e-Learning platforms intro

Originally, I had planned on writing about the introductory seminars for Moodle in my last term at teacher training. It was an interesting experience, but I kind of got away from the topic as the term went on. Now I got the opportunity to hold a Mahara workshop for a couple of teachers and sort of experience the whole process from a different perspective. Although I've been working with Mahara for quite a while now, I actually never got around to work with it in a primary/secondary school setting.

The premise at both the workshop and my seminar was that the attendees were all rookies in terms of the platform itself. For the Moodle course, there were student teachers in their last term, while for the Mahara seminar, there were experienced primary and secondary teachers present. Obviously the biggest difference was that for the Moodle course we had a full university term to work with, but the Mahara seminar took around 2-3 hours. Therefore it is clear that there is no way to attain the same level of detail in a couple of hours compared to a process that lasts a couple of months.

My first encounter with both platforms was very similar. The first time I got in contact with each of them I basically didn't have any guidance. Our first Mahara version was very low on features and usability compared to every version since. Also, we were the first group at the university to use the platform, so we were kind of the test-dummies. I guess that's why my whole mindset later was to just go out there and click my way through everything by myself. I say that because my first encounter with Moodle was me getting the task of creating and filling a Moodle course structure with content, but the content I was supposed to work in, being nowhere close to my field of expertise.  So as I built and explored, I simultaneously learned about the platform itself - about what it can do, how it can do it. A thinking process for how it can be used properly for my own work started right away.

This "click-and-explore" approach is obviously not always the ideal choice. Especially when it comes to beginners for e-Learning platforms, there is a bit of restraint. Although I like to tell the participants in my workshops that they should do exactly that, I always leave it to the very end. It is important to get rid of the "fear of the unknown" in the beginning. The relationship between user and platform has to become somewhat natural for them to be able to use this approach. The best way to achieve that is still a simple step-by-step guide about the basic handling of the system. The key is to get to a spot where the handling becomes second-nature and you can focus on more important things, namely talking about the actual benefits for using a specific platform.

Of course it takes a while to get over the shakiness, but most of the time e-Learning platforms work along the same principles and it is enough to give participants a simple framework of how to use the system. This is all easier said than done, but unless attending a workshop about a new e-Learning platform is "mandatory" (in their own mind), the participants are open to experiencing new things. It also adds extra motivation, helps swaying their mood and opinion if they are shown the "upgrades" a platform can bring to their teaching and their work.

All in all, it is interesting to think about personal experiences with a certain kind of introductory method and how it can work in various settings, be it beginners in the field of e-Learning or absolute pros wanting to try out something new.

Quotes on Quotes - Think to Start/Start to Think

I’m way behind my intended blog-writing again. I actually started to write this post some time ago in September. Honestly I don’t know what happened, October came quicker than expected and all the new and exciting things overwhelmed the things I wanted to write about.

Anyway, the main reason for this post was the new challenge I was facing. The last couple of months since I graduated from teacher training have been exciting and fun already, but what came next was without a doubt another step up. I enrolled in an MA program. It is not only a distance learning program, but I also get to dive deeper into a very interesting field of education research and technology use. The program is called Education and Media: eEducation.

Before everything got started, we received a package with our scripts for our first term. Although I got them later than I would have liked, in terms of being able to prepare beforehand, at least I got them. Included in this package where some pretty cool quote-postcards, which kind of were the first prompt for this blogpost.

For me personally, they offered a great starting point: it meant that we had to turn on our brain again. I posted the picture above and the best possible translations into English below:

Grey: "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

Red: "Educated are the ones who see parallels where others see something all new"

Light Blue: "Everyone can do anything, but he must also be ready for anything."

Dark Blue: "Those who set high goals, have a lot of room to grow."

Orange: "Education comes not from reading, but from thinking about what has been read."

Before even taking a closer look at the books, I started to wonder which one I liked the most, which one did I think was the most important one. Obviously all of them are good and important, but it is an interesting thought experiment. I think usually I would go with the red one, because from my experience, a lot of times it is about perspective. Education is one of those fields where everybody has an opinion. I'm not talking about teachers or researchers, I'm talking about anybody on out on the street. If you go out and ask a random person about his or her thoughts on education, I'm pretty sure you would get a somewhat passionate answer and explanation. Still most of the time, it is about getting to know all of the angles. Education is such a broad topic with way too many variables, but it is nonetheless important to be able to connect and understand different opinions.

Instead I thought about the Orange card the most. It might have to do with the influence my previous education program had on me, but the reflection implied in this quote, is one of the most important processes for development. I wouldn't count reflection as a key for learning necessarily, but the part about thinking is invaluable.  Regardless if you are teaching kids, youngster or adults, getting learners to think about the topic and not just regurgitate it, should be atop the list of goals. And in this case, it also makes sense for higher education. It is not enough to just read the books and studies about certain topics. A priority must be to understand what has been read, but you can only understand it if you are willing to think about it.

I will definitely come back to these quotes, because the first two months of this program have been more than interesting, to say the least. But in the meantime, what would be your favorite quote and why?

Teacher training - content or methods?

Just like there are different schools (i.e. primary and upper), there are different forms of teacher training. Regardless of how much politics influence the way education works, I still think more specific and individual attention could be brought to the way student teachers are lead down their path of professionalization.

Teachers of almost all subjects, obviously need to have some kind of knowledge basis for their particular subject. For one, teachers have to be able to build/form a lesson, based on the knowledge that the children should acquire, and it is also quite important to be able to answer additional questions somebody might have about a topic.

Teachers also have to know, which methods to use in order teach a certain topic, more importantly, the proper methods for the children. They might have to face the challenge of varying levels in class, or they have to adjust one method, because it just doesn’t fit the particular need for a class.

I would like to take up one of these two points. Especially, because I feel like I’m part of one, and I’m not having fun as a student (teacher) myself, the way I’m confronted with it now.

I’m going to take two personal examples from the last couple of years. One of my biggest passions, ever since I was young, is sports. It never really mattered, if it was a specific sport, it never mattered if I could only watch it on TV, I always enjoyed it. Even later, when I got older, not only did I participate in sports as much as I could, but I also got into coaching after a couple of years. With coaching in a specific sport, came trainer education and trainer certificates, where sometimes you get away from one sport specifically, but you focus more on movement and movement games. Now, in fairness, I might be different from other coaches or trainers, but for many specific movements, I don’t actually have to do and feel the movements myself, to be able to see what could be wrong with them and fix it. This can lead down a very tricky path - how credible can somebody be, if they never really tried it themselves? Well, the end result of sports movements should be that the athlete is able to perform them, without mistakes and economically. Maybe it is a deeper lying issue, but I personally don’t care how I can reach those results; if I get good and proper feedback, and it works, thanks to that, I will be happy. I don’t necessarily think the background of the trainer or coach really matters. The key thing to keep in mind: the coaches main goal is to get you to the end result.

As I mentioned above, there is a situation, which brings this whole big question to the forefront every time I’m involved. My second subject, besides English, is History and Social sciences. As you can imagine, History lessons tend to be very dry. Obviously History teachers have to have a very broad understanding and knowledge, since the topic itself is vast. But to be more specific, I’m in a teacher training program for 10 to 14 year olds. So to be very blunt, I don’t really care about all the details regarding wars and empires, I would really love to know, how I can make these topics interesting for children. Unfortunately these things never get mentioned, leaving me little to no real preparation for the things that I should teach, but at least I know a bunch of interesting topics in detail. I’m always surprised that most of the time our teachers never even taught in the same kind of schools we are going to teach in - which in turn wouldn’t be an issue, because it doesn’t really matter where you come from - it only matters where it leads us, but this part of learning for myself and not for my job is beyond me. To compare it to the previous paragraph, I think the key for a teacher is the same thing as for a coach - get you to the end result - but this time, the end result is that children acquire certain competencies and a knowledge base to be able to evolve, and either attend a higher education institute or get work, and I’m not sure if they would achieve those goals if I talk to them, or maybe let them read about history for hours on end.

In both cases I’m not a big believer in really having to do the actual ‘work’ (the sport or knowing specific topics), but I do think it is important to know how to get to the finish line. And especially in cases, where teaching and learning is involved, it is far more important to know how to teach, than what to teach.

Negucation - this is not a good title

A supportive environment, be it family or friends is very valuable on all stages of life. Growing up and getting older, one starts to be more aware of the surroundings. In the workplace, or just among friends, conversations get more mature and more reflective. Talking about achievements or various skills among co-workers or friends tend to go in a positive direction, at least most of the time. Not many people try to negate or downgrade what somebody else did on purpose when having a regular conversation. Most people in todays society have a positive and encouraging outlook on things. To me, it is rather surprising that a very important field of work has not embraced this mindset.

A lot of times, kids in school are everything but encouraged to try things and be hopeful for their future. They are told how ‘bad’ they are doing and that they ‘failed’ in various areas of school life. It’s no surprise where this comes from. Student teachers are treated the same way by their teacher during teacher training. No wonder many of them take on this attitude and live it to the fullest in their profession. But why is that? How come one has to deal with disrespectful behaviour from teachers so many times? And where does this all come from, is it just this generation of university teachers, or is it something that was common before?

I can’t speak for more countries than the ones I’ve been living in. I’ve spent a year in Sweden, where it was almost a culture shock for me at the university, but that is not the point. I’m curious where this came from in Austria. It might be a societal issue in general. If one would follow the classic stereotypes that are known about Austrian people, one could probably find connections to where it came from and how it developed over time.

I’d like to take it back to the basic educational point of view. If the student teachers get treated this way, then they are going to treat their students the same way. I believe in change in education from the top. More people can be reached if teacher education is fixed than by fixing yourself and just your own classroom. But how to start?

First of all, higher standards need to be set for new student teachers. It has to be clear that these people are directly responsible for how the society will evolve in the next twenty to thirty years, it is a big responsibility. If you set higher standards, you also have to embrace people who have better basics than others (e.g. prior work experience, certificates, coaching). And this is exactly where it all starts: people with a better basis than others can not be treated the same way. They are further ahead, so they need different challenges or they are going to lose interest. If it continues they get frustrated by the way they are treated because everything is adjusted downwards to suit the “new” student teachers, and so the negative vibes begin. The same could be said for student teachers who are actually new, in the same breath they are treated like little children. If you enter a study programme you obviously finished some high school or got the accreditations to attend a higher educational facility, meaning, you are capable of doing ‘real’ university things like working independently and getting things done on time. Unfortunately teachesr manage to mess up both of these student groups which in turn leads to teachers who treat their kids on a similar scale.

Somehow there is this strange feeling of being between two university-blackhole-systems - the teacher education is obviously very important for any country in general, but then again, there is no respect or encouragement for students who want to be part of it; then teacher training does not prepare you for what you would actually want and need out of it, and your own teachers don’t even have the experiences which would be helpful to you, which in turn makes them condescending; but the teacher training program wants to have ‘competent’ professors and so on...frustrating on some levels.

Education is something positive. And although there are plenty of teachers and schools that do good work, there still are kids in school hearing that they can not do anything every day in school, and sometimes at home. I’m liking the idea of teachers also switching to the roles of guides and mentors more and more. Sometimes the best ‘teaching’ is just to encourage. Encouraging to try, because there is no failure. If there is no way out, there is nothing wrong with asking a classmate or the teacher will help figuring stuff out. But if right from the start the mindset is ‘how difficult something is and that so many fail at it and that you couldn't even finish another task’, how much fun is it to even start and try. Especially thinking about students who need a little extra help, imagine just being positive around them, they will get through it even if its way harder for them. Telling them that it gets harder and harder, and if they don’t manage the basic things it can be impossible, is not going to help. There are so many competencies that are needed later in in life that could be taught through an encouraging attitude.

I feel like so much good can come out of Education, out of schools and universities, but it has to start with the attitude. It has to be made clear that in certain roles people are role models, if they like it or not, but they have to realize that their actions are far reaching. Imagine a teacher in teacher training having a positive influence on one of his groups with 25 student teachers, these student teachers will go out in their respective schools and give the same positive influence to each of their 100 students. So this one teacher can influence the lifes of 2500 kids. How great is that?
Instead of focusing on the negative things, education has to get a positive spin. It is great to have people who want to become teachers. It is an amazing opportunity to help those student teachers make a difference in schools. It is awesome to be able to work with kids and youngsters and help them evolve and develop.

And even Negucation is a great title!

Motivation to become a teacher - one for the money, two for the show?

Now that I’m in my final year of teacher training and I'm so close to the finish line, a questions keeps popping up, on why all the new students decide to take on teacher training. To be fair, sometimes I ask myself the same thing about people already attending teacher training. When you start at my university, there are admission interviews, where you are asked a couple of things, while they try to find out what your background is and why you want to attend teacher training. Of course interviews like these are easy to manipulate. I’m not talking about manipulating the interviewer, I’m talking about manipulating yourself and making yourself believe intentions that might not be ones really pushing you (or might not be reasons you could publicly state without drawing ire of the your counterpart). So I’d like to think more about the situation or idea that started the process. 

Probably one of the two most common reasons I’ve heard, is that back in the day, the person got to spend time with smaller siblings, or younger relatives or the young family members of friends. The fact that this was a lot of fun, leads many people down the path to becoming a teacher. There is nothing wrong with that, but sometimes I think people don’t realize the difference between spending time (i.e. playing) with siblings or children they know, and working with kids and youngsters in a school environment. Obviously this person could have discovered their talent while spending time with those kids and now wants to build up on that. I’m not sure there is a distinction, or I don’t know if anyone could tell that apart, but the basis remains the same - these people have experienced interacting with children as being something that means a lot to them and as something they want to do more.

The second reason, which I never really understood, is that many people want to do better than one of their own teachers they had in school. I know I had a couple of really bad teachers, e.g. disrespecting their students and just treating them like nobodies. Maybe my coping-mechanism is different, but as soon as I left school, I just completely eradicated those people from my memory. I couldn’t draw any motivation from those situations, because I know better. This post is actually connectable to those cases. Judging from the experiences students, including myself, had in their schools, those teachers maybe had not so noble reasons to become a teacher. Again I’m not talking about the obvious one that they manage to tell themselves, I’m talking about the real reasons deep down. Anyway, many students get their motivation because they think they can do better, and want to do better then their own teachers. It is a valid reasoning, but if they don’t have any talents or the proper social skills and work ethic, then it’s a nice wish, but probably not smart. As a sidebar, where I’d add the same argument, is people wanting to become a teacher because they had such great teachers and enjoyed school so much. Again, nice idea, but not smart.

The third reason has more to do with our economy then anything else. The last couple of years, and probably for a few more, there is a pretty big teacher shortage in my city. Even if you are not from the city it is something that is intriguing. Although everybody knows that the pay is not worth the stress you might face, but in this case, you are basically guaranteed a job, a job which you probably won’t lose that easily, and your pay will be pretty decent in a couple of decades. Now if I read that last sentence to a stranger trying to convince him to start education, I think more times than not, they would gladly accept. 

I can’t blame anyone for any of those reasons, all of them are valid and understandable, but sometimes I can’t help but think about the kids those people are going to work with. Of course in an ideal world, if you show up and are willing to work, the proper teacher education program will form you into an acceptable teacher. Not only that, but I think that it can change people and spark something inside them and change their true motivation deep down, because either way, apparently education means something to them.

Student/Teacher and the Summerbreak

So it has been a while since I posted anything here. There are a couple of reasons for that, especially because I planned on posting about a couple of interesting things. 

I finished and handed in my Bachelor thesis in the middle of April and had the exam at the end of June. The months in between I finished a couple of courses at the University, one of which was about one of my favorite new topics: conflict handling and conflict resolution. That's a topic that I never really thought about before, although it is ever-present, not only in school, but also in your everyday life. It's something I want to read up on and look for more input and maybe also some kind of education. After my exam I worked at my usual summer job, which is sports workshops with kids for a couple of weeks.
When I was done with that my summer break started. For the first time in a long while I had real 'time off', and getting to spend this time in Sweden helped recharging the batteries for the next term.

So now my exchange year in Sweden is coming to a close at the end of the month. One of the things I'm going to write about is this whole Exchange studies - Erasmus - Credit transfer system I get to experience. Another topic that I planned on writing about was the school where I worked most of the time here in Gothenburg, which is the International school. I already wrote a bit about a swedish primary school we visited, and also something about the English school where I also worked a couple of hours every week. It was an interesting experience being able to work in two different English/International schools.

Although this was probably the longest summer break I'm ever going to have, since university in Sweden ends in June and university in Austria starts up again in October, it still feels like it went by really fast. To get back into Rhythm I will catch up on the things I have in the back of my head and post them. I am pretty sure that as soon as the new term starts, there will be plenty of things to write about anyway. 

Language course - second or third foreign language

One of my goals for my exchange studies was (and still is) to do my best and try to master the native language, which is Swedish. Because of that I was really excited that I got in the EILC (Erasmus Intensive Language Course). This course took place a month and a half before the university term started. There was no placement test beforehand, so we basically just got split up into two groups, regardless of previous Swedish knowledge. The course lasted four weeks and our exam at the end was worth A1 level.
But at the end, not only I (as a language-teacher-to-be), but also everybody else who attended felt unsatisfied. When you take a four week long course, and you have lessons every day, you get homework and you generally hear a lot of Swedish, it felt like it would be impossible to not have some kind of understanding of the language. Then again, mostly the basic success depends on the teacher and their methods. I have to say that even though I expected to be in a better shape regarding my Swedish, I gained a lot of experience when it comes to teaching.
One thing I learned during my first years at the university as a student-teacher was that you should never stop reflecting. Whether it may be your own lesson-sequence or your own lesson, a presentation in a seminar or one of the courses you sit it, there always be opportunities to think about your professionalization and personal development.
So I would like to outline a few things I noticed. It has to be noted that I’m pretty sure that a few logistical problems could be an issue for the organizational staff of these courses, but nonetheless, as a teacher you have to make the best of what you have.

I believe the first issue at hand at many language courses is the level of the participants. Every language teacher knows that it is simply impossible to find any group (of random) students that have the same language proficiency. In our particular case it would have been way more effective for everybody if we would have split up our groups after the second week, or even the first week since you quickly get an impression how each individual deals with the language.
Obviously individualisation is always the issue when it comes to teaching. In this case it could have helped the better students to reach the level they wanted to reach. It was also clear that not everybody intended to really know about the language at the end, which is no big deal since the whole course structure offered many more benefits than just the language. But because of this, more advanced and motivated students could have progressed better. All in all, splitting up a group like this benefits both the good and not-so-good students. It offers more challenge for one group if the overall level can be higher but is also offers easier access for the weaker students, who may only want to learn really basic stuff.

The second issue is something that is thoroughly stressed throughout the teacher training program, namely the importance of lesson planning. This is the one thing that student-teachers cannot forget. A lesson plan has to be handed in an thought through before every lesson, even if you are only teaching the last ten minutes of a lesson. So with this in the back of my mind, it wasn’t pleasant to be part of lessons where the complete opposite was the case. The worst part about this was, that this problem was so obvious that even non-student-teachers immediately noticed and could point the finger at it. Especially when it comes to language teaching, it seems like a waste of time to teach a class without having a plan. It just won’t work if you are going to talk about whatever comes to your mind that morning.

Lastly, there is one thing that can really tip the scale for beginner students. When it’s the first time you hear a language, no matter how close it is to your native language, it can be confusing. Based on this thought, starting to talk in the new language in a lesson might not always be the best idea for beginners. Listening and speaking skills are usually the first ones to be taught to language learners, but that does not mean that it is good to confront beginners with a new language non-stop. The key thing is to find a balance where everybody is comfortable, but this is hard to achieve when students get more and more frustrated because everything is done so fast and without proper explanation in a language they actually understand. If the teacher goes to fast, the students become more and more frustrated and will soon close up and no progress can be made. It is tough to find the right balance between speaking and listening-to the new language and generally being understood, but to come back to a point I made earlier, it can help to split up students into groups according to their level.

All in all, it is tough to learn a new language, no matter how talented one might be or how common it is to one’s native language. The most important aspect is to be confronted with the language in everyday life, so learning a language in it’s native country is simply the best choice. And even though talking should be the focal point, there is so much vocabulary missing, that there is just nothing more that one could talk about. Students of a new language have to motivated to work on their own, picking up phrases and focusing on new vocabulary will help with everything else. As time goes by, the practical use becomes more and more natural.

Blogging for Teachers/Students

There are a lot of good reasons for teachers to blog. Different sources provide inspiration, or just give you an idea what it’s all about. Probably one of best posts I read regarding blogging, was this one, it really sums up the benefits of blogging as a teacher, and kind of makes you want to start one right away (BTW I really liked this first comment, which is one of the main points in my opinion too: “Blogging is fun”).
Another thing for me personally was that blogging is an actual exercise for us at the university. In the first year, it didn’t start as ‘classic’ blogging where you write about what’s happening regularly and then post it somewhere, it started out as more of an observation and reflection. At the end of our teaching practice we had to summarize what we’ve experienced and write it down - kind of like a journal.
So there was no instant feedback, which you obviously have, if you go the ‘classic’ blogging route. But for our second year, we were encouraged to blog in real-time. The assignment was to open a blog on our Mahara-Portfolio and share our thoughts about the teaching practice.
In my case, I decided to take it to another level and started a blog here straight away. Since I’ve been reading a lot of Edu-Blogs and following a lot of Educational-Tweeps, it was an obvious decision to try this on a ‘bigger stage’.