About
VOC I in General
We
had a very interesting course of VOC I. We are just finishing it and
it´s time for notes and final reflections. I really enjoyed the
whole course. In this reflection diary there are summaries and
reflections of each virtual session we had during VOC I course and
some comments from our final session.
The official content of the VOC I course is following: "After the compulsory unit on vocational pedagogy the student teacher will be able to recognize the duties of vocational teaching. The student teacher will be able to utilize conceptions of learning in planning, executing and evaluating teaching. The student teacher will learn how to apply interaction and teaching skills, as well as, various teaching methods to teaching and guidance. These abilities will be acquired through group work during eLearning sessions. Studies also include pre- and learning assignments, micro-teaching tasks and an assessed learning portfolio.for vocational pedagogy and after this cours the student teacher will be able to recognize the duties of vocational teaching." (www.oamk.fi/amok/english/vocational_teacher_education/studies/vocational_pedagogy/)
I liked a lot the variety of themes during this course because I see that they are all connected with my becoming teacher career. All the themes included lots of useful theories, ideas, tools and examples which I can use also in my practical work as teacher. I also liked a lot the learning style of the course in which we were supposed to teach other groups about our own themes. In this way we got many times own experience about teaching but we were also supposed to observe other´s teaching and pedagogical choices.
Of course because of the virtual nature of our course I was very happy to get some new aspects about this learning environment, too. I find this virtual teaching and learning environment especially interesting because I´m sure that in the future there will be many situations and even whole courses I will be having in virtual environment.
Our tutors encouraged us to make presentations that don´t include so much slides, texts or other traditional stuff. They asked us also to be creative and test some new pedagogical tools and activation elements. Especially at the beginning of the course some of the presentations were still quite traditional and full of information. Also it seemed that the time management was challenging. 45 minutes is not so much if you want to get people to be active as well. But with time we could see nice progression in presentations as well. All presentations included many nice activation elements that were used in an inspiring way to get people to be active in the lesson. I think during the whole course and with these many presentations we learned a lot and in the future we are going to have even better interactive presentations
The official content of the VOC I course is following: "After the compulsory unit on vocational pedagogy the student teacher will be able to recognize the duties of vocational teaching. The student teacher will be able to utilize conceptions of learning in planning, executing and evaluating teaching. The student teacher will learn how to apply interaction and teaching skills, as well as, various teaching methods to teaching and guidance. These abilities will be acquired through group work during eLearning sessions. Studies also include pre- and learning assignments, micro-teaching tasks and an assessed learning portfolio.for vocational pedagogy and after this cours the student teacher will be able to recognize the duties of vocational teaching." (www.oamk.fi/amok/english/vocational_teacher_education/studies/vocational_pedagogy/)
I liked a lot the variety of themes during this course because I see that they are all connected with my becoming teacher career. All the themes included lots of useful theories, ideas, tools and examples which I can use also in my practical work as teacher. I also liked a lot the learning style of the course in which we were supposed to teach other groups about our own themes. In this way we got many times own experience about teaching but we were also supposed to observe other´s teaching and pedagogical choices.
Of course because of the virtual nature of our course I was very happy to get some new aspects about this learning environment, too. I find this virtual teaching and learning environment especially interesting because I´m sure that in the future there will be many situations and even whole courses I will be having in virtual environment.
Our tutors encouraged us to make presentations that don´t include so much slides, texts or other traditional stuff. They asked us also to be creative and test some new pedagogical tools and activation elements. Especially at the beginning of the course some of the presentations were still quite traditional and full of information. Also it seemed that the time management was challenging. 45 minutes is not so much if you want to get people to be active as well. But with time we could see nice progression in presentations as well. All presentations included many nice activation elements that were used in an inspiring way to get people to be active in the lesson. I think during the whole course and with these many presentations we learned a lot and in the future we are going to have even better interactive presentations
About
Our Group Work during VOC I
We
were working a lot as virtual groups in VOC I section. I´m happy
that we were encouraged to work so much in groups as we have to be
good examples of group workers for our future students who are
expected to be good and effective team workes in different kinds of
learning and working environments. With own experience we can tell
our students about possible challenges of the group work in
traditional but also especially in virtual environments and offer
them tools how to overcome possible problems. But we can also
encourage them with our positive experience and attitude and try to
create them fruitful learning situations within groups. For these
purposes, I think, I collected a lot of useful material and
experience during VOC I.
At
the beginning it took some time before our group was able to create own
ways of working and find suitable tools for our virtual group work.
We chose to use Adobe Connect room for our meetings and it worked out
very well. As a small group we didn´t have so much technical
problems during our sessions. It was also easy to make some notes
during our meetings and we could share those notes immediately in the
chat room. In this way we could be very effective in our preparation
meetings and we always wrote our next steps in the memo.
Normally
we always met three times before the final VOC I presentation. First meeting was
more brainstorming and we were talking about our experience and ideas
concerning the topic. We were also thinking together about different
activating methods and we always tried to find something new and
inspiring for our teaching sessions. We also divided tasks to be done
for the next meeting. In the second meeting everybody presented own
subtask and we were checking that the whole presentation is becoming
to be coherent and easy-to-follow. It was also important that
we tested our chosen methods and our activating elements. The third
meeting was about checking the whole presentation and to train the presentation together. This
was also the time to encourage and support each other and to create a
nice atmosphere for our final presentation. In this field our group
was working very well. We had an open-minded, nice and inspring
working atmosphere.
One
technical problem was that we were not using the same program when
creating our presentations. It was mostly me who finally made the
final presentation collecting information and pictures from the
presentations that others have sent to me. I like a lot doing visual
things and making presentations clear and inspiring. But finally I
recognized that it took quite a lot time to do this and it would have
been good experience for everybody in our group to see what does this
kind of work mean in practice and how much time do you need for this
kind of activities.
I
learned a lot about group work during our VOC I course. We had some
challenges but above all this experience was very eye-opening. I
learned that in virtual environment the group work can be very
effective and there are good tools for cooperation. I also liked a
lot the atmosphere in our group. As we all have different backgrounds
it was was very interesting to cooperate. It was very nice as someone
started with his/her own idea and the next one continued with own
comments. After this course I feel much more confident with virtual
environment and with group work activities.
My Reflections from Virtual Sessions
Spend some time with my reflections from the VOC I course by clicking the links below.
Virtual meeting 17.9. Views of Learning and Guiding Students
Virtual meeting 1.10. Curriculum & Lectures & Virtual teaching
Virtual meeting 16.10. Evaluating Learning and Competences
Virtual meeting 29.10. Special Areas of Vocational Teacherhood
Virtual meeting 5.11. VOC I Closing session
Virtual meeting 1.10. Curriculum & Lectures & Virtual teaching
Virtual meeting 16.10. Evaluating Learning and Competences
Virtual meeting 29.10. Special Areas of Vocational Teacherhood
Virtual meeting 5.11. VOC I Closing session
No comments:
Post a Comment