It is simple I think students want to pass the course, and want to do that in an effective way. I also think that a group of students can achieve more by working together. If I can get the group to share the goal of everyone passing the course with a great grade, than I know each individual student will probably rise above the level he or she would achieve on his or her own.

I am looking forward to see students working together, sharing ideas, and letting me know what they want to learn. I will let the students choose how they want to achieve the goal, where and when they want help, and I’ll let the students decide how they want to communicate. I’m open to almost everything. Wiki’s, blogs, Twitter, pizzasessions, you name it!

Well, we chose to write a wiki together. The students were divided between 4 topics, all relating to Integrating Technology in Schools, 1) Roles and expectations, 2) conditions for implementation, 3) teachers competencies and 4) research and policy.
The idea was: write a wiki together, make sure everyone is equipped with knowledge when we visit the school and write advice reports on how the school (a secondary school) can integrate technology better in their curriculum, classes, policy.

Two students created the wiki, and in the past weeks I saw it grow. Yesterday I read the wiki and took some notes. Today we had a lecture and the idea was that each group would present the most important stuff they found, so everyone would be aware of things going on in the other topics. We had some slight miscommunications, so we didn’t have 4 presentations, and because of my lack of time management on presentations, we had too little time for my part of the job: synthesize and comment, and provide ‘next steps’. Here’s what I learned from this, and what I’ll change for next (and final!) session.

- I still like the approach, of not having lectures where a teacher (or a student, doesn’t matter) does the talking, and others listen. That is too easy consuming for the listeners. (Yes, you can do things with voting or questions through Shakespeak or Socrative), but that doesn’t stimulate going into deep in the literature. I chose to make students experts on one topic, and knowledgeable on all. By writing a wiki together.
- Starting a wiki isn’t easy, and I see mostly summaries of literature on the wiki at the moment. Great starting point, but to achieve our goals, we need more discussion. So, in the coming weeks, we need not be afraid to change, add, combine, remove and replace things in our wiki. I feel it is my job to stimulate this. What I will do is comment on students’ work, and already try to make some relations between different topics and article.
- I should have been more clear about the presentations, provided a max amount of time, and specified what should have been presented. (On the other hand, that would not be in line with the course philosophy….) Wonder what students feel about this?
- I got some questions about students not being sure when enough is enough, or students being afraid they would miss important information. Very important for me: I need to connect what is on the wiki, with the task of school visit and writing advice report.
- Shall I summarize the most important things from the wiki?
- One of my most important goals is helping students to use literature to build an argument, and to teach them that using literature has lots to do with the assumptions you have. In this case, if we want to advise on integrating tech, we should know what we consider to be tech, and whether we feel tech is a vehicle or the groceries (see Kozma Clarck debate, very small summary: here).

- What I missed a little is students opinions about the articles. Why is it a good article, why do you want to use it? One student said it was difficult, because students felt they did not have enough background knowledge to be able to do this. I disagree! But I am figuring out how I could stimulate the critical stance more….
- Next session: more time for synthesis. Need enough time to discuss the final task, and school visit.

So, happy with the course, found it motivating to see what students came up with, and think students liked it too. But, haven’t heard any remarks and questions about the lecture yet. So students, feel free to react! What would you like to see changed for the next lecture? (Remember: you get to evaluate the course afterwards, but it would be a pity not to let me know the things I can already improve during the course….)

I feel I didn’t put in enough effort in the course until now. So time to do my bit!!

Students have to be willing to learn. Right now I am a student at Kaplan College taking medical office specialist I make pretty good grades. Right not I am learning about law and ethics and why they are important in the medical field. Not bad for a 27 year old who hasn't been too school in 9 years.

Twin974 : I completely agree!

and well done on your studies, I wish you every success.

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Out of everything, I think that a good teacher is important (that way you can actually learn something) and also to have a good student body. A student body in which you can collaborate ideas and compare answers.

Ah we had an assembly about this, theres different types of learners ones that learn by sound, sight, movement and another one which I forgot. I agree in that I hate lectures and I don't believe them to be an efficient way to learn but I do have friends that love the fact that you can just sit down and take notes where you see fit. Personally I like the interaction and working with groups and am very much a learner by sound I learn best when I'm talking with someone about it. Anyway good luck on your course hope you have a great time doing it as it seems you are anyway