Day 2 of our blogging workshop

Day 2 of our ICT workshop !

Day 2 was focused on how the internet can be used to hunt down useful resources which can be practically applied within the class. Teachers at this school usually only rely on books or government-provided educational materials for their classrooms and rarely use the internet as a source of educational support material.

I first re-capped the use of Google, Facebook, YouTube and Ted.com for finding educational material which can either be used by the teachers or by students within the class.

Teachers were then organised into groups, and were given an activity to use any one of the websites I had re-capped, or others, to find at least one source of information which could be practically applied to their classrooms.

This activity took quite a while for a number of reasons – not enough internet credit, modems not working, laptops not working, internet signals cutting out, etc. Working in groups was a powerful way to overcome most of these problems, as teachers collaborated to seek solutions and to motivate each other along when the task became challenging.

In the end most teachers were able to track down a useful sources which could be applied to their classrooms, and presented their findings. Some of these were:

– A video on basketball techniques (from YouTube)

Presenting a video on basketball techniques which can be used for students within the classroom

– Videos on biology (from Ted.com)

– An article on blood circulation (from Wikipedia)

Presenting another article on blood circulation which can be used in biology class

– An article on the new Indonesian curriculum from an independent website (found through Google)

Searching for an article on the new 2013 Indonesian curriculum

Then, it was on to a presentation on ‘Online Learning Communities’ for teachers – the idea that interactive, collaborative online teacher learning communities through websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogging can be powerful for establishing teacher support networks, transfers of ideas and knowledge, collective solutions to problems and broad networking opportunities for professional development.

Due to popular demand, the main tool we focused on was blogging. We first entered into a discussion about the need to blog for a purpose, as recommended by my fantastic fellow teacher Kim Yeomans. To further this point, two teachers presented on their blogs which they are still using, giving an overview of why Blogging is important to them and what they use their blogs for.

One of the teachers, Mr. Mashur, is an avid blogger and identified a number of reasons why he still uses his blog,

– Other people can access your blog and view the information you post

– Creating and writing blogs means becoming part of a blogging community

– He can express his hobbies and interests through his blog

– Blogs can be used to socialize professionally

Mr. Mashur presenting on his blog

 

We ended the workshop by engaging in a reflective activity, during which these observations were made by teachers:

– With the introduction of the internet, we now not only need to rely on books to source information

– If we can use videos in class, the students can become more motivated

It’s all very promising, however something struck me today: it’s fairly easy for the teachers to follow steps to make a blog – the teachers pick it up fairly quickly, and usually persevere despite issues with the internet or with their computers. Similarly, they can search Google, Ted.com or YouTube for information fairly easily once they’ve learned the steps and can help each other. The thing is, I’ve realised today that there is not actually much of a culture of teacher professional development at the school, despite the fact that I have introduced ICT to try and support it.

And it’s understandable that there isn’t – as multiple teachers have indicated to me, there are little opportunities for teachers to further their own professional development. Outside staff meetings, there are little to no opportunities for teachers to develop themselves professionally. Teacher professional development conferences are often reserved for principals or school leaders and are expensive and too difficult to get to.

Linked to this, there is very little emphasis on self-reflection amongst teachers as an avenue towards developing themselves (which the Australian teacher from the plane indicated to me as a crucial component of teacher professional development/learning). I’ve realised this may explain the lack of motivation in teachers continuing their blogs, as blogging is a form of self-reflection, as social media may also be considered to be.

To put it metaphorically, it dawned on me that I may actually be trying to ‘build a house without a foundation’. I’m training teachers to use ICT for their own teacher professional development, when there is not much of a culture of teacher professional development in the first place…

Before any ICT can be introduced, the teachers need to actually become familiar with concept of teacher professional development, as something that is collaborative, interactive and crucial to developing themselves as effective facilitators of learning. This would of course be a whole week’s workshop in itself.

… Time for a cup of (Indonesian) tea.