Hello everyone,
We - the critical minds- met last week on 23 November at "Pink Meeting Room" at high school building. We started our meeting at our exact time on 15:45.
I was the presenter and I have chosen an article to share with my friends. The article named “Ten Pillars of Successful Technology Implementation” that is about a painter who loves fishing. Oh just kidding of course it was about educational technology. By this article I want to learn my friends’ opinions about using technology in their classes. I want to thank all of them, they gave me very worthy information. Only Sinan wasn’t with us, he had a leg problem and he couldn’t attend the meeting. I hope he is ok now.
And Nathan, he was our facilitator and he did his job perfectly. And the cookies he brought were very delicious. Thank him again.
We were a little curious about what will happen at the beginning so Nathan started first and he went over our protocol again. The entire group was very well prepared and they already knew the protocol. And then I explained why I chose the article and our session started.
Alex was the first speaker and she mentioned the Pillar 6: All teachers must receive ongoing technical support. She shared her concerns about technical support. And said that, if a computer problem occurs during a lesson, too much time spent on solving that problem and this affects the lesson very badly.
Then Simge started to talk about Pillar 2: Selling is better than telling. Everyone needs to buy into the change that technology brings. She mentioned that using technology in classroom should be bottom up. People want to use it, not by anyone’s command.
After her, Hande was our third speaker and talked about Pillar 5: All teachers must receive ongoing training. She said that teachers should use the up-to-date technology and must have the courses for them. We wouldn’t limit ourselves by the old fashioned technologies.
And then, Nilhan pointed the Pillar 7: Use it or lose it. She said that; we have to change our minds first and then we can use technological materials.
Tunç was the fifth speaker and he also talked about Pillar 7: Use it or lose it. He mentioned that if a teacher uses computer in her/his daily life, it will be easier to use in the classroom so teacher don’t loose their skills.
After him, our facilitator Nathan mentioned Pillar 10: Recognize that technology is for all, and that it involves all in the process of lifelong learning. And he shared his experience in USA how he used rap music to teach in class. The students were enjoying the rap music in their lives. He said it is important to make a connection to students’ real lives. And he planned to create a facebook group for his students.
Our last speaker was our coordinator Mrs. Beti, she chose the Pillar 4: Recognize that technological change is fast. Keeping up-to-date is challenging and essential. To discuss on. She pointed that there is a big gap between today and the technology 40 years ago. But using technology isn’t about young-old teacher, it’s about to be growth minded people who likes challenges.
We followed our protocol and everyone spoke for 3 minutes and then 2 minutes together after each.
And then we summarized our opinions.
- For the technical problems in the class, we can create a team from students which are good at computers. 1 person from each class and then give them a course about how to solve technical problems.
- Using Facebook and Twitter makes the teacher cool for the students. It is interesting for them and this can be used for teaching or giving tips, etc.
And at the last we decided to share our works about this session at the next meeting. Like I have started a Facebook grup or I have started to use computer lab, something like these…
It was a good meeting for me. I have collected the reflections after meeting and had very good feedback from my friends. I want to collect the opinions and make a project how to improve the educational technology in our school. And then prepare a presentation about these.
I want to thank all my “Critical Minded” friends and my facilitator Nathan and Mrs Beti.
