web 2.0 : love at first sight
My first contact with web 2.0 came in October ‘08 through a university course I took in the U.A.B. in order to get qualified to teach English as a second language in secondary school – this is what’s know as the C.A.P.
It was over 20 years since I had graduated from the U.A.B. - in Philosophy & Educational Sciences - and at the time I took the MBA, ICT technologies used within education were inexistent. We would learn about text processors and spreadsheets (with extremely unpleasant interfaces!) but as tools, not as an actual means to convey knowledge. In fact, I recall seeing the first Mac and the 8 inch floppy disks at that time. Each time I had to remove the disk from the tray I was afraid I would lose the information. Actually, those disks were so sensitive that it wasn’t that difficult to get all the information erased or damaged just being carried around in our folders.
Coming back to the C.A.P. course, I was mostly impressed to discover on the first day that together with the “standard lessons” we would have a virtual classroom and we had to comply with some assignments in there in order to pass the course.
Actually, it was the second time I heard about Moodle, since my nephew aged 14 is already using Moodle in her school. But having to be an active part myself, that sounded really interesting all together.
Far from being feasable and applicable to the majority of the secondary schools in Catalonia in the short term, the curriculum for secondary school is requiring the students to be ICT literate and ICT tehcnologies should be widely used as a teaching tool and as part of the methodology. Fortunately, our C.A.P. teacher not only is a firm believer of all the advantages of Web 2.0 applied to teaching, but also he is already effectively using all these resources for the benefit of his students; and probably with the envy/frustration of many of his colleagues that can’t either manage to become a digital immigrant or just get put off by the mere thought of technologies.
As far as I am concerned, I quickly clicked into any information he would provide us in relation to Web 2.0. I experimented as much as possible with blogs, wikis and any other possible tools related to the digital world when I had to create an original teaching unit.
The results when put into practice were amazing: students’ attention, enthusiasm, connected to their world, motivation, working collaboratively, etc
I just had to fall in love at first sight!!!
It was over 20 years since I had graduated from the U.A.B. - in Philosophy & Educational Sciences - and at the time I took the MBA, ICT technologies used within education were inexistent. We would learn about text processors and spreadsheets (with extremely unpleasant interfaces!) but as tools, not as an actual means to convey knowledge. In fact, I recall seeing the first Mac and the 8 inch floppy disks at that time. Each time I had to remove the disk from the tray I was afraid I would lose the information. Actually, those disks were so sensitive that it wasn’t that difficult to get all the information erased or damaged just being carried around in our folders.
Coming back to the C.A.P. course, I was mostly impressed to discover on the first day that together with the “standard lessons” we would have a virtual classroom and we had to comply with some assignments in there in order to pass the course.
Actually, it was the second time I heard about Moodle, since my nephew aged 14 is already using Moodle in her school. But having to be an active part myself, that sounded really interesting all together.
Far from being feasable and applicable to the majority of the secondary schools in Catalonia in the short term, the curriculum for secondary school is requiring the students to be ICT literate and ICT tehcnologies should be widely used as a teaching tool and as part of the methodology. Fortunately, our C.A.P. teacher not only is a firm believer of all the advantages of Web 2.0 applied to teaching, but also he is already effectively using all these resources for the benefit of his students; and probably with the envy/frustration of many of his colleagues that can’t either manage to become a digital immigrant or just get put off by the mere thought of technologies.
As far as I am concerned, I quickly clicked into any information he would provide us in relation to Web 2.0. I experimented as much as possible with blogs, wikis and any other possible tools related to the digital world when I had to create an original teaching unit.
The results when put into practice were amazing: students’ attention, enthusiasm, connected to their world, motivation, working collaboratively, etc
I just had to fall in love at first sight!!!
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