What about your students

Learner could be a non-student or student or graduate person, old or young person, learner could be anyone who is seeking knowledge in any subject matter formally or informally.

The reasons for learning are varying from a person to another; for example, some people might be seeking knowledge in certain areas as it gives them the opportunity to have a good certification that would enable them to have a good job/salary/position in near future and learning process end for them with achieving this certification “Done, no more study for us. Said by this type of learners” (unfortunately; most of our students belonging to this type), another type would be the active lifelong learner who acquire knowledge to deeply understand the subject matter to apply it in different contexts.

Learner could be motivated by many things to make the effort in learning such as the enthusiasm to be the expert in this subject matter, competency with other learners, financial reasons, and applying this knowledge.

For my students; they learn the Computers’ Hardware-Software & Network, this course Contents introduces students to the essential components of a contemporary computer system, the learning outcomes of this course are: recognize & identifying various types of computer system and explaining the function of their components. Construct a computer from physical components and recognize different hardware components and specifications. Define the role of operating system and demonstrate the ability to install and apply the required configuration. Explain standard network models and demonstrate the ability to construct and operate a peer to peer network.

It is a blended course learning using an interactive lecturing and project-based learning. Students demonstrate what they have learned through hands-on lab activities and case study problem solving.

The assessment is mix of written exam (40%) which tests the understanding of core concepts and knowledge plus students’ projects (60%) which tests the ability of applying this knowledge in simulated real work scenarios.

 

 

 

Module-II Project

This is the time to put it all together in one document; here is the link for my project http://ahmad71173.wix.com/using-technology-in

I hope you like it J

Moodle Week-13 Task

Plagiarism

This article is really a valuable one. I think many Skills are already integrated with my course.

For example critical thinking is one of the important skills as the simulation tool (packet Tracer) can have many design scenarios (Solution-oriented scenario) with some errors in configuration (or missing configuration in some network devices such as routers and switches) to simulate the real working environment, students responsibilities is to find these errors plus completing any missing configuration, they need to make it working properly. We usually divide the class to five or six groups (each group is 3 or 4 students) and we assign to them some troubleshooting scenarios, the idea behind that is to let the students practicing what they will face in their future career, they need to work as a team in different areas to sort out all the problems and to make it up and running normally. During the troubleshooting cycle; students need to search internet and handbook or any other source, they start to analyze and evaluate the information and how to apply it to their scenario, which develop analytic thinking and application for students. From my experience; students really enjoy this type of activities (assignments/projects/..), they really get inspired by doing lab activities and simulation tools activities.

Understanding the big picture skill; this is the most important part in my course as it will help students on how to construct the knowledge from many different areas, I applied it using a mind map program which links the entire learning outcome with different learning modules. I have three different modules in this course (PC-Hardware, PC-Software, and Network Devices), the mind map was a helpful guide to students on how we can reach our final target which is building computer network (LAN) to share data and resources between different PCs by first building the PCs itself (Hardware and Software) and then using Network device (router, switches, access points) to connect these PCs to each other.

I think balancing between preventing plagiarism and learning to work together and construct knowledge collaboratively is really a challenge, actually we had a good brainstorming about that in Moodle discussion with many ideas like giving students assignments that fits with their competency level another idea is having oral or practical assignments rather than written one.

Moodle Week-11 Task

Teaching in 21^st Century

For the first article; I do agree with the author that today’s learners are digitally literate, mobile, always on, experiential and social, they have their own acronymic words that they use on their daily life communications; I do not agree with the author in his comparison between faculty & students which give a general impression that faculty do not use interactive networked learning and multimedia in their teaching approaches. I do agree with the author that new trend should be in collaboration learning within the team/group through the blended courses (face-to-face or online). I agree with him that technologies like wireless, video conferencing did help a lot in collaborative and mobile learning.          

For the second article; I totally agree with the author that learning by doing is the most effective way to learn; I consider it a real way to offer authentic learning to students. That is why I did choose to use a simulation tool in my project to offer my students a real world scenarios to achieve experiences and deep understanding with real work environment scenarios also they can reflect (metacognition) on their level of knowledge to know the areas where the need more information .

For the third article, I totally agree with the author that digital native and digital immigrants’ terms are context based terms and it has nothing to do with ages, I do agree that our peer-group influences the manner in which we use technology for socialization.

Generally; I agree that our role as a faculty is a facilitating/mentoring in learning process, developing the culture of lifelong learner to our students, using the technology that can be fit to achieve deep understanding to our students (simulations, video, audio,..), using a project-based which contain a real life scenarios.  

Moodle Week-9 Task

Gamification

Excellent article (http://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=2031772) about using game mechanics to enhance eLearning; based on the concepts giving in that article I would say that my students “Target Audience” are really “wanting” this simulation tool as it give them the opportunity to practice most of  the lab  exercises and most of them are “liking” this tool. So it does worse “rewarding” for them to use the simulation tool which achieves students’ engagement and deep understanding “teacher’s rewarding”.

The simulation tool is built with a structural way to achieve short-term win (the easy parts assembly like computer’s power supply, DVD...) and long-term win (Assembling the whole computer unit), this fill in “Linear flow of Goal” model.

The simulation tool does have a “learn” section with written instructional “navigation” steps about the assembly process for each section in computer unit. Then another section call “test” is there to give a feedback to user about his progress (measure user progress) by letting him/her do the assembly in his own with different levels till last level of assembling the whole computer unit.

“Reward schedule” within simulation tool is not there, I think it is a good idea to have some reward points/coins but I can’t do it as I do not have the code for this simulation tool.

I think that some of the critical success factors of this simulation tool are simplicity and its user-friendly interface.

Moodle Week-7 Task

New technologies, new pedagogies

I did read two articles; one article was “Designing principles for mobile learning”, the second one was “using a smartphone to create digital teaching episodes as resources in adult education”

Both articles includes many ideas to apply in any classroom. For example, “Real World relevance” to engage learners with a real world contexts that have personal meaning and relevance plus allowing deeper understanding to be achieved. I think I can use this one in my class by creating more scenarios in my simulation software “packet tracer” based on best practice/Case-Based scenarios from real environments

Another idea would be using mobile learning in contexts where learners are mobile “Smartphones, mobile phones,…”. I think our LMS “BbVista” will release ipad/iphone version after sometime which could be used by our students to use it “in my case this will give opportunity to my class to access the PC hardware simulation tool using their smartphones!!!!!!!!!!WOW, I wish to have that version soon to apply this idea”. I think this will achieve many concepts "opportunities " of the “Designing principles for mobile learning”, it will make students use mobile learning spontaneously, they will have the time for exploration of mobile technology, they can use mobile learning both individually and collaboratively, and to use mobile learning to mediate knowledge construction.

Also as you all know that HCT will start deploying i-pad devices to all foundation students from next academic year which mean that m-learning will be deployed in HCT some way or another by customizing some learning applications and activities, I think that all of us need to be prepared for using the m-learning system in HCT in near future. "One of the challenges would be the training to teachers and students another one would be the availability of the LMS software to the new i-pad  and the customized learning applications". " many opportunities could be achieved using the concepts of “Designing principles for mobile learning”.

   

Moodle Week-6 Task

Follow-up to project progress

First, I would like to say that Face-to-Face meeting was very helpful for me to brainstorm about our project for this module; it was really helpful in giving professional ideas about using the selected technology and applying it inside classroom (as we always say 1+1=3).

I got a feedback from one of my colleagues (Oscar) regarding one of the simulation tools I have selected; the idea was to make it more generalized to more than one type of PC which was the starting point for me to think about using a similar tool for laptop as well as the one I use for Desktop machines. (Thanks to Oscar for his idea)

Generally speaking; the experiences of using a similar technology (Simulation tools in my case) by other colleagues in my college (HCT) was very positive as it help in project-based pedagogical approach (the technique I am using to teach my Course “Computers’ Hardware & Networking”), it extends the hands-on experience outside the lab boarders.

One of the questions that remain open for me is the “Limitations of simulation tools” which is really a challenging one for me, not all lab activities we can do it with simulation tools (bad news) but most of activities we can do it with simulation tools (good news). But as I was saying in my previous posts’ “that Simulation tools is going to give advantage in expansion of time and deep understanding but practical lab activities (hands-on experience) still a must in this course “as simulation tool cannot do it all alone”

I have already started the using of hardware simulation tool (to assembly the internal parts of PC like power supply, mother board, CPU,…) inside my classroom, some of the feedback I am getting from my students are below:                                                                                                  
 “WOW, it is working from home as if we are doing it in lab”.  “Sir, it is very good but still I prefer taking the lab’s keys from you and do it practically inside lab”.  “Sir, not all activities are covered, can you add more activities?”

I think balancing between using simulations technology and practical lab activities might be one of the dilemmas in near future as we are raising the bar about our expectations from technology.