After a late night preparing and an early morning we were up and ready to share our experiences as teachers in Canada with 75 different teachers- one from each school in the Barranquilla district. Three different classrooms were set up with SMARTboards (one delivered especially to the school by pick-up truck) at Escuela Marie Poussepin who hosted the event. Teachers rotated between the three sessions while 1200 students attended classes in the same building. We were all very impressed with how elegantly the whole conference flowed while classes continued as though we weren’t even there.
The three sessions were hosted by:
Luis Morales in room one where he did technical skills using SMARTboard and a SMARTslate (something that the Canadian teachers had never seen before!) Teachers got a chance to try out skills and techniques to make the use of SMARTboards in their classroom flow smoother and be more technically advanced than what they were previously doing.
Linda Vargas and Marleen Martin in room two where they shared lesson plans based around the idea of change. They compared and contrasted their experience with the Wayuu in Riohacha with that of Indigenous communities in Canada. They were especially pleased to find a Wayuu man in one of their sessions which added an authentic aspect to the activities that they did with their group.
Susan Marinucci and Danielle Mackinnon in room three with inquiry based learning using technology. They shared their experiences with inquiry based learning and problem based learning using technology and proposed possible ideas for global partnerships with Colombian and Canadian teachers through a common problem of interested. Some of the ideas proposed were sharing and comparing the problem that Alberta is having with Honey bees dying and their effects with that of Termites in Colombia(an insect that none of the teachers had seen before) and the environmental effects that are seen through them.
All of the Colombian teachers seemed quite eager to share their experiences and ideas for future projects. It was a successful conference with lots of excitement buzzing in the air over possible ideas.
We were amazed that after each session many of the teachers came up to get their picture taken with us. We didn't even have a moment to regroup from session one to session two because we took so many pictures. It is an odd experience being the object of attention.
The day was wonderful and I definately ggot a lot of experience presenting in front of a group (3-1.5 hour presentations will do that to you).
No comments:
Post a Comment