Activity 1: Start writing your portfolio

Try to remember a learning experience that you liked or a course that made you feel happy. Try to explain the reasons why, focusing on the following aspects:

 

How was the course content?

The content of the ProPIC Course was interesting and of great impact for me as a prospective teacher.

 

How was the teacher’s way of introducing the content?

Our teacher was very confident and open-minded at all times and so was the way she introduced the content, that is to say, informative without being tedious.

 

What did you learn?

I learned that it belongs more to teaching than just passing contents about a subject on to your students in the classroom. Now I can certainly and with utter conviction say that the act of profound reflection, whether it is reflecting yourself and your actions or reflecting the classroom activity of your students, fosters successful education. Even for autochthonous teachers who worked in their jobs for decades it will never be too late to upskill themselves through training for a consistent amelioration.

 

What were the classroom activities like?

There were different kinds of activities in the course of the week. I enjoyed the variety of tools we learned and the tasks we had which assisted us in adopting successful methods field-tested by scholars, academic as well as teachers. For example, various digital tools, such as e-portfolios, VEO and audio recordings were introduced in the course.

 

How did the teacher treat yourself and the rest of the students?

We were treated equally by the teacher and nobody felt excluded from the group. This became noticeable by means of the mandatory tasks where everyone was included and motivated to accomplish all of them.

 

How was the relationship between the group classmates?

We were students from various fields of study like English, French, Spanish and History, but what we had in common is the fact that all of us aim to be prosperous teachers. The learning environment in the university class was very welcoming with a friendly working atmosphere. The small number of people and the change of venue contributed even more to that.

 

Can you relate any of these aspects to what you consider a good learning and teaching experience?

To some extent I can relate to a few aspects I would term as a good learning and teaching experience. First and foremost, there exists probably not any better imaginable classroom setting than I have experienced during the course of ProPIC. Then, however, as the time period of the course has not exceeded one week a final predication for a good teaching quality cannot be made. The variety of methods and group work were suggestive of a positive learning atmosphere though.