Two hours preparation for every hour teaching seems to be a wise idea, especially for non-tenured faculty; time spent for teaching may be a lost time for research and grant proposals/publications. This also enables new teachers to be productive in their time usage both in research and teaching. Balancing the act of research and teaching towards tenure may be an interesting one to discuss in the context of teaching preparations.
Incorporation of technology is beyond a regular email could be a wonderful way to achieve several teaching goals. However, to learn technology could be time consuming and might take time away from designing and preparing course contents. I think I can manage in doing a good job in delivering course materials just by power-point presentation, white/black boards and classroom discussions. I am yet to learn the value of bloggers and other forms of electronic tools on how students will use for their own learning, group activities and provide an interactive atmosphere for the rest of class members.
Having a backup plan is always very important. I have seen some faculty candidate loosing very good opportunities not having a backup plans for their seminar and classroom presentations in their interviews due to power/equipment/software failures. In classroom setting always we could manage these situations by spending time on revising, group discussion activities, problem solving and application of quizzes and helping difficult to learn students.
Overhead projection- I am not sure many people use this as a teaching technology. However, there may be useful times when power points fails. Again you need to have all the backup transparencies to make use of this technique.
My department is in the process of having interactive whiteboard. Showing video of an experiment and getting student to write, discuss, and encourage group activity is a great way to use this technology to enhance learning. I can also use this to develop ideas, collaborate with peers and solve science problems. Prior to reading about interactive whiteboard, I was thinking only about using laboratory experiments to develop these skills.
Virtual learning community- This is a new concept yet to explore as I am coming to teaching business after about 10 years. Lots have changed since I last taught in a developing country. I can visualize the value of virtual technologies in developing communities. However, I am yet to experience this phenomenon. Hopefully, I will be able to learn something from this course before I could test with my students in the fall teaching.
There are so many gadgets in the classroom that students bring in ranging from cell phone, ipad to laptop computers. They may be using these devises for the purposes other than for classroom activities. They are also adults and could choose to do whatever they want to do. I am debating myself with how do we control these activities so that we can get their attention to the materials discuss in the class. Use of newer technologies helps teacher to do a better job. They also bring lots of waste when students are not using them for the class purposes for which we cannot blame. I am looking forward to Wednesday class on discussing this point and get some insights .
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