Events & Activities

Saturday, March 2nd, 2013

We attended a conference at LAU, Beirut, on "Integrating Technology into Education". The group consisted of our course instructor, Mrs. Amal Farhat, our coordinator, Mrs. Rasha Halat, and ten of us, classmates at the department.

The first half of the conference consisted of some presentations by some schools that have adopted technology into a large portion of their curricula. They have adopted differnt devices, one of which was having the whole curriculum on ipads.

In fact, the schools' representers went through discussing their points from a completely subjective perspective. We, as education students were able to criticize what they presented from a completely educational one.

* They presented interesting ideas that would play a role in implemeting technology in education, in an age of technology. It helps in elevating motivation, productivity, and engagement.



My classmates and me: at the entrance!

 * The last presenter emphasized the condition of when technology works or doeasn't:

_ Technology is a tool, not the point f focus: so I design my lesson, and then see what technology matches; it's not about building the lesson around the tool.
_ Teachers need to be trained; it should never cancel the teacher's role.
_ It should match the curriculum.
_ It should be student centered.

* However, some limitations that we noticed are:
   - availability of gtechnological devices,
   - high costs,
   - training needed,
   - and the shortage in elctricity in Lebanon, in the first place :)

* In addition, some questions can be raised:
1. How can we overcome the limitations just mentioned above?
2. How effective is the classroom management? We watched a video on the implication of the white board in classes, as a model in on eof the schools. The dominating asect in the class was that the teacher was overwhelmed by the board itself, where the students were noisy, talking and laughing with too much mess in the classroom. The pesenter mentioned that the teacher is actually trained, but even a trained teacher was not aware of the real, efficient usage.
=> So here the management of the classroom is totally threatened, with all the aspects that management encompasses.
3. Consequently, how much is it really student-centered?!


As for the second part of the conference, it was actually a presentation by a native experienced English teacher, who wanted to drive our attention to an important point: why not always innovate our methods of teaching the different English skills in our classes?



Friday, March 22nd, 2013

Steve B. Wolff

Today, I attended a webinar on "Team Emotional Intelligence for Building High Performance".
The presenters were: Geetu Bharwaney, Professor Vanessa Druskat, and Dr. Steve B. Wolff.

In fact, I registered in this webinar since, as you can notice if you took a tour around my blog, I'm an advocate of the proper implication and investigation of cooperative learning. Consequently, I registered in this specific webinar, as I wanted to learn how else I iprove the quality of m cooperative activities. In fact, the title seemed attractive: emotionally improving the quality of team work.

However, things turned out to be different. The term TEI, team emotional intelligence, came out to be some kind of a project that has been in action for quite a while. It's major goal seems to be improving the quality of team work in companies through developing the emotional intelligence of team members.

However, I got the chance to explore some knew ideas, refresh some other ideas I already knew, and learn a bit about TEI.

First of all, let me difine emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, a group, or others.

The presenters are 2 professors at Harvard, one of which is a "pioneer in the field of EI"; the third is a Dr. Steve B. Wolff, one of the founders at the field.

What follows are the main points they focused on.

* The importance of the study of emotional intelligence lies in two major points: reaching more people in the organizations, and improving outcomes.

* Humans possess some fundamental psychological needs (and these are described as we've studied, in Maslow's pyramid of needs): sense of belonging, having some kind of control, understanding of what's going on in the group, and trust in each other.

These needs actually lead to emotions that arise everytime we work in teams,which are always unconscious and automatic.

* However, these needs are the cause behind many conflicts that arise in the group. These conflicts are one of the greatest challenges a team can face.

The biggest problem here, as they present an anology of the iceberg, is that many times we tend to ignore and suppress these conflics and needs. This leads to disengagement and difficulties in achieving the sought-after outcomes. A impressive statement they said is, "It's not about data; it's about members!"

Again, meet the needs to reach the outcomes.

=> so, we have to avoid the problems: we need to see outside what's outside the onion, top of the iceberg!

*Therefore, there is a need to be ware of something very important. The problem usually aggravates because we usually focus on person, not environment's influence. This problem is represented in the equation presented by Lewin (1958): B = (p,e).
That is, we have to pay attention to the big role that the environment plays. Ususally, solving the problems focuses on trying to fix something about the individual themselves, while the real focus should be on the impact of the environment and how supportive and engaging it is.
So, most interentions usually address surface-level symptoms, not underlying emotions, leading to suppressing conflicts.



* Dr. Wolff is, as I mentioned before, one of the founders at the field. In his part of the presentation, he gave us an idea on the the project they work on.
** First, he started with a definition for "Team Work". I actually loved this simple, efficient definition, "It is when each member brings his best ideas into the group to be integrated to get a superior outcome to what we would get individually." So clear, so direct.
** This allows continuous learning and improvement. consequently, this leads to constructive interactions, collaborative processes, and team effectiveness.

 Geetu Bharwaney

** The process they follow is the following:

1. Team leader engages in team IE

2. All team members take a survey

3. Surve results debriefed with team leader first

4. Team discussion facilitated

5. Team defines its team norms and changes desired
6. Team actions adopted
The norms include the following: interpersonal understanding, addressing counterproductive behavior, caring behavior, team self evaluation,creating an affirmative environment, proactive problem solving, organizational, understanding, & building external relaions.

So, in brief:
1. Emotions are inevitable in groups,
2. Human social needs are common triggers ofemotions in teams,
3. High performance teams create norms that acknowledge the importance of emotions,
4. Team EI Survey facilitates dialogue andownership of team noms and behaviors,
5. And, Team EI interventions create wide-scale change.


Well, this webinar was some kind of refreshment for main points we have to be ware of in order to achieve the real goal of team work that the definition presents: A suprior product! And at the same time, "it's ALWAYS about members, not about the data!"



Vanessa Druskat