In my reflection I want to focus solely on my experience of online learning, how I dealt with and lived and the impact in terms of relationship with the students and on teaching. I wrote the thoughts that are cast as surfaced in my mind. Maybe I went a bit 'off-topic, but ... so I came
First course Editing Multimedia was not my first experience of the online training, but the latest in a series that began several years ago . Certainly the course of Andreas was quite different from all others (this will be the future of education, university, school ...? I hope so), in which, however, I almost always found at home with tutors readily available and, with colleagues motivated and eager to share and learn as I do.
As I approached these experiences? What has changed in me?
As I wrote in brainstorming, I have dealt with the transition from paper to that of the bit without anxiety, but with the curiosity that distinguishes me, wanting to get involved and interact with other people. This gave me the impetus to overcome the fear, uncertainty, sense of inadequacy that sometimes, even today, they take me. The network for me was and still is a big "gym" of life has made me more sure of myself in everyday life and especially in relation to others, although it is still a fund of shyness in me.
I think I have learned more in recent years than in many training courses in the presence followed in the various schools.
In all the courses of these three years of university there has always been a mix of training, say, traditional, based on books or papers (only in some such), along with activities that have enabled collaboration, and cooperative construction shared knowledge, skill development, experiments in class that have stimulated reflection on the metacognitive processes of teaching and learning. We started together, built together and grow together, but then came back on the books, each preparing for your exam. Editing
The course brought a totally different path. The beginning was the same for everyone, but then everyone, through his blog, he built a personal approach to "study" a PLE that was made available to all. The blogoclasse was experienced as a work space, thought, action open to all staff, a blogoclasse that has been building and enriching day after day and that can continue to live even after the course, calling for new connections.
At first I did a little 'effort, I had a moment of disorientation, I was without books, without reference points. My experience as a student has left deep traces in me ...
But when I began to explore this new educational territory, the road is flat and curiosity has done his part. The blogoclasse allowed me to "see" about the world and experiences of colleagues, I was able to read their ideas / opinions that have stimulated in me new thoughts, new ideas, new ideas, new acquisitions. Can not be learned only in books, in fact, you will learn more by interacting, responding, investigating, asking. In my opinion it is a knowledge-lived, and behold, what is lacking to knowledge gained through the books is the involvement, participation, what we read in books is always a bit 'cold, a little' detached from everyday experience. It is clear that we also need theories, but if you stop at what it gives us in terms of impact on our profession, our being persons / teachers? It remains something imposed from above, something that hovers over us but does not affect our minds, not "upset" our beliefs, our way of acting (at least for me so ...).
Instead, see colleagues at work with video, maps, experiences, activities, makes you want to try, to break away from that bag of relational practices and teaching that is very comfortable refuge, but that certainly is no longer suitable to our students, it is best suited to an environment that is renewed day by day, an environment composed of persons with different characteristics , with different needs, with a cultural background, family and social changing. They are not children who have to keep our pace, but the school needs to keep them.
It is not that the theory has emerged in blogoclasse, indeed, was a walk backwards: starting from experiences, thoughts have emerged references to ideas, authors ... From experience, the reflections we have returned to books, theories, reviewed and revised in the light of experience, we talked about multiple intelligences, assessment, cooperative learning, constructivism ... just to name a few. The blogoclasse has been the means, the tool that has allowed all this has led to a community of people who lived through the course together, walked together, he constructed new knowledge together, each with its own procedures.
Well, perhaps this is what we create in our classrooms / schools, this is what I'm trying to do in my class. Give more space and voice to the group, encouraging the contribution of all, by accepting the contributions of each, every opportunity, every idea, every response children, even and especially those not related to the subject being treated as a new learning opportunity. We must break away from the disciplines. The knowledge sector but should not be circular and everything is plugged in and connected and networked in a multi-disciplinary course that goes, of course, beyond the disciplines, because what matters is not the content, but the skills, cognitive and social. The content is only half, what matters is the process.
And then, we too have changed, we are still changing. We too have felt the need for a different universe, a different formation, renewed, more contextualized, more experienced, discounted and tested. We too very much appreciated and we were perfectly at ease in blogoclasse. Because even our students could find no good? Why should not feel the need for change? Why not settle? Let them and let us help them " cultivate their connections."
