Week 6. Interactive Classes - "Terra Creativity"

This week gave us a great chance  to dwell upon challenges posed by teaching large classes. We were offered some tried and true techniques to make classes interactive. Think-pair-share, conceptTest, Quick-think (re-order the steps, paraphrase the idea, correct the error, support a statement), Minutes Paper, Concept Maps are the techniques that really foster knowledge acquisition.

Teachers should be open to experiment, try some new techniques in order to "transform students from passive recipients of other people's knowledge into active constructors of their own and others knowledge"  (Rick Finnan, Donna Shaw http://umbc.uoregon.edu/eteacher/webskills/material/engaging_students_handout.pdf:).

As a special task for this week we were to create a PowerPoint slide show with interactive elements. That was really something new to me as I had never used interactive elements in my PowerPoint presentations before. Due to detailed instructions I managed to create an interactive PowerPoint presentation "Vocabulary Quiz. Charts and Graphs". Moreover, from my colleagues, I've learnt about different additional resources which are of great help while preparing interactive classes / lectures.

This week was the time to start implementing  a technology-related change to the class I teach. My reflections on that I posted a bit earlier.

Step by step, little by little further we go...

Helen