying, I don’t think I have much more to say about modern education and learning except what I see and do in our English classes.
First of all, I don’t think most classes work like our does. The classes I heard about don’t use internet as a way of communication between teachers and students, nor even to inform the latter about news and important details, notes, etc. However, I find ‘our’ use of new technologies innovative and extremely helpful, especially for people that, like me, are not able to attend the classes every day. With internet and the tools it offers to us, I can read what you all have done each day and, most of the times, I can do it at home when I have time. Although the most interesting thing to keep us informed is this very blog, tools like Google Calendar are great in order not to miss important lessons.
So, I hope education develops more and more its technological tools to make the process of learning easier for everybody. I know there are a lot of projects and subsidies helping its evolution, but, in the end, I think it all depends on the teachers, and how they react to these new opportunities. To be able to take advantage of this way of learning, teachers have to be familiar not only with their own teaching areas (maths, literature, languages, etc.) but with computing too. We are in front of an ever-expanding horizon here and we all have something to learn.
Our technological life: what is it now, what was it then?
15 years ago, as a High School student I would leave home with my folder full of worksheets and a bunch of pens. I just tried to takes notes of the important things, (if we were lucky and the teacher was not making us copy almost every single word he said, no matter if we did not understand them!). In subjects such as Arts, we just tried to imagine that reality they were trying to show us, with the help of a bad picture on a boring book, or (as an exception ) a most of the times damaged video tape. In Maths or Physics, most of he times I just filled pages with numbers and formulas I hardly knew what they could be useful for. With all this, been motivated was not an easy task as a teenager, when most of our interests were far away from these things. When I arrived home, i left my folder on a table until the next morning or when I was close to the next exam. I didn´t look for more information on the internet, nor did I chat with my classmates about the website were everything was perfectly explained or where you could almost see every single brushtroke of El Bosco´s paintings. The goal: passing exams and graduating. I´m not a High School student anymore and I have no idea whether things have changed in such an important way or not. I guess the goal is the same one now, and many teachers keep doing the same as well, although nowadays they have many other ways of motivating their students thanks to technologies. At least, it should help them to share a common language, a new way of communicating and passing the information.
Besides, I agree with the students in the video when they say that they would probably work in a job that doesn´t exist now. At least, they will probably use different techniques or skills when doing it. It´s also true that most of the information you get as a student is not useful. Last technologies are nowadays helping us to improve and to fight against this lack of knowledge in our professional areas. Then, maybe all the educational systems should take this into account and appeal for a change.
I´m not a High School student anymore. I´ve also finished my University degree some time ago. And now …I´m a teacher. My students have learning disabilities and serious handicaps related with communication. The internet is helping me everyday to find new ways of dealing with their difficulties, as a way of exchanging information, treatment programs… It is true that my job has not much to do with all the stuff I learned at University, as things are in constant change and every now and then new theories are coming up. I would probably be a bit lost in a small island if I could not use this to see how people are working in other countries, if we could not share all we learn everyday.
So, I´m not a Formal student anymore. But I could say now that I´m just a student for life, thanks to technologies.
Latest Comments