Use of ICT in Learning and Teaching

Exploring Innovations in Education - The Teachers Guild Date 14/Nov/18 Wednesday This blog post is inspired by my dive into hundrED Innovations in Education . Though it was not possible to share all of them here, I have picked up the ones that inspired me the most and are worth trying in schools. The first one is the Teachers Guild Approach in education. My upcoming blogs will explore their impact and possible applications in schools. To begin with "The Teachers Guild" its a learner centered approach aimed at equipping teachers with the mindsets and methods from design thinking so that they can plan and design learning experiences keeping in mind the growing and evolving needs of the students. This  approach focuses on collaborations among teachers based on design thinking methods and mindsets.  It encourages teachers to share ideas, starting with a challenge that you intend to solve with collaboration with peers. It equips you with skills that help aid teachers in

Exploring - Buncee Date: 10th Oct 2018/Wednesday This blogpost is inspired from my recent dive into Buncee - a super cool tool for content creation - from creating interactive and animated presentations to digital stories flyers, comic strips, animated cards, tutorials, newsletters and much much more. The blog post will give you a virtual walk through of the important features of this tool called Buncee,  with an insight of how and where could this tool be used effectively and meaningfully to engage learners/educators.  Lets begin by exploring why do we need to create presentations? Obviously to share information, share ideas, promote a product or launch a new initiative, create awareness, check understanding, to inspire and motivate people, to instruct or teach a topic, deliver a lecture, to engage the audience and so on. Have you ever thought of using presentations to cater to the differentiated needs of the learners in the classroom? Have you ever thought of creating pers

Why Kids need to learn Scratch - Part 2 Date: 02/10/2018/Tuesday This blogpost is simply inspired from the work kids are doing in Scratch at Ranaa Child Welfare Foundation. The blogpost will share some of the amazing programs kids have been able to make in Scratch through coding with an insight into why kids need to learn #Scratch. Why kids like Scratch? A number of reasons.  Firstly, It has a very user friendly and ease to use interface. Kids can drag in sprites easily from library, change background, add sound from library , even draw own sprites. They can increase and decrease the size of  sprites using the grow and shrink button. Secondly   it's color coded, kids know blue colored code is for motion, purple code represents sound, brown code represents events, green represents various operators and so on. They just have to drag and drop the code in the script area. Third they have learnt how to look for step wise tutorials, learn independently about how to add g

Professional Development - Whys & Why Not's Date: 27th  Sep 2018/Thursday This blogpost is inspired from my love for training online/face to face for teachers/trainers/educators. Through out the previous two years I  have had several opportunities for professional development online. This blogpost will explore answers to  few important questions regarding  professional development beginning from my views regarding online PD, why does it matter so much, what are the various opportunities available for online PD and what do educational institutions need to do in order to ensure equitable access to online professional development for their staff in their respective institutions. Why is Online PD important for me? Lets begin by looking at reasons for my unending love for  Professional development and why it matters to me. Firstly It is because of these online professional development opportunities that help build my own skills and led to the development of my onlin

Differentiated VS Personalized VS Individualized Learning Date: 23/09/2018 Sunday This blogpost is inspired from my twitter chat today organized by #edchatmena about individualized, personalized and differentiated learning.  It was so good to interact with a very experienced and knowledgeable group of educators who were able to share some amazing resources about the three different learning approaches. I did have some understanding about differentiated learning in classrooms, but the twitter chat helped build a much clearer understanding of the three approaches.  According to an article by Dale Basye differentiation is a type of learning where instruction is tailored to meet the needs of learners in class, the learning objectives remain the same, but teachers can use different resources, different strategies , providing students different paths to students to achieve their learning goals. There are different types of differentiation. Lets look at each in detail. Though t

Exploring Mobile Technology In Education Date: 16 Sep 2018/Sunday This blog post is one of the most interesting blog post written in a long time because it deals with a very precious device called MOBILE that we hold tight in our hands 24/7 :). I am sure each one you out there would enjoy reading the blog.  We see mobile phones almost in every second person's hands, be it a 2 year old kid, a teacher, a parent, cook, cleaner etc Whats important is to educate everyone around about an effective use of this device. It has much more to offer than just games and social media interaction.   This blog post will provide you an insight into a different dimension of mobile devices, you will get an opportunity to look into effective use of mobile devices in teaching and learning.   In the recent years there has been a huge increase in the number of educational apps and tools that can be easily downloaded and installed on our mobile devices making learning and teaching much e

Re-thinking EdTECH in the Early Years Date:08/09/2018  Saturday This post is inspired from my recent dive into an Online course  about the  Early Learning & Pre - School Education 2.0 - Child Centered and Playful Learning in Finland offered online by ALO Finland . I am extremely thankful to my course Instructor Pirjo Sohunen for the opportunity to explore and learn from the Finnish education system. The course helped me understand the meaning of child centered and playful learning in the early years. It also highlighted the process through which the Finnish system ensures that every child gets equal opportunity to grow to their full potential. It further provided an insight about use of various strategies, tools and education technology in the early years.  I will begin by sharing how learning takes place in the early years in Finland and then move to discussing in detail the role education technology plays   in the early years. Lets start by looking at a few good i