Wednesday, January 22, 2014

A New Jouney Begins

Today was the first classes in the Spring of 2014 semester. I am always curious what the students will be like, how well they are prepare for accepting the challenges, how tech savvy they are.

I always share with them the videos about the Net generation students in today's classrooms. I am surprised that in most cases, teacher candidates haven't see these videos and haven't heard about the term Web 2.0



Below is one of the videos I usually share with teacher candidates, "The Vision of Students of Today."


I enjoy seeing the change of students' face expressions, and love discussing why it was important for me to share the video with them. 

During the first week of classes, I use as an ice-breaker, an activity where each student is assigned a Web 2.0 tool that they have to learn about and use to introduce themselves. It is so exciting to see how quickly teacher candidates learn the tools, how creatively they use them to express themselves and then how proudly they share their new learning with the whole class.

I challenge them to use this activity as their first teaching experience to the whole class. It is much more challenging to teach to your own peers than to the elementary school children! Some teacher candidates confess that this presentation really breaks their fear, stage fright, and helps them develop confidence.

I am excited to learn about MoveNote and I have used it already to introduce myself and all Moodle classes to my students from the four courses.

Here it is, one of the introductions: