Group Vygotsky's doings

My co-operation with group Vygotsky ended during the autumn 2013 because I couldn't find the time for these studies. It was a wonderful group with very nice members :)

9 Oct, 2013

I have been ill, and I still am, it's only a flu but quite overwhelming, and the doctor said that it could take two weeks... So I feel that I haven't been much help to my group now, although I have been listening to all skype meetings and read material people have presented.

I couldn't participate the teaching session last time, but I asked my fellow students about it and I understood that there had been at least as much hassle as during the first teaching session. And since we are the last teaching group, the time can be a problem if the preceding groups are delayed. And the students are already tired and some are in a hurry somewhere etc, so I don't see being the last group any benefit here, and I feel for teachers who are trying to teach sth from 2 to 4 p.m...

What I and we as a group have learnt so far is that half an hour is actually a very short period of time, and it seems that we have had a bit too much material squeezed into it, especially if we ask people to do something (I think we have somewhat stick to the suggested 12 slides). Now we are planning for the next session, the topic is the role of student's self-evaluation in vocational education.

The method we seem to have developed (by doing) is that we usually start by reading and gathering some information on the topic, have a skype meeting at some point, discuss our findings and do some plan on who does what for the next time. We also plan the actual teaching act, what tools to use and what material or questions to present.

Once we have reached consensus (not really a problem) on what information is relevant, we decide on who concentrates on what, and we go deeper into our topics. Then by a given deadline we deliver material for other group members to comment on, and probably have a skype meeting as well. Finally one of us makes a power point presentation, and others can be doing sth else like padlets or socrative questionnaire. I think this works very well.


27 Sep, 2013

For the first VOC1 session we created a ppt show and we also used padlets in our teaching. I did my teaching together with Virpi, who said that she would like to do it with someone because she doesn't have any teaching experience. Well, I can't claim to have much experience either, but I think Virpi did very well in our session :)

For our second teaching session (the topic deals with eLearning and how to make it better) we have had one skype meeting and are having another tonight. I have been trying to define eLearning, but, to begin with, it seems to have quite many names (online or virtual learning, or even web-based learning) and these have somewhat overlapping definitions (or do they all just refer to the same thing?). Also eLearning seems to be quite popular commercial product. For example, when googling "successful eLearning" there is a number of companies offering different software, environments, platforms etc. for virtual teaching/learning.

I've been reading about a Finnish study (Korhonen, V. 2003. Oppijana verkossa. Doctoral thesis. Tampereen yliopisto.) which discovered that one difference between a traditional lecturing and online course is that the learners on the online course are a bit more likely to gain deep learning than those on a traditional classroom course. This indicates that the learning methods in an online course may require the learners to think more independently and not just memorize the text as may happen when sitting on a lecture and listening. In fact, I have been studying on a couple of online courses or courses that are partially online, and I must admit that they do require more thinking and processing the information, and own thoughts as well.


21 Sep, 2013

We have had our first VOC teaching and learning session and it was a very encouraging experience. I was a bit worried about the technical arrangements, but all went very well. Now we are already planning our next teaching session and I think that in our Vygotsky group things go smoothly. I'm happy to be a part of that group. 

Since I haven't got any real teaching experience, I thought that it would be easier to do it via these technical apparatus and from home where no-one can see me. However, as one member of another group pointed out during his teaching session, it was not that easy to speak without seeing any reactions on the listeners' faces. So this is also sth we are learning now.