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.

Week 7: One-computer classroom - the current state of affairs

First I have to describe the situation in my school regarding the use of the classrooms. As we share the school premises with a vocational school, we have simply-furnished classrooms where students remain stationary and the teachers move from one classroom to another. However, we don’t share all the classrooms with the other school. There are several labs that are only ours, such as the two computer labs with Internet access, and the two foreign language labs. Only one of the language labs is equipped with a computer with Internet access and a projector. There are 8 language teachers at my school so we have a sign up a list for this lab as well, just like for the computer labs.

Unfortunately, the lab remains locked during breaks, so I read the article Self-access – A Framework for Diversity by Michael Rodden with envy. There is absolutely no possibility for me and my fellow language teachers to create a student corner at school, where our students would have access to materials connected with language learning, such as dictionaries, newspapers, brochures, postcards and other memorabilia that we bring from our trips to target language countries (besides English, German, Italian and French are taught at my school).

Also, as the financial situation won’t allow us to buy software for language teaching and learning in the near future (schools have always been underfunded), we have to rely on the free resources available on the Internet. For this reason I set up a website together with two of my enthusiastic colleagues. I’m in charge of the English pages where I post links to all the free interactive materials that have instant feedback. Occasionally, I write my own materials. As it was the first of its kind in Croatia, the website became so popular that it is now used by students from all over the country who are preparing for their school-leaving exams. Since its launch in December 2009, it has been visited by more than 183,000 students (with more than 10 million hits). You can visit the Moja matura page here.

I sometimes use the links from the website in the one-computer classroom, but I have to admit that it is much more useful when students do the exercises individually or in pairs at their own pace, especially as they can check their answers immediately.