Blog 3 - The role of teachers in the new educational approaches

                                        

  I believe the role of teachers has been changing significantly nowadays. A lot of researches have been conducted and many educators have many ideas about the new role of teachers in education. As we all know, teachers were the most active part of a classroom, and the presentation of the topic was made by teachers all the time. Students were passive in class. However, with some new approaches in education, this situation has been changing significantly, and teachers have taken over new roles such as leaders or mentors. The role of the teacher is significantly reduced. The teaching activities of the computer are very complex in structure and include didactic tasks, learning tasks, teaching materials, teaching methods, which are integrated into electronic developments. But that doesn't mean we don't need teachers. Teachers are the people responsible for creating the conditions for students to learn the language, acquire knowledge, and become educated. (Elmurodov, 2020) As Elmurodov indicated in his paper, it is obvious that teachers' roles significantly reduced, however, this doesn't mean teachers are not necessary. On the contrary, as Sir Ken Robinson indicated in his TED talk teachers as leaders and mentors should create the suitable, right conditions for students to let them accomplish their own learning.

 "Teachers mentor students for a multitude of reasons. “As mentors, teachers typically pass on knowledge of subjects to improve educational achievement” (Heller and Sindelar, 1991, p. 7). Secondarily, teachers mentor students to facilitate personal development, encourage students to make wise choices, or help them make the transition from school to career (Zeeb, 1998).
Teachers who make the time to prepare themselves to be mentors tend to have more satisfying and productive mentoring relationships than those who do not" (Zachary, 2002). 

 Basically, new approaches to education show us that teachers' roles are significantly changing and this must be understood properly. In this approach, even though teachers seem to have less work, they actually have a different even more difficult work which is not only presenting the topic but leading students to think, search, question, and find out. 

References 

Elmurodov, Ulugbek Yarashovich. 2020. The Importance of Multimedia and Mobile Applications in Teaching Foreign Languages. "Science and Education" Scientific Journal. September 2020 / Volume 1 Special Issue 2. Chirchik State Pedagogical Institute of Tashkent Region

Zachary, Lois J. 2002. The Role of Teacher as Mentor. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, no. 93, Spring 2002.

Blog 2 - Multimedia in Language Learning & Related Tool "Raz-Plus"

                                              

                                               

   Raz-Plus is an important tool of reading in the English language for young learners. It has a lot of books on different levels and it contains a lot of pictures related to the topics. It can be considered as an effective tool that consists of lots of pictures and words together. Additionally, there is narration for each book and it can be considered as very effective as multimedia principles. 

   According to research conducted in America in 2012, when presenting multimedia instruction in language learning with narration and animated pictures, adding text to the presentation does improve learning. The main idea of the redundancy effect is to decrease the redundant information from the multimedia presentation to reduce students’ cognitive load; however, if the topic is language learning, it was proved that narrated text is not redundant information for the language learners in this study (Samur, 2012). 

 

   Raz-Kids presents a variety of narrated books which are very effective for the language learners as indicated in the research. 

 

     There are books that can be assigned as homework to the students. It has both listening to the narrated texts and also recording voice function. It means that this tool also can be used as a kind of learning management system. 

                

    Raz-Plus offers a lot of information about the students' performance levels. Teachers have room to check and follow the performances and processes of their students via the Raz-Kids tool. Raz-Plus is really rich in terms of graphics, comics, and humor books. That is why it is that wrong to say it is an open sea of multimedia tools. 

References 

Samur, Yavuz. 2012. British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol 43 No 6 2012.

Photos are taken from the Raz-Plus website.

Blog 1 - Integration of technology into education and Multimedia

 

   There have been many experiments and innovations in the field of education and training regarding knowledge delivery. From face-to-face to virtual education, different technologies have played great roles at different times. In the last two decades, due to the advent of computer technologies, information delivery has got a new meaning. Development, access, and transfer of text, sound, and video data have given a unique face to classrooms, libraries, and training and resource centers, in the form of interactive multimedia programs. (Sanjaya Mishra, Ramesh C. Sharma, 2005)

   In addition to what Mishra and Sharma indicated, the delivery system has changed immediately and mandatorily because of the Covid19 pandemic. Moreover, the use of technology and multimedia has increased correspondingly.

   As of 21st-century educators, it is important to see the new approaches in education. It is very clear that education has been changing for ages according to the new experiments and it is getting more integrated into technology. People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.

This hypothesis is the basis for the promise of multimedia learning. Multimedia instruction consists of words and pictures rather than words alone. (Mayer, 2001) Regarding this, it is inevitable to integrate more media into the lessons. Therefore, we should deeply understand the process and effects of multimedia to integrate into our lessons. We have three types of memory which are sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory. The figure shows how the multimedia learning process occurs.

                              

    This figure shows us the process of multimedia learning.  The central work of multimedia learning takes place in working memory, so let’s focus there. Working memory is used for temporarily

holding and manipulating knowledge in active consciousness (Mayer, 2001).  As it can be seen from the figure, new information integrates with the prior knowledge and stay in the long-term memory temporarily. 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

References

Mayer, Richard E., Multimedia Learning, 2001, New York. Cambridge University Press.

University, A. (2005) Interactive Multimedia in Education and Training. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 6 (1), 115-122.