=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=An Experience of the Creation and Approbation of the Learning Course “NIT and TFE” for Future Teachers
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-848/ICTERI-2012-CEUR-WS-paper-41-p-207-214.pdf
|volume=Vol-848
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/icteri/KushnirM12
}}
==An Experience of the Creation and Approbation of the Learning Course “NIT and TFE” for Future Teachers==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-848/ICTERI-2012-CEUR-WS-paper-41-p-207-214.pdf
An Experience of the Creation and Approbation of the
Learning Course “NIT and TFE” for Future Teachers
Nataliya Kushnir1 and Anna Manzhula1
1
Kherson State University, 40 rokiv Zhovtnya St., 27, 73000 Kherson, Ukraine
kushnir@ksu.ks.ua, ilovetrees@mail.ru
Abstract. The article presents the experience of forming the ICT-competencies
of future teachers of elementary school and early education. The course is
developed on the Moodle platform for distance education. The course objective
is training of future teachers to use ICT in their pedagogical activities,
understanding the role of ICT, its opportunities and perspectives for improving
educational process.
Keywords. Distance learning, Moodle, ICT-competencies, future teachers of
elementary school.
Key Terms. Teaching Process, Teaching Pattern, ICT Tool, Competence
Formation Process.
1 Introduction
The tendency of the development of information society, changing the teacher’s role
from a source of knowledge to facilitator and the approval new state standard of
elementary school, which includes Informatics as required course for all pupils
starting from the second year led to increasing the priority of the course “New
information technologies and technical facilities of education” (NIT and TFE) for
professional training of future elementary school teachers.
Now lecturers of this course observe such tendency: students use the ІCТ more
often and have better skills of working with different applications. The data, got from
the entrance survey, have confirmed it. Really, there is no sense to repeat the school
course of Informatics: 89% of students have their own computer or laptop; 70% of
respondents have free access to the Internet outside university; 78% of students have
stated they are skilled in using Office programs, Internet, printers, scanners; 51% of
respondents have experience of self-reliant learning of software. 49% of students feel
comfort and enjoy working at the computer, 33% – feel assurance. So, there is a need
to move accent from the learning “buttons” in Informatics to understanding ICT
creative potential for teaching and applying it in future pedagogical activities.
208 N. Kushnir and A. Manzhula
It had identified a need to research changes of goals and assignment, content,
methods and forms of teaching this course, peculiarities of its realization and analysis
of received results.
2 The Essence of the Research
The course “NIT and TFE” is a single discipline in computer sciences in the
curriculum for undergraduate students of specialty “Primary education”, except
students studying at specialization “Basics of Informatics”. The course “NIT and
TFE” is a base for studying the discipline “New information technologies in
preschool education” (8 hours of lectures and 12 hours of practical lessons) for
undergraduate students of the specialty “Preschool education”. The overall objective
of these disciplines is training of future teachers to use ICT in their pedagogical
activities, understanding the role of ICT, its opportunities and perspectives for
improving educational process.
The objective of the course implemented such educational and training tasks:
to uncover the importance of role, opportunities and perspectives of the ICT in
preschool and elementary education, train the skills of studying with the ICT and
reasonable using these technologies in future professional activities;
to familiarize the students with the basic facilities and methods of the modern
information technologies, their theoretical and technical basis;
to give to the students knowledge, abilities and skills, which let them learn and
develop independently having in mind the effectiveness of using ICT in their future
professional work;
to organize students’ creative activities in making their own computer programs for
teaching;
to give an opportunity to each student to realize his educational trajectory in a way
of differentiation and increasing the quantity of creative tasks;
to encourage students to make a collection of e-resources for learning;
to form the basics of information culture of the students.
The importance of the educational and training tasks listed above requires a
priority status of this and similar discipline in the curriculum of pedagogical
specialties. In our opinion, it would be reasonable to extend this course and add a lot
of academic hours at the expense of variation part of the curriculum. For example, at
the Department of Preschool and Elementary Education of Kherson State University
(DPEE and ES KSU) there is only 18 academic hours for work in auditorium: 4 hours
for lectures and 14 hours for practical lessons, while the quantity of time for
independent work is 36 hours. It requires making clear tasks, forms and terms of the
students’ work. It was confirmed by the results of final poll in which fair quantity of
students had expressed an opinion to add a lot of academic hours and extend this
course.
The actual level of the development of Internet-services lets an educator write an
electronic summary (e.g. in form of presentation), regularly change content without
any expenses for re-edition. Students can use such electronic resources in any time, if
they pass a lesson or wish to revise the material. Students can get distance
Experience of the Creation and Approbation of the Learning Course … 209
recommendations from the educator or other students about different questions
concerning their tasks. Students can also load the files with an executed work to the
site for control. Students have the opportunity to evaluate the course and a quality of
its teaching and in this way the administration can perform monitoring. This type of
organization of studying has already become a standard in many leading universities
all over the world.
The course described above satisfies all these norms and the Moodle platform for
distant learning helps even the beginner to realize it conveniently and easy (see
http://ksuonline.ksu.ks.ua).
Let us describe the course in detail.
The main webpage visualizes a structure of the course; it consists of the annotation
to it and the blocks with hyperlinks to the each topic. The course contains an entrance
poll and testing, they help to learn about the audience better, identify the level of
residual knowledge of Informatics of the educators that gives an opportunity to
optimize future educational process. According to the results of the entrance test
students are subdivided in two levels of difficulty of the tasks: intermediate Level А
and advanced Level В. The course includes also a final poll. Despite the fact the
students spend a lot of time at the computer, they use it mainly for entertainments. So
the level of residual knowledge of the school Informatics course is low and 79% of
students studied at level А, respectively 21% performed the tasks of level В. The
latter level we proposed to the students, which showed high results of entrance test: a
quantity of right answers had to amount more than 75 %.
The content of lectures includes the basic definitions of ICT, approaches to using
ICT in education and classification of pedagogical software, new tendencies as Web
2.0 and so on. Theoretical part of the course also contains modern requirements of
elementary teacher’s ICT-competency. The priority of the course is its professional
focus, so content of lectures includes the important questions such as peculiarities and
approaches to using ICT, sanitary and hygienic norms of working at the computer in
kindergartens and elementary schools, recommendations for choosing pedagogical
software.
We formulated the following requirements to the practical tasks for students on the
ground of methodological literature analysis:
1. Using ICT in the educational process, on the one hand, facilitates to the
systematization of student’s knowledge in this sphere, on the other hand, reduces
the level of creative activities. Therefore, the need to increase amount of creative
tasks appears to be the compensation for such ICT influence.
2. Tasks should be directed to the forming self-education skills that is one of the
factors of the further professional development.
3. Tasks should raise internal motivation for education, particularly for studying
opportunities of using ICT in the future teaching practice.
4. Tasks should be oriented to the future professional activities.
5. Tasks should form understanding of modern tendencies of the ICT development
and using it in the educational process.
Practical tasks are structured in four blocks: “Information and communications”,
“Creating and using an educational presentation”, “Text documents for a teacher”,
“Using of Excel program in pedagogical practice” and distinguished between two
levels: intermediate Level А and advanced Level В. Students are subdivided on two
210 N. Kushnir and A. Manzhula
groups according to the results of the entrance test (see Table 1). We consider starting
of the course with the topic “Information and communications” to be principally
important, because not every student has an experience of distance learning and
unfortunately a lot of students even don’t have e-mail or don’t use it. Therefore, we
had to teach students to use the Moodle platform for distant learning and give tutor’s
consultations in a case of difficulties or technical problems with electronic
correspondence.
Table 1. The plan of the course “NIT and TFE”.
The Theme Auditorium tasks Independent work
acade- blocks The content of the tasks The Content of The
mic А (intermediate) В (advanced) forms of the tasks forms of
hours control control
2/1 Creating the site Loading The The
Search of the
by the tools of the file to acquaintance answers
information on the
Google sites, the site. with the rules in a text
theme:
filling the main The of network form.
“Educational
page and the hyperlink etiquette.
programs for
page of the to the Formulating
Information and communications
children”, adding
useful recourses blog on 5-10 rules of
the web-pages to
(minimum 5). the using the
the “Favourite”,
educator’ Internet for
filling the table
s e-mail children of
following the
box. primary
example for 5
school age.
sites.
2/2 Forums and polls. Creating the The The Test on
Searching the poll on the free hyperlink acquaintance KSU
forums of the service and to the site with the Online.
professional allocation it on on the document Loading
themes, the own site. educator’ “ICT the file to
registration and s e-mail competency the site.
participation in box. standards for
one of them. teachers”.
Creating a poll.
2/5 Producing Creating an Loading The Loading
“diapositive” tale interactive the file to acquaintance the file to
Creating and using an educational
with music visual aid. the site. with the the site.
support document
“Design of
educational
presentation
products in
MS
PowerPoint”.
Making test
with triggers.
2/4 Creating Creating Loading Making the Loading
didactical game didactical game the file to design the file to
with the with the the site. of all the site.
hyperlinks. triggers. presentations.
Experience of the Creation and Approbation of the Learning Course … 211
The Theme Auditorium tasks Independent work
acade- blocks The content of the tasks The Content of The
mic А (intermediate) В (advanced) forms of the tasks forms of
hours control control
2/2 Making the letter Creating labels Loading The “It would Loading
for a teacher
of commendation for a student’s the file to be interesting the file to
documents
by merging the exercise book. the site. to know” the site.
Text
documents.
2/1 Statistical data Statistical data Loading Drawing the Loading
Using of the
pedagogical
analysis using MS using MS the file to graphics and the file to
program in
Excel. Excel. the site. diagrams. the site.
Excel
ti
2 “Children and the computer”: search Loading Final
Final lesson
of information, statistical data, its the file to complex
graphic presentation in MS the site. test.
PowerPoint. Test.
Conclusi-
ve poll.
Among practical tasks there are such ones as creating and editing a site by the tools
of Google Sites, filling its informational content; communicating in a blog or forum
on the professional topics; producing “diapositive” tale with music support; creating
interactive visual aids and didactical games by means of MS PowerPoint; creating
labels for student’s exercise book; making letter of commendation by merging
documents in MS Word; statistical data analysis using MS Excel etc.
We’ve got interesting results of anonymous final students’ poll. They noticed that
the most difficult creative tasks are the most attractive and useful for them. The data
showed 64 % of respondents answering the question “What task was the most
difficult one?”chose following answers: “Creating a didactical game with the
hyperlinks”, “Making test with triggers”, “Producing “diapositive” tale”. As an
answer to the question “What task do you consider to be the most useful for you?”
79% of students have selected variants “Producing “diapositive” tale”, “Creating a
didactical game with hyperlinks”, “Making letter of commendation by merging the
documents”. About 67% of students gave the following answers: “Producing
“diapositive” tale”, “Creating a didactical game with hyperlinks”, “Making the poster
“It would be interesting to know”, “Make letter of commendation by merging the
documents” on the question “What of the tasks did arouse the greatest interest?”.
We have to mention that statistic data presented earlier characterize answers of
students, who studied at Level А (79% of the whole group). Approximately such
statistical data describe poll’s results in the group of Level В.
The practical tasks have typical structure: a title, an objective, necessary software,
criterion of assessment, examples of executed task, step-by-step instruction with
illustrations. Also we have submitted video-lessons and put hyperlinks to subsidiary
web-resources as collateral relief. Observing the network etiquette was the important
requirement to the students’ work.
Everyone can review the best students’ works on the site “Virtual gallery of
creative multimedia works of DPEE KSU students”
212 N. Kushnir and A. Manzhula
https://sites.google.com/site/museumfdpo, which shows the real example of using free
internet services in educational aims.
Among the most original products in gallery we wish to grant next works of our
students: “In the vegetable garden” (Irina Govrishchenko), “The games” (Tetyana
Kydrevs’ka) and “Compare numbers!” (Svitlana Shrub).
This site motivates students to the higher quality of creating multimedia
educational products and cultivates respective attitude to the copyright. Furthermore,
the students’ participation in creating of the open collection of multimedia projects
promotes further collaboration, exchange of experience among other teachers in
future.
Tasks for independent work are not differentiated and do not require a high level
skills of ICT using, directed to the generalization and deepening Informatics
knowledge, understanding of the role and opportunity of using ICT in future
professional activities. Students have the considerable quantity of time (36 hour) for
the independent work that predetermined its clear organization (statement or problem,
forms of control, execution terms etc.). Moodle Platform provides a possibility for an
educator to regulate the time for execution of the tasks (for example, an access to the
function “loading files” will be closed for students after the deadline).
It is well known that principle “effort here and now, but result – later” reduces the
motivation. Therefore it’s important that all tasks should be checked and marked
before the next lesson and if students get some educator’s comments or
recommendations, they can improve their product and, naturally, get a better mark.
Students submit a result of their work in form determined previously by educator like
“submit file on the site”, “send hyperlink to tutor’s e-mail”, “test on the site” and etc.
The authors added a section “Recourses for You” as extra support for students,
which contain the presentations of lectures, “Useful resources” – structured collating
of Internet-resources, “Main definitions” (glossary). ‘Guide of algorithms” contains
instructions illustrating some operation of using MS Office. Such reference books
decrease the task description, because elements of algorithms are not duplicated. The
structure of such tasks is convenient both for “weak” and for “experienced” software
users: it gives step-by-step illustrated instructions for the first ones, and it does not
draw the advanced users’ attention to unnecessary detailed description that let them
move quickly and independently.
The final block of the web-page helps an educator to organize the last lesson that
includes complex task (55 minutes) and final test (20 minutes). Students must show
skills of using as a minimum three of four program tools considered on the practical
lessons and abilities to search and analyze information, identify a problem question,
well-reasoned presentation of certain point of view and graphic visualization of data,
particularly statistical. So we decided to choose sufficiently broad a general theme of
the final task – “Children and computers”.
The aim of the final test is to check the main learnt statements of the lecture
material. Test includes questions of different form with different quantities of the
right answers. Every student has only one attempt to take the test.
The aim of the conclusive poll is to detect the level of student’s satisfaction by
quality of methodical support of the course, to reveal the most interesting and useful
topics for them, to identify new strategies of improving the course.
Experience of the Creation and Approbation of the Learning Course … 213
Thereby, developed course “NIT and TFE” fully corresponds to the actual level of
educational process organization at the universities. The course can be “disseminated”
at other educational institutions without attracting the authors of this course to
teaching and organization lessons. At the same time, the electronic form of this course
is open for modification and improvement.
3 Results
According to the schedule of KSU working in 2011–2012 academic year this
discipline had been teaching in period from the 1st of September to the 29th of
December for third year students of the Department of Preschool and Elementary
Education. Generally, during the period 109 students finished this course.
The results of final poll are evidence of students’ understanding the role of ICT in
future professional activities. So, on the question “Do you consider the skills of
working at the computer to be an integral part of your teacher’s activity?” 47%
students gave an answer “Yes” and 42% – “Likely yes than no”.
Students have estimated the quality of the course materials “NIT and TFE” as 9.29
(arithmetical mean) from 10 and novelty of lectures’ information for them – 7.59
respectively, practical tasks – 7.64 according to the ten-point system.
The students described their emotional state during studying course “NIT and
TFE” like the following: 42% of them felt interest, 17% –enthusiasm, 12% –
astonishment, 8% –pride, 8% –joy, 6% –anxiety, 4% –terribly and 2% –happiness.
Consequently, the approbation has confirmed positive results of our work.
As for further improvement of substantive component of the course we can also
follow the student’s wishes expressed in conclusive poll. Summarizing students’
replies the future course may include studying of other different software (for
example, MS Publisher, MS Project, Adobe Photoshop, MS Access etc.) and studying
programs as MS PowerPoint (triggers), MS Word, MS Excel, using Internet, creating
sites etc. more detailed for using them at school. Also students mentioned a wish to
study methods of ICT using in professional activities and a need to add the hours of
auditorium lessons.
4 Conclusions
Detailed and clear structure of the course is useful for supporting equal conditions and
criterions (ruling “double standards” out) and makes the process of estimation of
students’ academic achievements independent from the educator. We want to note,
that such organization of pedagogical process “disciplines” both students and tutors:
requires their regular attention and higher level of activity. Students note when they
had problems, they got help from a lecturer during the lesson – 54% and during the
individual consultations – 9% (10% of students didn’t have any difficulties at all and
25% got a help from their colleagues).
The participation of students in this project has become the factor of enriching their
experience of effective ICT using in education. Such system makes possible for a
214 N. Kushnir and A. Manzhula
student to act as a subject of the educational process: it also influences on the further
improving the course and through the poll takes part in estimation of developers’ and
educators’ work.
Moodle distance learning platform makes it possible to present the course
visualized and structured. It makes the educators’ work highly organized and
“transparent”. The potential of Moodle led to the general positive student’s attitude to
the course, particularly, because students can make some tasks distantly. The
experience of development of this course by means of Moodle is useful for educators
of any other discipline as well.
One of the aims of the article is to present the experience of forming the ICT-
competencies of future teachers of elementary school and early education. So, we
hope to get feedback relative to advantages and short comings of our approach.
References
1. Anderson, J., van Weert, T.: Information and Communication Technology in Education: A
Curriculum for Schools and Program of Teacher Development. UNESCO, Paris (2002),
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001295/129538e.pdf
2. ICT COMPETENCY STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS, Paris (2007),
www.unesco.org/en/competency-standards-teachers
3. The course “New information technologies and technical facilities of education”,
http://ksuonline.ksu.ks.ua/course/view.php?id=10
4. The site “Virtual gallery of creative multimedia works of students DPEE KSU”,
https://sites.google.com/site/museumfdpo/%20
5. Kushnir N.O., Manzhula A.M.: The practical tasks of the course “NIT and TFE” for
students of pedagogical specialties. Scientific pedagogical journal “Parus”, Mykolayiv
(2012) (In Russian)