Hi everyone. Hosein Azizvakili invited me to visit his class of teacher trainees in Tehran and speak to them about learner autonomy, though I was determined to model and demonstrate the process by which they could become autonomous teachers by talking WITH them about their practice and reflection (thereby making them the experts who were visiting me). I expected Zoom to cut us off at 40 min, and the first 10 min was setup and equipment adjustment, which I recorded because I thought it was instructive. Anyway we kept going not for 30 min but for almost 50 (expecting the cutoff at any minute). Sorry about that (you can just watch the first ten, and the last ten where Hossein's students become the experts and tell me about their challenges teaching in Tehran).
This is raw video. I'm leaving on a trip later today so I didn't have time for editing or enhancement. Also I learned (again) to be very aware of what Zoom is doing as opposed to what you see on your screen. The first part was fine, we went from gallery view as you see in the thumbnail to slide show (screen share) where the two cameras shared the top of the screen, but when I stopped the screen share I saw my audience on the screen with my camera at the top. But when I saw the video I realized that we were in speaker mode, and mostly the last part was talking head with me doing most of the talking. Note to self, after leaving screen share monitor whether you are in speaker mode or camera matrix mode. The latter is much more effective when there is a speaker and an audience. Nice that Hossein put the camera on the class throughout.
Enjoy, and I'll try to make it on Sunday, not sure how that will work out at this moment though.
https://youtu.be/RTF9EDXtSYM
Hello dear friends,
ReplyDeleteIt was a great session with Vance. I had invited 20 teachers. Some can bee seen and others are on the other side in the recording.
Vance had an excellent beginning and talked about teacher autonomy for about 10 minutes and the rest of the time continued by answering the questions of the teachers.
My teachers and I enjoyed a lot and we all appreciate Vance for accepting this invitation.
Thank you Vance.
This turned out to be a good opportunity for me to model and demonstrate my teaching philosophy to a group of engaged learners based on my experience practicing, and reflecting on, that philosophy. Here I discuss my teaching philosophy in the context of teacher autonomy with teacher trainees in Tehran, learning2gether.net - Teaching Online with iTDi and International Facilitation Week
ReplyDeleteGreat opportunity for the teachers to be. I also learned from your session Vance. Thank you
ReplyDeleteVery impressive!
ReplyDeleteThis, Vance and Hossein, has been really thought-provoking. Regarding this teaching philosophy, Vance, I really agree on this 21st century approach of being constantly ready to “find out”, as teachers, as learners, as citizens of this world. I must confess that, on the one hand, I am a complete digital immigrant but, due to my personal background, finding myself on the road to autonomy. Teaching here in Tacuarembó is inevitably pushing me to do so. I am, quoting Vygotsky, in the middle of this kind of unsettling period of learning despite the fact that I ve been on the road for quite a lot. Clearly, moving out from my confort zone now.. Ja! I am therefore very thankful for the chance of this understanding and look forward to keep going, step by step… I loved the example with the rubic cubes, the idea that learning is really up to the students.. In sum, cheers, and thank you both!
ReplyDeleteI read about Deci's experiments in the book Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirkey, a book I highly recommend. Googling to make sure I had Deci's name right, I found that he wasn't working with Rubik's cubes but with something similar called Soma (so Google Deci, Soma, and his seminal work was in 1969). I came on an interesting article relating his and other similar experiments along this line, https://thelollipopeffect.com/tag/soma-puzzle/. One example that I recall from Shirkey was where a day school in Israel tried to get parents to pick up their kids on time by fining them for coming late. What that did was make parents feel they could leave their kids, just pay the fine. But that wasn't what the school wanted, so they did away with the fine and left it up to the parents' conscience to get their kids on time, and the social pressure and the notion of doing the right thing worked better than negative monetary pressure to incentivise parents to collect their children on time.
ReplyDeletethelollipopeffect.com - Soma puzzle | Thelollipopeffect
Oki... I'll check it out. Thank you very much!!!
ReplyDeleteNow I have been able to listen to the complete conversation. How rich! A master piece of history of autonomous leaning. Many many thanks to Vance for this presentation!
ReplyDeleteI am so honored (made my day :-) Here is how it looks in a blog post: learning2gether.net - Teaching Online with iTDi and International Facilitation Week
ReplyDeleteReally enjoyed this Vance Stevens especially as your philosophy of teaching is so similar to mine. Students do find it hard here in Spain not to be spoon fed information or "sit and get" as you call it but they do gradually get used to another way of working. I find having a wiki a great tool to encourage student autonomy and make them responsible for their own learning. Also implementing the flipped learning model has helped my learners become more autonomous and enagaged in learning. My online venture is very much focused on learner autonomy and connectivist learning... Thanks for the expert advice ;-)
ReplyDeleteVance Stevens love the idea that there is no such thing as an English teacher! So right....
ReplyDeleteVance Stevens I really wish I can pronounce English beautifully as you do! Your audio setting is perfect---The sound is so clear to understand.
ReplyDeleteVance Stevens Vance Stevens I found some of Shirky's rationale in the following Ted Talk. So it's not really true, among other things, that money makes the world go round.. That's good news for me!!
ReplyDeleteyoutube.com - Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world
Thank you Fernanda Taranco I enjoyed this.
ReplyDelete