With the
development of technology, communication among people has become more and more
convenient. Especially, the technology of internet has changed our life
greatly. We can share our photos, our favorite food, even the music with our
friend on the web anytime anywhere. Thanks to the invention of web conference
software, our meeting with colleagues and partners in distance has become
available.
During my web conferencing
with my partner Karin through skype, which was a quite pleasant experience, we
shared our experience in teaching adult. First, we talked about the role of “adult
educator”, and we all agree that the “role of adult educator” in and after our regular
classroom has changed greatly. As an educator, we should be able to build student’s
confidence, listen to their feedback patiently, and constantly learn and
explore new approaches for effective and positive teaching. For those adult
with various background, who have their own views and attitudes, we, educator, should
customize our teaching methods. We reached agreements that we must be a
lifelong learner for being a qualified teacher.
My good classmate,
Karin Carlson, has also shared her experience in teaching writing, which did
inspire me a lot. She has used several methods to improve her students’ writing
ability, such as one group exercise, asking them to do self-assessment or
peer-assessment; pair-share; one minute
paper; or one- sentence summary , requiring them to use concise word for the
best expression-- “who does what to whom”, etc.
She also explained
that her students come from different country, some are native, some are from India,
and even some of them are Chinese. So, I believe it is more difficult to
explain in class for those students with various cultural backgrounds.
She also shared
one good and interesting article with me. She has briefly introduced the main
idea of the essay—the teacher recorded his course by using video tapes and
then, students can learn it according to their own pace. For the quick learners， they could skip some parts of the video;
for the rest, they can easily repeat what the teacher say and then learn the
course effectively and efficiently.
At last, Karin
also shared a website for me to learn how to write reference correctly.
Web-conferencing
is quite convenient and easy to get access to. Although we have encountered
some troubles in connecting with each other, the whole process is quite fluent.
In brief, Web-conferencing is a definite trend not only for individual
communicate, but also for business to conduct meeting, which could greatly
lower the cost.
