CSU Kruševac 20.-21.02.2016.

CO16 reflections

Connecting Online is a free online conference that takes place on the first full weekend of February. CO16 is a collaborative, inclusive, world wide community initiative that involves future educators, leaders in schools & colleges, and business' involved in training at all levels.
The virtual conference will be held online using WizIQ platform and would be hosted by Dr. Nellie Deutsch. The theme of CO16 is ‘Teaching Online to Improve Instruction and Learning in Education and Business’.

It would be a treasure trove of amazing insights and experiences of leveraging the power of the internet for instruction and learning. An event that’s not worth missing for anything in the world!
Topics and Highlights of CO16
Connecting online to improve instruction and learning
Online learning and instructional experiences
Experiences with technology in face-to-face and online classes.
Best practices: What worked and what didn't work?
Challenges involved in teaching and/or learning online
How do you use technology to promote your online workshops, consultation, and communities?
Books written on e-learning
Business Models for Online Teaching
Marketing Online Courses

 

During webinars it’s been possible to connect with the other attendees and at the end of each webinar speackers gave answers to attendees’ questions.
In this edition the questions that I found more interesting were about suggests for a correct and professional use of a teacher website and about the way to use online teaching to earn money
 I followed thoroughly this appointment and I watched almost all webinars. I noticed the great variety of arguments, all very interesting.
Some presenters (Jaime Miller, Chris Rush, Susan Brodar et al.) treated about their experiences as online teachers, suggesting how to avoid the most common mistakes and how to have a right approach with technologies and in the relationship with online learners.

 They insisted particularly on some key issues: tools must be intuitive and reliable and a good website must be easily consulted by users.

I found very interesting the lesson about flipped learning through mobile devices (Dr. Revathi Viswanathan). I think  it's a new way of teaching that considers the students as an active part in the learning process. And it can be considered as a way for the teachers to enjoy themselves. Flipped classroom is not just a new technique, it is a new thinking method. Another good point is made by teacher when he says it is very important to know the content that needs to be online and how to organize. Another way to interest students can be to bring real life into the classroom, just as  Stephen Greene teached in his lesson. It can be possible if music, arts, actuality and all aspects of real life are rapresented with technologies, but also with the rapresentation, rielaborated by students and their creativity.

Also in the lesson of  Rosmery Ribera, teacher gave many suggests to be a successful online student and it seems that an oriented use of multimedia can contribute to this result during a process from motivation to reflection. Young people, but not only, have familiarity with Facebook, Twitter, … and this social network can become a good support for teaching.

 Dawn Alderson in particular reflected about the use of Twitter in teaching, for the level of involvement in which learners can be engaged. For my experience I can confirm that in effect students feel themselves more inspired to study and to use technologies for their formative success. They know anyone can read what they write and so they’re also more controlled and careful in their comments.

Theodora Papapanagiotou believes that socialmedia give great opportunities. She is persuaded that collaboration is the strong point for teachers to achieve Future Skills 2020 for a globally connected world. For this purpose she attends all online environments she can (networks, blogs, groups…) and collaborates with other teachers all over the world in production of educational
Also Karin Heuert Galvão in her webinar wanted to explain that collaboration in teaching is the best behavior that the community of teachers can adopt.

After all in his conference from India, Ramesh Sharma emphasized how is important to create a learning society (that is also the title of a book written by J. Stiglitz and B. Greenwald), specially in a world more and more digitalised, in which readers use increasingly tablets and e-books. So he and  Theodora Papapanagiotou say it’s necessary to think how to work for a social intelligence, a new media literacy, a transdisciplinarity, a cross cultural competency, a design mindset.
The conference that I particularly liked  was by Letizia Cinganotto and Daniela Cuccurullo about Techno-Clil.

 To know and to use an additional language for learning and teaching of both the content and language is an entitlement but also a necessity to become global digital citizen. Skills can be achieved by literacy and the goal is fluency in creativity, information, media, solution and collaboration. Teachers were very inspired and communicative.
The event finished with the conference about using Amazon Echo for your Online Teaching Needs by Brian C. Steinberg.

During the presentation of all possibilities that Amazon Echo offers, for few seconds we appreciated some notes of a great Beatles love song called “. Amazon echo’s been only the last but not the least of a series of online resources that are presented during all webinars by presenters.
I admit to be very interested not only as a teacher but also as a learner because I’d like to wide my perspectives and learn about new ways of teaching.
I find the contributions of the presenters so interesting and inspiring, as they put so much effort in creating all these new materials and constantly re-think their way of teaching.
I felt great admiration for them, specially for their abilities and their practical approach to consider teaching profession. Hearing them, makes one rethink their ways of teaching. First of all I was stimulated to think back on my own teaching experiences. Now I know I want to implement some of the ideas I have heard by presenters in webinars, but I can imagine it won’t be easy.
In my opinion key factors should be considered an intelligent content design, consisting both in a simple and clear website and progressive problem solving activities, but also in an appropriate time management and in the availability of the resources.
The challenge demands a great initial effort and a large investment of time and resources to be productive.
CO16 was a very interesting collection of experiences!
As an atendee I had a great on-line expirience and I would like to express my gratitude to the moderators of this event Dr.Nellie Deutch and Rob Howard.