Whatever happens, happens for the better…

That is my last post in this year there was a great opportunity to improve different skills through blog post writing. This semester have remembered with tremendous number of assignments and thesis writing process as well. I know that it seems as a big pressure for us but as one of the proverb says “Whatever happens, happens for the better”. The best way to make it easy is to apprehend it as a game where you just play, it should not relate to the drama. Therefore, in this post I would like to share my small contribution and piece of thoughts about the mini-thesis writing process.

At the beginning, while writing the thesis, I have faced with some obstacles as well as my groupmates. The main problem was lack of sufficient time to do my daily work responsibilities and university assignments at the same time. The specific subject what I teach at Nazarbayev Intellectual School is Global Perspectives and Project work where students have to conduct their research on one of the Global issues. In this regard, to teach them how to conduct the research, and then check 40 research works of my students at the same time was challenge for me. That is why, I sometimes finished some assignments later than the deadline.

The next problem was lack of experience to do such thesis. The instructors have provided clear description of the tasks and explanation of the writing the thesis. However, it was not enough in my case, I need to have more face-to-face contact with my professors and instructors in order to understand and have more feedback in real life not only online.

Frankly speaking, I really appreciate to the university stuff for their effort in supporting us. They believe to our ability and always have chance to provide us any advice. I think that is awesome. After all my assignments I became to know more about thesis and I guess I have improved my English. Therefore, I can share my small personal thoughts and experiences for online learners. My advice is never hide your problems, always be keep in touch with your professors, instructors and your peers. That is very important because only these people know what is going on in your life. They could make your life easy, that is why do not ignore this advice.

As I young teacher and new researcher I have started to notice that I always observe different teachers’ methods and approaches of study. The current online course has demonstrated me the new system of teaching and learning. Of course, there are many positive sides of writing the thesis and that could have some improvement after the course. However, if I would be instructor I would have more interaction with my students face-to-face. What I observed is that if you will collaborate and keep in touch with your students that could bring fantastic shifts.

Moreover, I would suggest creating different video-lessons where instructors will demonstrate all the aspects relating to the course. I think my peers will support me that it could provide more motivation and relieve the stress especially for Master’s students.

In conclusion, I would say that it was honor for me to be there, to have a chance to have attempted my best and participate in this blog, thank you. Separate appreciation to my groupmates for their amazing ideas and dizzy experiences without their support I think we could not have such atmosphere and spirit to study. Good luck for all of us in the process of writing our ‘big-thesis’ and my congratulation with coming Happy New Year. See you next year.

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The best way to develop research skills is to do more research

The enrollment to the Master’s program at GSE Nazarbayev University provided me new impulse in my professional life. Undoubtedly, it gave me the opportunity and chance to be more than ‘ordinary’ person it brought me the responsibility, such as deadlines in the different courses and of course the experience of writing my thesis. The process of writing is quite challenging when you have other responsibility, such as daily work and family. It is more difficult if you never experienced conducting research in a new high level. But, I realized that more writing and reading about my mini-thesis, more I become to be ‘not bad researcher’. Here, I would like to say huge appreciation to our instructors and professors for their support.

In this post I would like to share my personal challenges of writing my methodology and data collection sections in my mini-thesis.  The purpose of my mini-thesis was to clarify losing motivation of students to learning in online learning environments. I thought a lot in order to identify which research method is appropriate then after spending many times of reading I decided to explore the topic through qualitative research design. My literature review demonstrated that there are different reasons of losing motivation of students to learning in online learning environments, such as challenging in time management (Clark-Ibáñez & Scott, 2008), lack of community, difficulty understanding instructional goals, and technical problems (Singleton et al., 2004), personal interest, external and internal motivation, and conversation of information into knowledge and depth of learning process to recognize how to amount student motivation (Knowles & Kerkman, 2007).

Those literatures helped me identify my research method. The research was conducted through the qualitative research design, particular semi-structured interview. Nohl (2009) indicates that semi-structured interviews allow not only for assessing the participants’ opinions, statements and convictions, they also allow to elicit narratives about their personal experiences.

But, I understood that it is not so easy to conduct the interview. Fortunately, that is not my first experience that is why my previous knowledge helped me to manage and conduct the interview procedure.  However, I can definitely say that I am not good interviewer, that I need more practice and training to do it again. My challenge was the preparation to the interview itself, it means that arranges all documents, creating the specific questions and prepares yourself in psychological side. Another obstacle was to find out specific time to prepare for the interview itself because my intensive session at the university and busy daily work. The last problem was do not forget my questions and record all the answers of my respondents.

Nevertheless, I believe that what we do it is extremely necessary actions towards to be ready in the thesis writing. My big lesson was that the more I practice the more I become a professional researcher. I hope that I will able to analyze all data what I have now and in proper way to illustrate in the result section.

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Reference list

Nohl, A.-M. 2009. Interview und Dokumentarische Methode: Anleitungen für die Forschungspraxis (3 ed.). Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden, Germany.

Education via 3D technology

Nowadays it is not enough to merely be a good teacher, you have to be an extraordinary teacher. The current trends make it necessary to change and improve your ability. Each year, the education transforming into something new and modern teachers should be flexible to changes. In this post I would like to share the new “innovative” technology experience which is already used in the classroom that had positive results in the United Kingdom (UK). In the video the Shelfield Community Academy is using 3D technology in the classroom. It is the first school in the UK to work with Gaia Technologies to adopt and develop the use of classroom 3D technologies.

In terms of implementing it in my own classroom, I think that “innovative” approach might be helpful to my students. In Nazarbayev Intellectual School there is an appropriate condition to apply it. According to comments of students from the video they have felt excited in the classroom. Also, they mentioned that it can make lesson more realistic and fascinating, that they are not just listening but participating in the content of the lesson.

In my perspective, the main barrier for implementing such innovative technology is the lack of attention by the policy makers to such beneficial technology. It is recommended that people propose such way of studying to the Government in order for it to have a positive effect on the country’s state of education.

Reference list

Innovative Technology Film Series – 3D in the Classroom. Retrieved October 9, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vakjnnoj7w

Literature review my First love… (Part IV)

In this post I would like to share my experience of writing literature review. Last year, I was fully introduced to the concept of literature review and I was really ‘falling in love’ with this section of research. In order to understand my own research topic I found some sources which showed me the meaning of my topic. During the process of long night reading and surfing the internet I noticed that I had started to get more deeply involved the process of research. Without a doubt it was an amazing feeling because before I even did not imagine that different literatures could create a miracle of combining all these sources which finally yield a product referred to as a research.

The topic of my research is a Principal’s leadership, where the main focus of the study is teachers` perception of their Principal’s skills at school. There are some challenges that any ordinary students faces during the collection of literatures. It could seem to be biased but it is indeed difficult to find researches which have been conducted in Kazakhstan. I do not know the reasons why there is a lack of research in Kazakhstani context but that are a fact. That is why I needed a lot of time to find appropriate sources which relates to my research, especially research in Kazakhstan. Fortunately, I have found literatures from different countries such as the United States of America, China, Canada, Brazil, and England. Now I am in the process of reading, highlighting and understanding what different authors have sought to explain in their researches.

Personally, I always try to make any process of writing into some kind of game, whereby I need to win the ‘dark side’. For me, the most interesting part is has always been preparation and writing process rather than the final product. That has been my small secret of how to deal with different tasks. Consequently, I use this kind of approach to encourage my own students in the learning process and without a doubt I can say that my students are quite involved in my classes.

In conclusion, it is possible to say that the literature review play significant role in any research. I have recognized that without literature review it is impossible to have in-depth understanding of your thesis. Moreover, the process of reading and then writing main point from the literature need huge amount of time which I absolutely have not really had. The solution is to stay focused in and take control of your personal time and manage your daily life regime. It is only through this way I have tried to do my best. Thank you!

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Once upon a time in the kingdom of APA… (Part III)

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My professional life has led to some questions about how to become a real and true teacher. Questions such as why education becomes complicated year-by-year, why do people create some ‘techniques’ and ‘methods’ which are sometimes not necessary in the real life and what would be simple ways to explain these concepts to students. I always try to analyze and review my professional experience to find out what the challenges were for me and how I solved those problems. This thought process always leads to the birth of new ideas which are actualized in my classroom.

My first year at Nazarbayev University introduced me to the American Psychological Association style (APA). At that time it was an absolutely new and scary technique for me. Previously, I never thought it was necessary to provide the source of information in a study. However, I now understand that it is very valuable practice otherwise it would be considered that you have plagiarized different works without citing the authors. Even after long spell of practice it is still confusing in terms of following the formats but I know that it is quite possible.

In my opinion, the APA uniform system has some advantages and disadvantages. Firstly, it needs to clarify for whom it is needed. Audience identification is very important; educators at university ought to known APA or other styles such as MLA, Chicago and so on. In education there is a rule, ‘Publish or perish’, which means your career as an educator will depends on your professional publications. That is why, it important that one knows all techniques in education. However, if you are not professor or researcher I think basic knowledge of APA style formats are enough for application in some assignments at school for a student. My point here is that people should focus on their interest area of study rather that learn by heart all these many rules.

To sum up, my three year experience as a teacher without a doubt I will not recommend to anyone the choice of teaching profession as it is a very complicated profession in the whole world. It needs huge number of passion and time to be a real teacher. You need to have universal skills and know different techniques such as APA style. That style needs more than one year to understand them. My advice in this post for future students is always share your personal experience with other students because only your peers could explain to you in a simpler language APA style and not your lecturer. Another advice is more practice; only during the practice you would see the common rules. Thank you and Good luck!

Online learning. Traditional vs. Online education? (Part II)

Nowadays online learning became to be pivotal part in any society. Basically, education have been transformed and changed in terms of accessibility and flexibility. In fact, as a teacher of 21 century, every day we meet with online learning when we need to prepare for the lesson or create different activity, we mostly use internet in order to find some materials or some sources. I can definitely say that online learning was discovered because of time necessity and it is possible to suggest that in the next decade there will be absolutely new form of learning. In this post I would like to examine traditional and online learning.

In order to explore the topic I found different sources about online learning. The first one was written by American scientist Joseph L. Holmes (2015) and the main strength of this article is creating equilibrium environment in education. The term equilibrium in the article means suitable level of collaboration between students, faculty, and administration needs can all be met. The author emphasized the important distinguishes between classroom and distance methods. Furthermore, online learning can stimulate high levels of teacher interaction and higher levels of student learning through the application of teamwork, high-level problem solving, peer review, debate, individual and group projects, and other similar activities (Holmes, 2015).

According to Chen (as cited in Holmes, 2015) in terms of traditional classrooms there was an idea of improving relationships between teacher and student, face-to-face classroom support may feel more natural, and teachers may be able to more readily adapt to class situations based on verbal and non-verbal cues.

Another article was provided by Roanne Angiello (2010) where the author compares between traditional and online learning. There are different perspectives for and against which increased spreading of online degrees, courses, and training. The main idea of this article is that current teachers need to know how effective online learning is before increasingly scarce resources are expended. It is studied by the U.S. Department of Education, “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies,” which has demonstrates on this issue. As a result it concludes that, on average, “students who took all or part of their classes online performed better than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”

After reading these two reputable articles I recognized that it is not possible to say that we should not apply traditional or online learning because both of them are significant and different. That is depends on what do you want to study. I think the current teachers should combine both of them and encourage all learners to actively participate in that learning process. That is the main purpose of to be a teacher, to be agent of change and to seek new ways of learning. What we, I think doing right now.

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References

Angiello, R. (2010). Study Looks at Online Learning vs. Traditional lnstruction. Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed For Quick Review, 76(2), 56-59.

Holmes, J. (2015). Closing the significant differences gap between distance and face-to-face instruction. International journal of Instructional technology and distance learning, ISSN 1550-6908, 13-23.

The adventure of writing my first master’s thesis (Part I)

First thoughts when I started to write this blog is how should I start, what is the meaning of blogging, how it will help me to improve my language and writing skills. There is a simple answer is just I have to start and try without it I could not feel those emotions such as adrenalin that someone will read this crazy notes and may be it will help someone to have a motivation to start write own thesis. To be honest I still confused in my thesis topic. There are some thought how it will look like and for whom it should be interesting because I really want to write ‘not very boring’ paper which will have value in education area, which even will guide for all the readers and potential audiences.

Let’s see what my thesis is. At the first time as an ordinary student of university with high ambitions and expectations of thesis it was difficult to identify the concise direction of my thesis topic. All my life I really interesting on leadership aspects generally then after enrollment to Nazarbayev University I’ve decided to focus on leadership style of principal at school where the principal play key role at school. I wanted to identify what types of leadership styles are in my school. However, then after talking with my professors and instructors we came to conclusion that it would not have sense only examine principal leadership style it will have sense if I will examine point about teacher’s attitude of leadership skills not styles.

Then it was the time where I read a thousand articles, newspapers and different source where were provided examples about principal leadership skills. Ideally it should not be problematic to collect all my sources and thoughts into research. However, as a young father and teacher of Nazarbayev Intellectual School it is difficult to find some time in order to write the components of my thesis. That is my first blogging where I share my thought about thesis and I think that later I will add more specific of my thesis. I would like to say thanks to davidphillip to collect all of us into this blogging and to wish good luck for all of us. Thank you!