Learning Diary ofBabis by Adal Harry

Who am i

dalikeris_1999 — 2015-04-16 14:44:43 UTC

I teach computer science in a secondary high school in Amaliada, Western Greece.

I' m a school teacher for 12 years now, and i'm aiming to enhance my teaching with

new ways and orientations and hopefully influence other teachers in my school to do the same

M1 Q1: Why do i want to use tablets in my teaching

dalikeris_1999 — 2015-04-16 14:48:54 UTC

I presume that using tablets in my classroom will help students motivate

themselves το better perceive and understand the lesson taught as they 'll be

able to interact and visualize aspects of the lesson. However i don't intend to

completely and without discern, embody tablets in the everyday lesson but onlyas a supplementary tool

M1 Q2:What whole-school challenges do I already face or do I anticipate facing when using tablets?

dalikeris_1999 — 2015-04-16 14:55:07 UTC

First of, would be the acceptance of the teachers' faculty and the heads of the school for the whole project. Since it would be an innovation initiative that hasn't yet taken place countrywide and due to the usual and not able to be surpassed way of teaching being done in Greece, i think that there would be a somewhat difficulty in convincing fellow teachers about the necessity of the project. Perhaps a pilot stage or class could be implemented at first.

Then, there is the amount of things to organize in order to get it to work, beginning from technical issues to appropriate software and apps to be found to number of devices being bought.

There's also the educational apps problem. How will i be able to find, if there are any at all, educational apps in my native language.

Also, the issue of one tablet per student, as not all students have the economic ability to own a tablet.

Technical issues are also a matter of concern, but as me being an IT professional, this problem is the last on my list,

So this, in my opinion would be a long going process and must be implemented and surveyed step by step in order to work efficiently.

M1 Q3: What classroom challenges do I already face or do I anticipate facing when using tablets?

dalikeris_1999 — 2015-04-16 15:04:40 UTC

Since the student interest would be certain, i think one challenge that would present itself would be the encapsulation of collaborative learning within the whole context of tablet use, meaning that there might be some technical issues concerning how students would communicate and share their acquired knowledge and work with each other.

M2 Q1: What do you make of the Learning Scenarios concept? Maybe you have even used Learning Scenarios yourself (in another project)?

dalikeris_1999 — 2015-04-25 07:48:16 UTC

Phases of Learning Scenarios are a part of developing projects. Students are given a theme as part of taught subject in class and are asked to produce a result in any subcategories they think of, working in groups. They have access to the internet and the use of PCs but since no tablets are used they cant go mobile.

M2 Q2:What kind of content can you produce with your class?

dalikeris_1999 — 2015-04-26 13:38:12 UTC

Once, in cooperation with a colleague of mine, a teacher of Ancient Greek, we encouraged our students to create a project about the greek trireme ship: It's origins, how it was built, which sea battles did it play crucial role, even build a model. Students were divided into groups, with each one centering in a different aspect of the project and alltogether sharing info that could perfect their work.

M3 Q1:How do you form groups of students for group work and why do you take this approach? Based on your experience what strategies of forming groups work and which do not work? Why?

dalikeris_1999 — 2015-05-01 20:19:41 UTC

At the beginning of the year, i'm giving my students a knowledge and skills test to determine their level of competence and then i divide them in groups of four making sure that are formed by students with different levels of competence. In this way, weaker students can benefit from stronger ones. I find, that this strategy works better if the levels of competence are close, i.e. i won't form a group where the stronger student has a grade of 20 and the weaker has a grade of 12, because the gap between them will make them get bored easily and thus don't benefit from the advantages of collaborative learning.

M3 Q2:How do you keep your students focused and on track during collaborative projects? How do you ensure all students contribute to the task? If you have organised a similar project share your experiences (positive and negative) here.

dalikeris_1999 — 2015-05-01 20:26:14 UTC

By assigning meaningful roles to the students so that they feel they are being an important asset to the team. Each group has to reach some milestones before completing its part of the project. After the completion of each milestone, the leader of the group has to assess the performance of each member and with the help of the other members, reflect on what if any, went wrong and how the members contributed to it. Then, the groups and me are discussing the reasons and try to figure out solutions either by assigning different roles or moving students to other groups that might interest them more. My experience with this kind of teaching is mostly positive, since it is a new way for me to do my work as it is for the students who happily accepted a change in their usual way of attending the classroom. There were some gaps in the process, especially in the cases where some students had reduced interest with the project theme so i had a difficult time finding them something that would interest them and the same time wouldn't disrupt the ongoing group work.