May 29, 2006

item 2 : Learning Circles

What are your views on the:
effectiveness of the learning circles approach, especially its effectiveness within the Asia-Pacific cultural context?
Please remember that Gerald already highlighted some of the problems in the pilot of Learning Circles when we all met in December in Chiangmai ... these were ...
  • insufficient initial training
  • lack of a common language of communication
  • written materials (in English) too wordy
  • regional contrasts marginalised some schools
  • unreliable telecommunications networks
  • insufficient country level support for participating teachers
  • learning circle coordination was managed too remotely
  • teachers' email culture was not well established
listen

2 Comments:

At 14/6/06 3:26 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Learning Circles has many benefits in that it is highly structured and focuses clearly on useful topics. On the other hand, it's high level of structure makes it somewhat inflexible in some cases, for instance, it is hard to integrate schools if they are late to join.

There are some more simple forms of collaboration which could be used for beginner teachers, which might encourage those who are less confident with ICT and telecollaboration to join in.

 
At 24/6/06 10:30 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I do not actually think it is hard to accommodate late joiners. Although a learning circle takes 10 weeks it only involves a small amount of class time in any one phase. That time can be made up in a day or two. I cetainly think it is very possible to accommodate late joiners up to the end of Phase 3. This is sometimes useful if a group is suffering from a high number of inactive clases.

 

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