Final thoughts

The course is very interesting and impressive, it add many to our knowledge. This course is the best for me; I learned different strategies to teaching IT. This Course holds smooth ideas that can be implement not just ideas written on paper. I am sure that it will help me a lot in my future.

I would like to thank Dr Myint for his clearly explanations and spaciousness of his chest and his cooperation with us. I hope all teachers hold the same morals.

Games and Simulations

I was happy to know that many researchers view video games seriously and try to incorporate games and simulations into teaching and learning.  It’s nice to know that video games are not just for recreation.

I really like the direction on incorporating technology into future learning.  It is exciting how innovative teaching and learning may become.

I hope to create some video games that meet the main objectives in my lessons, It will help me think a lot about how games and simulations need to incorporate real game-like features to make them more interesting and meaningful to students.

Cyber-safety

The Internet is an indispensable tool for information, research, and education.   We use the Internet to communicate with family, friends, work colleagues, and others for a myriad of purposes.  All forms of entertainment can be accessed via the Internet. 

Those with common interests can share their thoughts, skills, and support and are not constrained by geography. 

Most of us rely on the Internet to purchase merchandise, do our banking, and conduct business transactions.  We have the option of not going to the store, bank or place of business, but rather doing these activities from home.

While the Internet is a very valuable a tool, it also poses risks to our safety, security, and privacy.  Most of us have had “pop-ups” appear while visiting a website promising free gifts and prizes in exchange for personal information.  Children are enticed by these promises and may divulge information that can jeopardize their safety or privacy.  

This is some online -safety tips:

u Never agree to meet with someone you have met online

u People may not be who they say they are online

u Encourage the use of pen names

u Remove address and contact details from emails

u Never respond to obscene or suggestive messages

u Don’t send personal photos over the internet and critical data such as visa card number

u Be sure there is an anti-virus installed in your PC and be sure it is updated

concept/mind map

Like all maps, concept maps are representations of spatial relationships.   Concept maps reflect the psychological structure of an individual’s knowledge.It show what individuals know and how their knowledge is structured.

Grounded in a constructivist perspective of learning, concept maps have 3 elements: nodes or concepts, lines representing links and directional relations among concepts, and labels that describe the nature of the relationship. These 3 elements combine to create propositions, or meaningful statements.

I think Students are lack of knowledge about mind map, Students cannot identify the key words / key concepts, they have just copied down the headings of their textbook or they copy the whole paragraph and some students claim that it is time–consuming.

But I advice teachers to overcome all of these problems is to create a mind map together by part to part during the lesson, show the benefits of mind map, integrate the mind map into teaching activities .So student will be familiar with this kind of maps to get better results through facilitate long term memory, identify linkages between concepts, consolidate concepts in junior forms, and cultivate Self-learners.

WebQuest

WebQuest is a new educational tool designed to provide a new learning system for students and through the integration of the web in the educational process. As an educational tool, it is flexible and can be used in all grade levels and in all subjects and disciplines.

It aims to develop the capacity of student thinking and building researcher student can assess himself, in addition to that the teacher gives students the opportunity to explore information for themselves and not only provide them.

I find WebQuest gives students the ability to search in specific points in a deep and thoughtful, but through the limits selected by the teacher same time .It saves the sequence of the lesson. This would help a lot on non-dispersion of students and to intensify their efforts in the desired direction of the activity that they are doing.

Web Quest leads to provide students with research skills on the Internet creatively and product (Creative researchers) this goes beyond being just browsing web sites.

WebQuest with a good design, good materials , additional links sites (sources) to enrich the lesson in a positive way and enabling the student to work independently, All these are factors helping to build a successful WebQuest.

Inquiry based learning

As we all know traditional education focus on ‘what we know’ (facts), it is a direct transfer of knowledge from teacher to student where the teacher’s role is dispense knowledge and student’s role is receive knowledge. But inquiry based learning focus on ‘how we know what we know’ (evidence); this is kind of Indirect transfer of knowledge where the teacher’s role is facilitator of learning and student’s role is active, independent learner (investigator).

“Inquiry is something that students do, not something that is done to them.”

This type of learning is flexible and adaptable for a variety of projects. It helps to build self-esteem through allowing students to be more active in their own learning process, rather than passive via traditional lecture based methods.

It also reinforces and builds several skills of students in the areas of physical, emotional, and cognitive and it can work with any age group.

On the other hand I find there are some disadvantages which are it doesn´t work for all topics , it requires more planning, preparation, and responsiveness from the educators,educators must be skilled in helping students learn the art of asking a good question. Finally, as we know time is the biggest enemy so this kind of learning requires more class time and may be less able to meet goals of standardized testing.

Student-Centred Learning

    

From my understanding to student-Centred Learning is that kind of teaching that focuses on the student. Decision-making, organization, and content are largely determined by the student’s needs and perceptions. Even assessment may be influenced or determined by the student. The instructor acts as coach and facilitator. In many respects, the goal of this type of teaching is the development of the student’s cognitive abilities. I think Learning will be most meaningful when topics are relevant to the students’ lives, needs, and interests and when the students themselves are actively engaged in creating, understanding, and connecting to knowledge. The students are not just memorizing information, but they are allowed to work with and use the information alone or with peers.

From my point of view that this type of education has many positive because it provides motivation to student, teaches understanding no knowledge, effective in developing study skills, higher motivation and grades and finally it is interesting ,exciting and boosts confidence. But in the other hand it requires more resources and it is difficult for large classes escpecially in Bahrain the average of class is 30 which is too large.

In the end it is up to each of us as teachers to determine how much SCL we will use. It helps to vary class structures for students. It helps to strengthen outcomes for students. It provides variety for us as teachers. It is up to us as teachers to lead the class and to see how to best utilize the benefits that SCL can provide us. It is up to us as teachers to use a variety of techniques to keep our students challenged in their ongoing quest for understanding.