Reading

These are some of the readings I did this week.

Oates, Rita H.  (2009, September 9). How to learn in the 21^st century.  Retrieved September 11, 2010, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept09/vol67/num01/How- to- Learn-in-the-21st-Century.aspx

Oates started sharing her experience when she was at high school and the way she was taught.  Then, she gives some ideas how she would change that situation in this time.

One of the suggestions she gave is to read a book from the place the class is studying, but most important would be to use the Internet to connect with other people and places in real time.

Oates also stated that "learning  in the 21st century requires critical thinking, adept use of technology, and global collaboration, and we should offer all these to our students on a regular basis."

The author mentioned key points for teachers such as teach with real situations, make use of the environment around them.  The school walls should not be a boundary to go beyond and search for what is really happening globally using use of the technology appropriately.     

 Cheng, Y., Mok, M. (2008). What effective classroom? Towards a paradigm shift. School Effectiveness

            & School Improvement. 365-385.

doi: 10.1080/09243450802535174

Cheng and Mok (2008) referred to the three shifts of the waves of educational reforms.  In each wave the definition of learning is different, and the effectiveness has a different meaning too.

The following are the questions they describe as the support for each wave:

            First Wave:

•     How can learning and teaching be well organized in the classroom to deliver planned knowledge, skills, and values?
•      How can the delivery of knowledge and skills from teachers and the curriculum to students be ensured through improvement of teaching and learning in the classroom?
•      How can teachers’ teaching in the classroom be improved in a given time period?
•     How can students of the classroom achieve the given standards in the internal and external examination?

Second wave:

•      How can the performance of teaching and the outcomes of learning in the classroom meet the key stakeholders’ expectations and needs?
•  HHow can the education services provided in the classroom be ensured accountable to the public and stakeholders through various types of monitoring, reporting, and benchmarking?
• H How can the classroom become internally and externally competitive to provide quality services in the education market?

Third Wave:

•     How can the environment (‘‘classroom’’) for learning and teaching be well globalized, localized, and individualized?
•       How can students’ learning opportunities be maximized in an unbounded environment through IT, networking, and paradigm shifts in teaching and learning?
•      How can students’ self-learning be well facilitated and sustained as potentially lifelong in such an environment?
•      How can students’ abilities to globalize, localize, and individualize their own learning be well developed with the support of this learning environment?
•    How can students’ contextualized multiple intelligences be continuously well developed by students themselves in such a learning environment?

I wonder if the administration in the schools and the people leading the education have any idea of these waves and if they are taking into account the right set of questions and be part of the solution, and finally get a better education and effective classes with the help of the web 2.0 tools.