Am in a class....with ALL FREEDOM

i am right now attending  Mr. Zaid Ali Alsagoff, E-Learning Manager, International Medical University (IMU) from Malaysia is conducting session on "Social Media for Research" for SNDT PhD Online course participants on

http://authorlive.com/aliveext/LoginToSession.aspx?SessionCode=dB8Vr4ZInnnaOSQawxb1Dg%3d%3d where

  http://zaidlearn.blogspot.in/2013/05/social-media-for-research-at-sndt.html still able to write this.....!!
Can hear the speaker sharp and clear but can not PARTICIPATE due to technological challeges that i do not know how to solve.
Its more of technical exploration to start with once you get grip over the enter-exit challeges you can may be contribute/collaborate.
He asked what is twitter hashtags and appeared little disappointed knowing that many people online did not know it. Its been fun- had never imagined that you can be in class and still cheat on the teacher....and do blog about class. Am not allowing my students to SMS in face-to-face class.
Thank you sir your educational hashtages-experts-following will be used by us but in my opinion for me the time and technology both seems to be the challenge at this point in life.
GREAT experience being in class with so much freedom.
 

ITs been a YEAR!!!

We are again in October, a year latter in a few days from now and realised nothing much changed...not even me- the old me.

Did a piece on ICT and culture URL: www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov.ifip and it was more of my confusion with myself. Came across OER Asia space due to FB posting of my friend Dr Jayashree Shinde and thought of pasting few ideas.

What is education mean to large majority in India? At a public university that i am part of every alternate days i meet a parent or a GIRL student who looks at the degree with the essentiality to marry and settle. Met a girl other day at Mumbai University who told me that she is under depression- that too as an execuse of dissetation viva that i was assessing as an extenal expert. Having realised that everyone except me were of the opinion that she should pass, including her guide who had to an extended not done his job, the remark that i was told was that you have made her marriage possible!!!!

If ICT is just to fill in this gap of giving degrees, why not do it as mass enterprise.

We would be able to make many peoples jobs easier including mine. As a postgraduate full0time teacher, lot of my energy in the face-to-face class environment goes in making sure that the student does her job- that of studying!!

Personally i do not allow slipping below a point and after all their efforts to 'pass' through me  that i recognise and do not allow, they give up and finish their job as they realise that i am not letting them go......which is what they want to do. Get out with minimum effort!!

ICT atleast puts the onus on them....so, after a year and not much of application of ICT in HE TOT am signing off this piece with the hope that ICT will make my life and their (my students life) easier. 

Teachers are bad students!!

Finally we are out of MT TOT on ICT in HE at DET, SNDT, Juhu campus as students. We went back to our older routines- classes and classes, paper setting, assignments, assessments, administration. Its going to be a month for the training and the teacher-Dr Jayashree Shinde had to remind the bunch of 24 teachers that the HOMEWORK post-training was due for submission. This blog itself was born out of the compulsion to do the home work. Since it was  almost a month that i last wrote, am pushing myself to create this follow up.
Blogging is exciting provided am all kicked to express- ventilate-vomit my emotions/reactions/feelings. It is fun if 'am here to show off that i know' and tell the world that 'i exist'. This blog post was a compulsion of home work so a student is always a student. S/he wants to disobey, want to question, want to look for shortcuts. ICT is a great help as it provided lot of copy-paste provided you have time. TIME is a commodity at premium at this point in my life. May be the same would not be the case in the years to come. At the moment there are too many demands from my eight year-old who wants all the attention. She thinks that i am giving more time to computer than to her. And there are times when she is excited to experiment what she learnt in her school computer class on home computer and i have time to myself.
This post at this point turned out to be non-ICT nature. But it came out of the concept that we teachers when became students/participants to ICT workshop, we are doing all those things that our students do to us. Look for shortcuts, try and finish fast, give execuses for not doing the work, avoid giving 100% at that point as there are other pre-occupations.
Anyways, teachers can be bad students. i am the example. But for now have finished my homework. i was supposed to fomr a group and invite members. Out of my 24 invitations- only three responded. So, what will ICT do in HE if teachers dont do their homework. i can imagine the problems- lack of access, absence to time, ignorance of process, lack of interest, absence of priority.....am waiting my collegues to accept my invitations. The yahoo group of sndtjuhuteachers have yet to become reality!!   

ICT MT TOT at DET

From 5th Sept to 9th September, 2011 total 24 TEACHERS struggled it out to deal with human and technical challenges to get trained to be Master Trainers in Information and Communication Technologies in Higher Education- Training of Trainers. The training actually can be relabeled as Training in self training as there is very little that can be actually LEARNT. Its more of unlearning and exploring that a trainee as well as trainers had to do during those five days that at this point on the fifth day of the training i feel personally that its a Herculean task to make this a part of day-to-day reality. Time would tell us where and how we as an institution go, as an individual i got reconfirmation that i had been on the right road. It was in 1999 that i did a paper on "Boundaries Blurred: Changing role of teacher and the taught" for a Mumbai university national seminar with only two years of teaching post-graduate students at SNDT. The journey that i started was into exploration in the years that went by. In the year 2008 we undertook an action project on "Changing role of undergraduate teachers in twenty first century at the Department in collaboration with Human Development Department. The findings were interesting. This TOT came in as an extension to that experience and may formulate into a larger research exploration. Thanks DET, Kamatmam and Jayashree in particular to push me to plunge. It was great to swim knowingly.