Cooperative Learning

 Hello everyone, 

I hope you are all safe and sound!!!

Recently i read one article about cooperative learning which left me speechless. Personally i believe that cooperative learning is something very important nowadays and a great technique to apply in your curriculum. Especially in elementary classrooms because it helps students become actively engaged in their learning process and improve their understanding at the content. But what actually do we mean by "cooperative learning"?, is an instructional strategy that enables small groups of students to work together on a common assignment. The key of success is to differentiate cooperative learning than simply dividing students into small groups. Positive Interdependence.  From the moment that they will start to divide the exercises about the mutual assignment then they will be able to understand that they count on each other. If someone of them becomes lazy then everyone on the group will "sink" but if everyone do their job on time they will succeed. Another important point is that" students work together, but perform alone" and this is called Individual Accountability. Which means that they can really work together but at the end they will be graded individually. The classmates that are part of a group must be able to understand that they are successful as a whole but also that they are successful as individuals. Face-to-Face interaction is as well very essential. This means that students need to practice orally the nature of the concepts being learned, oral explanations of how to solve problems etc.In cooperative groups students learn academic subjects taskwork, and also interpersonal and small group skills such as teamwork. Such a group must me able to provide effective leadership, trust building, decision making, conflict management and communication as well.

When students will develop these kind of skills they will be able to run on future projects smoothly and fast. And this is called Interpersonal and Small Group Social Skills. The last but not less important element is group processing. This means that after we have completed our work we need some time in order to reflect on what we have done right and what not. It will help students to be better and to improve next time they have a group work. Personally i believe that cooperative work is something very good. It will help students to broaden their horizons, and to understand the main point which is working on small groups, working together as a whole, as a team. They need to be cooperative not only at school but during their whole life even when they start working, or when they are eating all together on a business table etc. Maybe they will not understand the importance when they will be on elementary school but they will thank them (the teachers using this method) later.  And this is the reason why i am going to practice that method as a future teacher one day.

Hope you enjoyed reading this post! Feel free to leave your comments down below!!!

The impact of technology in education and our expectation to this course.

The impact of technology in education and our expectation to this course.  

 Hi everyone, 

I hope you are doing well!!!

Technology offers so many opportunities, initially making teaching interesting but not only because it also offers a variety of information which can be easily accessed offering a productivity in terms of teaching hours.Technology is one of the main drivers of social and linguistic change. It is used to satisfy both the visual and auditory senses of students. The use of technology especially in teaching English has become widespread but there are still teachers who teach in the traditional way. None of these traditional behaviors are bad or harmful to students. In fact they have proven to be useful as well. The use of technology in the creation of language teaching programs has allowed the best and most attractive teaching models to be achieved in the classroom. The teacher uses these as tools to explain the basic concepts and to keep the students concentrated as long as possible.The use of technology in the classroom has become a necessary complement to the teaching of a language because it has been seen to be effective and attractive to students who want to be successful in their teaching. For this reason i would like to highlight some of the advantages of this method. 

First, technology is a complementary tool for the classroom teacher. Educational technology today is beneficial to teachers in many ways. Traditional education is no longer so appealing and teachers need to motivate their students more than ever to use it and even when presenting any material in class. Books are taking the second place and technology means that classrooms can be much richer in content and with more participants than before.

Second, technology is motivating and stimulating for students. Using technology both in and out of the classroom makes students feel much more motivated, using devices with which they can practice a language through features such as the voice recognition and interactive exercises. For new students it is much more stimulating to learn with a tablet or smartphone than with a traditional textbook and a CD for the exercises. 

The impact of technology in language learning transforms students from passive recipients to active learners and allows for deeper and richer language immersion. 

Third it enable us to monitor the students progress. Assessing students with tests and exams and many other tasks that have an administrative nature, these days are managed thanks to online educational platforms that offer countless functions tailored to the needs of educational centers due to the state of emergency that the entire glob is in. Not only it gives educational instructions better and more effective control over activities such as activating student accounts, creating groups, sending communications and automatic notifications, but they can also perform important tasks such as monitoring student progress. 

I would like to conclude with a saying: " we need technology in every classroom and in every student and teacher hand, because it is the pen and paper of our time, and it is the lens through which we experience a large part of our world.". In order to continue with the future of technology, we should all be willing to change our old mindset into an open one towards innovation. 

Hope you enjoyed reading this post. Feel free to leave your comments!!