During the period between May 26 and June 7, Mona Abdelfattah Younes, Editor of the Teachers Network, conducted a training program titled: " E-Learning for Science Teachers" at Hamza Ibn Abdul Muttalib School Preparatory for boys. (Two successive tuesday evenings were devoted for Primary Teachers and two successive sunday evenings were devoted to Prep and Sec. Teachers)
Importance of this training program
E-learning is still conducted in a very traditional, instructor-led fashion in most of the Independent Schools. There is a widespread belief that using MS Office (esp. PPT) is a proof enough for the integration of ICT in education. At the same time, there is very little awareness related to effective and constructive use of e-learning tools for learning purposes. This is a combined challenges, where lack of pedagogical concepts (constructivism, collaborative, contextual learning…) intersect with lack of sufficient confidence to use ICT tools.
However, this is facing a revolutionary change. E-learning is evolving with the WWW as a whole and it's changing to a degree significant enough to warrant a new name: E-learning 2.0, also known as Social Learning. New tools like the Web 2.0 tools have paved the way for such an evolution. They support social interactions, connections, collaboration, sharing and the creation of user-generated content. More and more, educators are beginning to use Web 2.0 tools to create social and collaborative learning experiences for their students. To understand the value of it one has to experience it. This is what the workshop will aim to achieve: to give the participants the 'look and feel' of using E-Learning Tools to Develop Interactive E-Content.
Training Program Objectives:
- Provide teachers with a good understanding about the nature and attitude of the 21st century learners, the Digital Natives
- Stress the necessity to shift to a more active and collaborative teaching approach
- Provide teachers with a huge variety of online resources related to English teaching
- Highlight the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0
- Highlight the educational potentials of Web 2.0
- Aware teachers about requirements related to NPS # 6
- Introduce GOOGLE DOCS, SURVEYMONKEY, TEACHERTUBE as tools that may be useful when during the planning phase (as specified in NPS #6)
- Introduce the concept of educational blogsas a useful tool that can be used during the implementation phase (as specified by NPS # 6)
- Support teachers in the process of creating their own blog
- Provide teachers with necessary tips and tactics that would turn blogs into an effective teaching tool
Training Program Format
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THe training program was conducted in a hands-on training fashion. This means that there was be a theoretical (face-to-face) short introduction to the main concepts and ideas related to the topic. Different short videos were presented for that purpose. However, the main body of the training was the practical experience within the computer lab, where the trainees got a chance to see how to build an educational blog and how to post content on it, and then immediately after the display, start doing that on their own with support and guidance of the trainer.
Training Presentation and Handouts
