Google For Education Community Meetup

I attended the first Google For Education Community Meetup today. The event was hosted by Google Malaysia at the KL Sentral Office, which does not look like a conventional office to me.

This two-hour meeting was chaired by En Amir, involving 30+ people, ranging from preschool, primary and secondary teachers to public and private university lecturers (IPG, UPSI, SEGi and Taylor's).

After an hour long of self-introduction of every attendees, groups were formed to generate ideas on professional development (PD) training programs needed by educators in Malaysia for using Google for Education Apps.

I was proposed by other group members to synthesize and present outcomes of the discussion. I classified the outcomes into the TPCK model. Herewith the outcomes:

Contents:
1. Should cover the whole spectrum of education, i.e. early years, primary, secondary, tertiary and lifelong learning.
2. For specific subject matter e.g. Add Maths, learning apps should be made inclusive cover multiple topics to afford active, fun and creative learning activities.

Pedagogy:
1. Pedagogy for personalised and eaningful training experience.

Technology
1. In terms of affordance, post-training and just-in-time support should be made available to trainees.
2. Technological knowledge on using apps should be structured into three levels. The basic level would expose educators to the technologies; the intermediate levl should be demonstrating how to optimize the usage of existing apps, while the advanced level should focus on turning educators into apps developers.

I have shared the following formula to my group members:
Results = Personal Capability x Personal Knowledge x (1+method)(1+tool)

Also, a spider web visualization could be used to determine the types and topics of PD needed by individual trainees.

During the discussion outcome presentation, interesting ideas were suggested by other groups, including:
1. Setting up Google+ community to share teaching materials.
2. Sharing of short video clips, ideally 5 to 10 minutes per clip, like Brainwave Video Selfie on what you did in the class
3. The need for quality control and content curation.
4. Uploading Qs encountered in using the apps.

-----
My reflection:
I should use Google Apps in my teaching and document success and failure stories.
Training provided should be subject matter specific.

寓教于乐在教育里的潜力：从游戏中的学习来探询中华智慧

探询透过玩游戏来学习的中华智慧

The Potential of Game-based learning in Education: Exploring Chinese Wisdom in Learning through Game Playing 

As a Malaysian Chinese, I always wonder how Chinese in other regions perceive the potential of games in education. 

Playing Chinese chess (围棋 or Go) for example, has been regarded as one of the four arts （四艺） for being a scholar under Confucius ideology. 

Types of Learners (personal notes made in 2003 and reflection in 2016)

Three main types of learners:

1. 海绵型（sponge): absorb whatsoever taught or talked by teachers. Good in digesting contents but lack of analytic and differentiative skills.

2. 过滤网型 (filter): analyze whatsoever taught or talked by teachers. Good in absorbing and memorizing essence and main points but slow in digesting contents.

3. 黑炭型 (charcoal): hard in nature but not really bad. Lack of absorbing, digesting and memorizing skills, thus not interested in teaching and learning. Assume escapism as the only problem solving measure.

------

Reflection in 2016

I believe all students could be nurtured to become various types of learners. 

Teachers should afford students to become ALL THREE TYPES of learners mentioned above. 

For essential and core learning contents, students should become sponge learners, in which mastery learning approach should be applied, because the construction of fundamental knowledge and skills would set the foundation to acquire intermediate and advanced knowledge, skills and values.

For technical or specialized learning contents, students should become filter learners, in which individual students should contextualize whatsoever contents provided by teachers to suit personal needs and requirements, instead of grabbing all contents.

For negative contents which are against the social norm, e.g. terrorism, corruption, violence, vandalism, etc, students should become charcoal learners, in which they know why and how to say no when they are exposed to or have to encounter such contents.