Real education is an activity, and actuating a person to self-education by means of that activity, generating such a demand in him, which helps to ensure constant progress, development, freedom of will and thought. Education, apart from scope of interests and inner motivation, is violence. And I definitely believe that man mustn’t turn to violence for any reason. What excuse can violence have if the aim of education is the formation and development of an individual with free will and thought? We only have to put up with the challenging idea: organizing education individually according to learners’ interests, skills, abilities, and mobility.
At all the stages of my pedagogical activities, I have always been a teacher. And now I am teaching the students of Grade 8. Now I have concentrated all my mental power on the solution to a pedagogical problem: complete individualization of teaching-learning process and processing the organization of such kind of teaching: In the individualized teaching-learning process each learner chooses the linguistic-literary direction he/she is interested in, presents his/her project of activities and starts to realize it within the framework of his/her skills, abilities and working rhythm. Project based method of teaching is suitable for blog based teaching-learning process in the environment of wireless Internet coverage and presence of digital means of education.
The learners formulate and publish their projects of language activities and reading at the beginning of the school year. There are projects which last several years, and sometimes they are transferred from one group of students to another. Projects are taken up not only by certain groups but also by individuals. The teacher includes all these projects in his/her own educational blog.
Groups or individuals create the virtual area of their project in their blogs where they present the process of project realization and the results. This virtual area may be a category in their blogs or they may create a new blog for that project. The projects include different forms of oral and written speech: translation, the narration of ideas, thoughts and feelings, radio broadcasts, literary readings, reproductions of the texts written in old Armenian, literary creations and other materials.
In addition to their own projects, the learners may also take part in the projects coordinated by their friends. In the result of this, the learners are involved in different forms of language and literature activities. They can continue working at home. There are, of course, students who do not coordinate any project but participate in the projects coordinated by their friends.
I myself publish tasks for students in my blog. The content of the suggested tasks may comprise language structures, literary fiction or Grabar (old Armenian). I also offer a list projects for them to choose. If the learner is interested in the task, he/she can do it in class or at home. There are learners who combine doing the tasks with their projects. You can read my tasks and the list of suggested projects in my educational blog in the category “Educational work” for the 2016-2017 school year.
Here are some of the projects done by the groups of learners: “Mtadarak“, “Mediadarak“, Translational Blog “We”, “Grabar”
Examples of individual projects:
- Nanor Hovhannisyan “I suggest reading“
- Samvel Balakhchyan “The Life in Japan: As I have seen”
- Roman Barseghyan “Film Making”
- Narek Isakhanyan “Cooking Blog“
The number of these projects can increase until the end of the school year. It is important that the learners shouldn’t leave these projects half-done. What am I supposed to do as a teacher? That is: organizing the learner’s work, directing him, helping him to improve his written speech, to search for necessary materials on the Internet, to develop translational and blogging skills, to manage montage programs and to be able to make and give presentations. Actually, I am managing activities with all its components. There is not any differentiation whether some issue is considered to be professional or non-professional for you. Am I a mother language teacher or am I teaching Russian, English or ICT? It doesn’t matter. I am realizing public education in the basic school. All the above-mentioned skills are the objectives of my self-education. If I am not engaged in self-education, how can I make learners do it? I am supposed to manage the teaching-learning activities completely always being beside the learner in the role of a helper or an elder friend. We mustn’t allow the learner to stop working or any obstacle to be unconquerable for him. We should help him with any matter, push him forward, not allow his enthusiasm to fade away.
It is impossible to write everything about individualized teaching in one article. But I am sure that all my efforts are directed to the individualization of the teaching-learning process.
Although I have always taught enthusiastically without excessive efforts, I never experienced such peaceful, unstrained work of a teacher. Teacher’s work has never been so interesting. I walk about the large classroom keeping an eye on the groups of learners who are silently concentrated on their work or discussing something, and I am always ready to come up a learner or a group of learners needing my help at any moment. As a teacher, I am pleased with the fact that each student takes his own time and nobody feels upset at the thought that he/she is a slow thinker or less quick-witted. Individualized teaching gives everybody an opportunity to express themselves and acquire self-confidence fitting their rhythm and capabilities.
Translator: Yura Ganjalyan