OER4Schools/Overview

Title: Introduction to OER4Schools
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The OER4Schools Professional Learning Resource

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  Introduction to OER4Schools

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Introduction to OER4Schools >>>

Facilitator's version, Participants' version

OER4Schools Professional Development Resource Home - Overview

Introduction. This is a professional learning resource for teachers, focusing on interactive teaching, with and without Information and Communication Technology (ICT). A key feature of this resource is the use of video as a stimulus for discussion. The video used has been produced mainly in the Zambian primary school context, but we anticipate other video materials to become available.

Licence. This resource is openly accessible under a Creative Common licence so that it can be freely distributed, copied or adapted. To facilitate this in practice, it will be available in a number of formats (online and offline), appropriate to the varied sub-Saharan environments in which teachers find themselves. Please check our website http://tinyurl.com/oer4schools for available formats. In addition, our videos are available from our YouTube site, http://www.youtube.com/user/OER4Schools. If you do not have access to the internet, then do speak to the person who gave you these materials about how to find out more information.

Modes of use. The resource can be used in different ways, depending on your circumstances. It supports different modes of learning, such as

• individual, self-paced learning,
• use by small, informal groups of colleagues,
• use with a class of students on a formally taught pre-service or in-service course,
• use by staff of a whole school, or for
• blended learning – as part of a distance learning course with some face-to-face workshops.

Content. The resource consists of 6 units, including one introductory unit, 4 topic-based units, as well as a concluding unit called “Sharing the vision”. The units are

1. Introduction to interactive teaching,
2. Effective group work,
3. Whole class dialogue and effective questioning,
4. Assessment of learning and lesson pacing,
5. Supporting co-enquiry,
6. Sharing the vision.

Format. Each unit includes an introduction to that unit (providing an overview of the topic itself), and a number of activities, including

• Personal reflections on textual material about interactive teaching,
• Workshop activities based on discussing video, audio and photographical stimuli,
• School-based classroom activities for teachers to try out during lessons,
• Guidance for teacher reflection (following their lessons),
• Educator reflections – for teacher educators who might be using this resource to run face-to-face, blended, or distance learning programs.

The resource introduces and illustrates interactive teaching using interactive teaching techniques itself! These include asking users to brainstorm, reflect, collaborate, discuss, make personal sense of new ideas and try out new classroom practices.

Educator note

Rationale for workshop - modelling practices in the workshop that teachers are supposed to implement in the school.

How do you do a whole-school process at your school? Who needs to be involved?

The resource is available as a version for participants, as well as a version for facilitators with additional notes.

Versions. General “teacher” text is for use in a workshop or by individuals or classes using the resource (“users”) to support their own professional learning. Users could have that text in front of them on a projector or printed out. It might effectively be used as a series of slides or a handout, that provide a thread through the resource or workshop.

Background reading

There are also background notes, that are useful to teachers and educators for background reading. They are usually found on separate pages or at the end of units, and are meant to provide additional background information that workshop participants can read in their own time.

Educator note

In the facilitators’ version, additional notes for facilitators appear like this and is for an educator to use, for example when facilitating a workshop or working with a class of students. It is interspersed with the “teacher” text, to provide additional guidance on how to use the resource.

Timing. As a workshop facilitator, you should consider how to use the present material, and what form your workshop will take. The resource could be used in

• weekly or bi-weekly session of say 2 hours each (e.g. teacher group meetings in a school or regular scheduled sessions in a teacher education college),
• for whole day workshops,
• or a mixture of those.

You should negotiate this with the participants. We provide guidance but as a facilitator running a course based on these materials you will need to make your own plan, and evaluate this plan as you progress.

A key principle is taking responsibility for your own teaching and learning. This means that as a facilitator, you take responsibility for providing a successful workshop, teachers take responsibility for their learning during the workshop and their teaching practice in schools, while school students take responsibility for learning, as well as supporting each other in that process.

Jointly building an understanding of interactive teaching: at the end of Session 1, ask participants: What does interactive teaching offer you?

You might return to the principles of interactive teaching as a group after a few sessions and classroom trials to see which ones are / are not being addressed.

Adapting the format of the resource to the specific context. Ideally, there would be at least the following contexts:

• Paper only. Possibly only the facilitator has a copy of the materials but ideally users do too.
• Semi-digital: There’s one computer / projects
• Fully digital: There are several computers with sound, and participants are able to watch various videos in groups.

ICT use in the classroom will be introduced in the workshops. Teachers need a basic level of ICT skills, for instance how to type, how to open a web browser and open applications, how to write documents and spreadsheets, etc. If your workshop participants have no prior ICT skills, you need to allow time for them to practise those skills.

Follow-up and practical classroom activities: End each session with planning for follow-up activities, eg classroom trials, lesson planning, readings, etc.