MY REFLECTIONS ON WEEK 6

Hello everyone,

Well, Week 6 was as rich as the other weeks we have already experienced. And this in terms of learning.

This week, I was really interested in one of the main subject matters, namely teaching in large classes. I was interested, especially as I have been teaching large classes since I entered the teaching profession. I had my own techniques to deal with some of the problems encountered in large classes, but with the reading I was recommended about large classes, I ‘m now aware of some new and interesting techniques I’ll certainly implement to make my activities more interactive. This change will bring learners to be more interested, moving from the status of passive students to that of active ones. Relating to the problem of “shortage of time” during lessons, I think that things like discussion boards, Emails, blogs, etc. are appropriate solutions as far as a good time management is concerned.

This week, we were asked to start the implementation of the technology change as solution to the specific problem we’ve pointed out earlier in Week 4.

Thus, to start the implementation of the technology change in my Grade 10 class, I found it important to talk about what the change will consist in doing and my expectations. Since the vast majority of the students (90%) are not computer literate, I had to give them a theoretical and a bit practical course related to the use of a computer. For that, I had to bring in my class a desktop and my laptop. The objective was to show them the different parts of a computer with their corresponding uses. To make sure that the message would go through, I decided to give all the explanations in French - our official language - so that everything would be clear in their minds, and that they could be able to ask me some questions. Then, I connected my laptop to the Internet to show them what a “Nicenet” page looks like. After creating a class on Nicenet, I gave them the URL of the website, the class key and asked all the students to join the class, after I had given them some explanations about the different stages to join the class. It is useful to recall that my technology change is about how to deal with the problem of time constraints during a lesson (time management). To ensure that things move ahead quickly, I gave the students a deadline to join the class.

As observations, I noticed that some of the students were a bit “scared” about the idea of using a computer without assistance. Others were very excited because they were looking forward to discovering new things thanks to the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It’s at that time that the students were granted a four-day holiday on the basis of the schedule of the Ministry of National Education. So I have to wait for next Tuesday to keep on doing the implementation of my technology change.

Best regards,

Dagnogo