New Summer Global Adventures

This summer is rich in my virtual and face-to-face presentations about an engaged learning and teaching. In the beginning of June, I present at Moodle MOOC 4 on WizIQ.

My presentation will be about The Value and Process of Creating Collaborative Learning Communities in Technology-enhanced Teacher-training Courses.

Each year I start a new semester and inform my classes that the major format of my courses will be cooperative and collaborative learning. I always notice the change of expression in a number of faces. As a rule, those teacher candidates that expressed disappointment, had a bad experience during their schools years with "cooperative" group work. From further conversations and discussions, they share that they were completing all work in the assigned group projects but everybody in the group would get the same high grade. Unfair! This confession happens each year. It takes a while, almost a semester, to convince these students to start appreciating the value of cooperative/collaborative learning. If done correctly, cooperative/collaborative learning is a powerful and meaningful method.  That's what my session will be about. I will share the research findings, best practices and my personal experience on how to create positive collaborative learning communities.

I will be presenting my talk via WizIQ, a web-based platform. I have been using WizIQ since 2008. First, in my online classes when I was assigned to teach classes in the summer or during winter interim but was traveling abroad. I was also using WizIQ when I was asked to share my experience with the Web 2.0 tools. In 2009, when I started closely collaborating with Dr. Nellie Deutsch on a variety of projects, we were using WizIQ for coordinating Moodle workshops, IWE global projects, or moderating Connected Online conferences, Spring Blog festival, and now Moodle MOOCs. It is such a rewarding experience! WizIQ is a space where talented, creative and skillful educators meet, collaborate and exchange ideas and most importantly generously share their mastership with each other and the learners from all over the world.