Week 8: Creating online exercises

Many of my colleagues have mentioned the importance of introducing test makers to students. If we teach them how to make exercises on their own, they will become involved in the learning process. In this way, students will become aware of the importance of their engagement and their new role in the classroom. Eventually, they will take control over their learning. The teacher will be there to guide them, facilitate the learning process or simply someone to lean on when problems arise.

In a comment to my previous post I mentioned an influential post by Doug Johnson from The Blue Skunk Blog: Creating Empowered Users where he says that instead of saying "Here's how you do it", we should ask the student "What have you tried?". By being LESS helpful, the teacher actually empowers the students to think independently, to rely on themselves and to become autonomous.

So far I have introduced my students to exercise-building on the ITESLJ website, where you can see some of their bilingual quizzes. However, what my students did, was to write the words in two languages and send them in an email to the site administrator who generated the quizzes. I believe that my students would enjoy going through all the stages of the quiz making process. Over the next school year I am going to make use of this weeks’ recommended websites and I am sure my students will benefit greatly from being involved in test making, be it only for practising purposes. Besides, I might use some of their creations for “real” test, which will make them more engaged and motivated.

Week 7: The new teaching is learning

Last weekend I participated in the Reform Symposium Conference, an online conference organized by enthusiastic educators worldwide who believe that teachers are capable of bringing change into the classroom.

One of the quotes that best describes the essence of the conference was The new teaching is learning by Monika Hardy, a passionate math teacher whose students want to redefine school for improved learning, where they are responsible for their learning.

This perfectly sums up what we have been discussing this week. Students have to learn to take control over their own learning. Teachers need to direct their students to follow the path of independence and autonomy. In order to facilitate this process with competence, teachers themselves must be autonomous and comitted to lifelong learning.