I arrived in Dominica Sunday March 27th, 2011 and found a beautiful island with regular rainfall and high temperatures. The next two weeks will be spent working with the faculty of education at Dominica State College. Although they have given me very little in the way of direction, I think we will be working together building our understanding of role of technology in education.
To this end, I have planned ten days of reviewing the TPACK model, in order to ensure that the technology we discuss will be used purposefully. Also on the slate is Digital Citizenship - something I believe teachers in Alberta (including myself) started focusing on a little too late.
The first day did not go as I thought. I met some of the faculty, including the Dean of Education, as well as the President of the College. These meetings were beneficially informative for me, but I caught a whiff of impromptu in each one. None seemed prepared for my visit and I may have given a similar impression by replying "What would you like to do?" when asked "What are you going teach me?". This was not what I expected.
Furthermore, it became obvious that I would not ever meet with the group as a whole, instead I will spend a few hours with each faculty member discussing what he or she might like to learn and then attempt to accomplish some progress before he or she gets back to preparing for class. Slightly disappointing. Tomorrow I meet with the Dean of another faculty and will be offering my services there, too, to make sure my time here is spent well. I do not expect to use anything I have prepared.
On the positive side, for my first day, I did introduce one person (who may have been pressed into entertaining me) to the cloud computing tools in Microsoft Live accessible through her Hotmail account and another to social bookmarking. Neither were aware that these tools were even there! Not bad for brief meetings.
Wednesday I will work some Moodle magic with two faculty members and Thursday will be spent observing a student-teacher in action. This vignette of Dominica education will be invaluable for me!
What will Day Two hold?
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You go girl! Sounds like you are off to a great start. Personally I prefer small group, coaching, to large group session. More personalized learning;) Have fun, looking forward to peeking in on your internship!
ReplyDeleteI am so very jealous that you are there but am also very glad that you are trouble-shooting some of this on my behalf! Good luck and take care!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds very much like home...everyone is at different places in terms of their technology comfort level/abilities. Teaching individuals ensures each is getting what they are capable of handling at the time, instead of sitting in a group setting feeling frustrated. Stick to the TPACK modeling and doing what you do so well and you will most certainly make a difference. :0)
ReplyDeleteThanks to all of you for your comments! I will try to keep these interesting just for you :)
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