My personal reflection:
At first I would like to mention that I previously taught on a different program where the teaching methodology were mainly in the form of teacher centred rather than learner centred.The program in itself was very rigid in terms of seperate theory and practical sessions. This type of class dynamics were typical of the school environment most of our students were used to and disliked. This is then no wonder why some students lost interest, fell asleep in class and sometimes dropped out.
Teaching on the CAME program required a paradygm shift, the rules of the game has drastically changed.The teaching environment changed by way of a new pedagogical approaches using Web 2.o tools and the Living Curiculla which focusses on complexed conversations, curiosity/inquiry, collaboration, self- efficacy, problem solving, creativity and reflection.Later on I will discuss some of the tools we use in the program . We as teachers had step away from the front of the class and mingle with the learners(become one of them the "Digital Natives" Marc Prensky, 2001). This meant stepping into their world of the internet, wifi, bluetooth, iphones, ipads, Google docs, blogger to name but a few.MarcPrensky (2001) noted that our students have changed radically.Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach to.
We are now" Digital Immigrants" that have to learn the new digital culture, language and not to mention using the new tools available. Our Digital Immigrants instructors, who speak an outdated language(that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entire new language.(Marc Prensky,2001).Learning the new technology was quite daunting at the beginning.Being able to send an email and accessing the internet, I thought I was sort of okay with technology soon to find out that I have merely scratched the surface.I now became a learner too in this evolving world of Digital and Cyber natives.
For our course it was decided that we move from Moodle to Google Apps. We as lecturers spent about a week exploring the new tools and to look at how we would implement the new applications.A common blogsite were set up to post our learning packs and teaching resources to.This course requires the students to have access to a laptop/netbook and a camera.The following statement by (Duffy,Peter D. and Burns, Axel ,2006) The use of blogs, wikis and RSS in education: A conversation of possibilities, I find in my opinion very relevant to our new teaching pedagogy, " In a 'socially mobile learning environment', it is no longer sufficient to use online learning and teaching technologies simply for the delivery of content to students. A 'digital literacy'exists where flexible and mobile technologies must be explored for collaborative and (co)creative purposes, as well as for the critical assessment and evaluation of information".
By doing the SLT course it has definitely helped me in exploring some of the available Web 2.0 tools and their possible uses as instructional mediums.
References:
Duffy, Peter and Burns, Axel (2006) The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. In Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, pages pp.31-38, Brisbane.
Prensky, M.(2001). Digital natives,digital immigrants.On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
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