"The most important thing you'll learn here," they said, smilingly, "is Fika" Fika basically means to get a coffee but we are told that it is so much more than that. It is a much needed break, a social interaction, a big smile, the sunshine in a rainy day. Best case scenario: there's not only coffee but also cinnamon rolls! |
During the week, Tobias presented several ICT tools to us that we can use during our studies as well as future professions, all in order to prevent "death by Power Point."
He also introduced video papers to us. Video papers are a way of bridging the gap between theory and practice in teacher education. After recording a lesson it enables reflection of a teaching process with the use of several video clips (about 60 seconds each) from the lesson. In teacher training at Borås University, these video papers are used to also share moments from class that haven’t gone too well – what matters is, that students reflect on these moments and take them as opportunities to improve. |
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Together with Leenke and Malik, we created a concept for a short lesson on the Arabic language. Since Malik is a native speaker of Arabic, we had a professional among us. Moreover, we could be quite sure that noone else would chose the Arabic language, as there were so many other languages in the classroom.
We started the lesson using Mentimeter and used several other tools, both digital and analog, the latter in form of a printed out pairing game with English rooted in the Arabic language. During the lesson, I certainly felt the nervousness as we needed to balance our own personal teaching parts with those of the others and all keep cool while the video robot was tracking our every move through the classroom. |
I still remember vividly Tobias standing next to me while I was struggling with the MAC computer in the university's MAC room (a service provided to the students, no questions asked, unlike at Kiel University - this is why we call Sweden forward) . He looked at me and my seemingly troubled face and said "Stay calm, Leona. I see that not being familiar with a MAC really bothers you." This was exctly the case. We needed to cut our videos and there wasn't much time in the day left. Out of my group, I was the only one who had cut a video before - but on a Windows computer. I felt all of my skills just floating away from me and it bothered me deeply. I wanted to show what I can do but I couldn't because the tools that were handed to me weren't the right ones for me. It becomes clear that in this lies a big truth: the tools you are given, can really determine the outcome and at the same time one outcome does not necessarily represent the person's skills. For me, this is an important thing to remember as a future teacher.
In the end, we managed and created a reflection video paper we were all satisfied with. You can look at in on our little website here: proPIC Arabic Lesson
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TO USE OR NOT TO USE, THAT IS THE QUESTION
SMARTPHONES IN THE CLASSROOM CAN BE USED AS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE ENHANCING TOOL - AT THE SAME TIME THEY CAN TAKE THE STUDENTS' ATTENTION AWAY FROM CLASS it seems like nobody is quite sure, yet, if and how to use smartphones in the classroom or if it's wise to take them away |