Assignment 14.1:
A.
Technology and TPD
Once
you are graduated from the teacher training center, The question is "will
you stop learning?" If you go to shool and you meet your students, would
you think that your knowledge you learn today will be sufficient enough to
answer all their questions or equip them with enough knowledge and skills for
their future? I believe you know the answer already. And I believe you agree
with the idea that what you learn today will not be enough for equipping you
for the future teaching challenges. Therefore, you will keep on learning and
you will keep your self up dated with the lates technology in education.
Why teachers need to keep up with technology? Why don't we just let the students work with technology themselves and just give them assignments to do? Aren't they familiar with technology already? But how will we ask students do something with technology if we do not know what technology is available and the potential of it? Even worse if we do not know what might be the potential danger that can possibly brought about by the technology. So, learning technology continuously is a never ending effort that should be performed by teachers. It is part of their professional development (PD) as well since learning technology and how to use it will eventually enrich their knowledge, hone skills, and deepen their understanding of how actually students who have been immersed with technology learning today. It is important to always remember that without sufficient knowledge on how technology can be used in the classroom which very often offered via professional development activities teachers will never be optimally implement technology into their daily instructions (Skogerbo, 2013).
Professional Development does not always mean attending standardized and official TPD hosted by government, or teacher training institutions etc. It does not also mean a site-based one that includes many teachers and scheduled rigorously to meet the expectation of the teachers on site.Yet, it can mean just a self-directed teacher profesional development (TPD)(Gaible & Burns, 2005), initiated and conducted by the teacher themselves. The last type of TPD probably the most feasible one for us. since it requires only our will and itention to be better teacher. Through the use of technology self-directed TPD nowadays is just a click away. But how we can start our TPD? and what tools available on the Internet that assit self-directed TPD?
Check
the followings:
1. Electronic Mailing List (E-Mail List)
1. Electronic Mailing List (E-Mail List)
is a special use of email for delivering electronic mails to a
number of email recipients that belong to a group. For example, if we are a
member of an e-mail list, then we can easily send an email to members (that can
be hundred or thousands in number) of the e-mail list with one single click. in
returns, we can also receive email from all members that is sent to the e-mail
list. This email list comes in very handy especially when we want to have a
special group on the internet and we want the group members to discuss things
over the interenet. what we can do then is just set up the group in an e-mail
list provider, invite people to join the e-mail list, and we can start doing
discussion online by sending emails.
Two
examples of e-mail list provider that is well-known are Yahoo Groups and Google Groups.
In Yahoo Groups you can either start your own group or find an e-groups
that most interest to you. You can start you class groups, works groups, or may
be your clubs' group. See the video introduction about yahoo groups here:
Now,
you can try by clicking here Yahoo Groups , and
search for topics/groups of your interests e.g: search for 'ESLGroup' or
"ELTIndonesia'. Once you can find the links to the groups join the groups
by clicking the join buttons. You will notice there that the ESLGroup is Public
and therefore, needs no approval by the group owner to join. However, the
ELTIndonesia is a restricted group and that's why when you click the join
button you will need to be approved by the owner in order to be the member of
the group. Once you become the member of the groups you can then start
receiving emails from the members and you can also send emails to them as
well.
You may
try other topics/groups that are interesting to you, you may try scholarship,
technology or if you cannot find one you can start making your own group and
inviting people to you group. What about Google Groups? It is
just the same as the Yahoo Groups. If you wan to try Google groups, all you
have to do is just follow the on screen instructions and you should be ok.
2.
Online Forum (Message Board)
In addition to the e-mail list, online forum is basically
similar with it. It is also a place where people can discuss things online
either directly over the web or via email. An example of online forum can be
found here:
- One Stop English
Discussions
- ELT Community
- EFL Classroom
- VOXoPOP ( A voice based discussion board). To use this you need to sing up and then log in. Once you are logged in you can start searching for a discussion topic of your interest, for example you may try English Language Teaching.
3.
Social Media
Almost every internet users nowadays probably is familiar with
that term social media and have account in one of the social media sites.
Social media is a place where people share and exchange infomation. It is built
on the idea of web 2.0 that promotes the creation and exchange of
user-generated contents (Kaplan & Haenlien, 2012). The social media is
gaining more and more popularity today as a a kind of medium for social
interaction and communication. It has been proved effective to attract internet
users because of the features that social media offers. Some features are
content sharing ( e.g instagram and youtube), micro blogging (e.g. twitter),
social networking (e.g. facebook), professional networking (e.g. Linkedin) and also
feature like mobile device friendly.
With those features people in social media do many things like
shopping, marketing, discussing, chatting , conferencing and still many other
real life businesses. Using social media in education is not an exception.
check this video:
If we can use it for education that it means we can also
use it for teachers education as well. Teachers can share and exchange
information with other teachers in other schools through social media. They can
do through egroups that can be found in social media like in Facebook, Twitter,
Path, Pinterest etc. All you have to do is login to those social media and
start searching the intended group for example TEFL, ESL, TESOL etc and join
the group. An example of how Twitter can be used for Professional development
can be check here:
Or you
may also create your own group there, see how to do it here:
In short, through social media groups, teachers can share
their knowledges and exchange informations. Thus they can alwasy be updtaed
with new information about education and teaching knoledge. People can share
lesson plans, discuss ideas to solve specific problems etc. So, through online
discussion in the social media groups, there will be no longer lonely teachers
who have no one to talk to when having problem in the class. Eventually, there
will be no theacher that will be left behind.
Another
social media that are very useful for teacher professional development is video
sharing sites like YouTube,TeacherTube, Vimeo, Schooltube, WatchKnowLearn, Edutube etc. Teachers can just subscribe to those
video sharing sites and they will be updated with resourceful and useful videos
for their teaching activities.
4. Open
Online Course
Another alternative for TPD is open online courses where
teachers can expect to get updated knowledge about education. They can also
share knowledge, discuss on current ideas, and even get certification upon
completion of the online courses. The followings are some open online courses
that can be a good place for teachers for exploring about teaching knowledge.
There, teacher can register and join the online courses for free:
5.
Online Seminar (Web-based Seminar)
Online webinar is also another alternative for teacher
self-directed professional development. Check the following sites for available
webinars. In those sites teachers can join the upcoming webinars, or just watch
the recorded ones. If you join the webinar you can get more incentives since
you can post questions or share your knowledge with others as well:
Assignment
14.2:
THis assigment will be the last assignment for this course. You
will individually need to find a TEFL/TESOL groups in yahoo groups, google
groups, or in social media like facebook, twitter, path etc. The, join the
group, and post a question or comment on one of the discussion forum there.
Take the screen shot and upload through the assignment folder.
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