Teaching and Learning

I am back at home in Singapore after an amazing 4 week journey from Sydney – Mangalore – Chennai – Singapore. We are doing the finishing touches at our team paper, we are learning a lot in the last discussion about assessment. I share a video from Dan Brown called “An open letter to educators” his style is merging facts with opinions so it is not really easy to draw the difference between those but… what a great video. Here my favorite quotes:

The world is changing and if you don’t change with it, the world will decide that it doesn’t need you anymore

But what has education done to reinvent itself? In my experience…nothing! I mean sure they are starting to use email, online databases, sources like blackboard… and if this was 1999 I’ll be saying Great!! But it is not 1999 and if institutional education wants to survive in the information age then  institutional education needs to do more than just adapt a few new tools.

The big question is how technology really affect education? How assessment, and not the nice authentic we read this week, but the one that want to measure your memory with tricky questions is still a bad influence for a teaching style… Some school still prepare students just to pass exams but not to help them discover the true passion and talent inside every single human being. This really was an exiting  journey and still to much things inside my mind.

I am in this program, because I wish to be part of the education team that will help education reinvent itself.

I am quite happy I just sign to one class this term. I have been really busy this last month and this is now my 4th week away home.

Thinking about the future is always a nice exercise! and somehow it always make me contrast with the past. I have so many dreams and wishes about education and technology, using devices like cell phones or ipad’s should be part of the teacher’s tools. No matter if is face to face or online.

But still, we may have the tools and technologies but if we do not change our methods we will finish with a lot of boring content and using punishment to force students to look at it! Like the new-hire training video at some organizations.

To much to do… so little time!

Note: This was the post for February22, but somehow I forgot to publish (It was in the draft)

At Panambur rocks, near Mangalore. India

I started this week with a trip from Sydney – Singapore – Mangalore to deliver a BPM face to face training at Infosys. At the same time I need to review the work of my students at Colombia, read and review some of the classmate articles, coordinate with our team the final phase of our team paper, read about institutional aptitudes, share a little about my University in Colombia and refine the article for  CVC.

On my spare time, I took a course about iphone/ipad programming using the Stanford lectures at iTunes playing with my new toy: a nice white macbook with the magic mouse.  I also try to catch up with my family in Colombia to see what is going on there.

I feel quite close to my team, The Global Learners. I feel safe, I know we all wish to do an excellent job, we trust each others and are quite honest to express our minds using PBWorks. At the discussion board on our course I still think it is too much information. I returned to Singapore on Friday and I choose to review all the papers with no reviews at the moment. Only three papers apply, Bob’s, Jason and Karen. I did enjoy reading and made small comments to their papers, even share resources to help.

where was the pic taken?

I also receive great comments from Professor Datta and Paulette. And after reading the other papers I have some ideas to improve the paper. I must also share that in this moment I am exhausted! and need to prepare for a new journey to Chennai, India in 6 hours. I need to download all the next week work and hope for a good connection at India.

What was the main topic this week? Ahh yes… institutional attitudes. Big question: can the “power of one” change the behavior of a traditional organization from “Far, far away”?

I am at Singapore Airlines lounge, waiting for my trip to Mumbai and then to Mangalore. I just returned from Sydney and between planes, time zones, learning new tools at the office and trying to catch up with my course it is quite a challenge.

I need to use every spare time to read, write the midterm, talk to my team and sometimes just rest! The mid-term is flowing, using mind maps and reading many documents. It is fun, but “hard fun”

I am using the concepts of this course in my online class at Bogotá, Colombia. Currently I have 20 students from engineering, science, biology, math and information sciences from first to last years, with basic to advance computing skills!

In my country, the first week of classes is a real challenge, because they are still changing courses and may or may not stay (actually, students can move across different courses in the first two weeks).  The term last 16 weeks, and you need to keep the course alive, with activities and new things so it is not boring. Also, you need to keep it simple for newbies and challenging for advanced students. It is a lot of work and with all the things we learn, I try to add more to each class.

This time I added a “game like” type of rubric, (sorry it is in Spanish) and ask them to blog about the content and evaluation style and so far the response is quite good!

Rubric using trophies (in Spanish)

This week we are working in guidelines and team charters as part of our class. We are using pbworks as our team workspace, and so far is working real nice.

I read a lot about teamwork. The best book so far is from Patrick Lencioni: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series) Here, there are five basic rules for teams: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results. Lack of any of these may cause problems…

Five dysfunctions

The other nice thing is about social learning and communities. I found this presentation about the seven social media trends – Trend 3: Social learning!!

I have been doing a lot of thinking and research this week as I had a small break from traveling and training. I have many topics on my mind so I choose the one that collect all:  Online Learning Communities.

On the book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson,  I learned about the vital behaviors. So I was trying to think about what are the vital behaviors to create an online learning community.  On the anecdote blog, there are some suggestions that I like:

Community leaders meet regularly to shape and improve the community

Community members band together in small groups to create things that are valuable to themselves and the entire community

When someone asks a question members provide answers. No one is left hanging.

Before you ask a question you put some effort finding the answer and in doing so respect the everyone’s time

I also found that normally vital behavior share a tracking component to see if we are doing the behavior and a practice component that comprise you to perform something.

What do you think are the Vital Behaviors for Online Learning Communities?

Since the version one I loved the did you know series… I believe this can add a little context to our online learning communities discussion:

What can you teach? What can you learn? It is possible to teach everything?

One of the most challenging questions I think about is if you can really teach everything: Abstract concepts, practical skills, values, principles, behaviors, beliefs. What is “teachable” and what is not… for example a face to face course about “How to be happy” or an online course about how to swim.

This is my year so far… January 1 – Bogotá Colombia having brunch with my family. January 3 – Trip from Bogotá to San Francisco via Houston. January 4 – Trip from San Francisco to Seoul and start of my online course. January 6 (I lost one day on the trip) – discover that I do not have internet access in South Korea! Trip to Singapore. January 7- Back in Singapore to work and start reading and posting on my new course… looking for a interview partner and then the new decade just begun!