3rd year students – Higher Training School “Clara Parada de Pinto” – Digital Tools Workshop -Trinidad 2023
I am a systems engineer and since 2020 I have been developing workshops and training courses in Alma on the use of technology in the classroom for teachers, directors and education technicians from Beni. One of my complaints is always that there is a lot of resistance to carrying out activities with programs or applications that these professionals do not handle, results are achieved yes… but it is difficult to apply them precisely because of the lack of mastery and training in the use of technology. But this year I got a surprise.
In the first semester of the year we trained teachers from the “Clara Parada de Pinto” Higher School for Teacher Training, but since the last week of July we started training students and began with the Digital Tools for Education workshop with the group of 3rd year students from Trinidad. We had an excellent participation in this training year, 70 of the 82 students spent two full days on the weekend participating with us.
For this year, we at Alma decided to use the Moodle Platform as a tool for interaction with all students to ask questions or start discussions; We also use the platform to include evaluation questions of the learning achieved with the group and as a means to provide all the digital material on the digital tools course. We had already used this change last year with school teachers and this year with ESFM teachers.
Normally in a workshop with the planned content, we barely finish the products with a couple of hours of extension per day or giving homework. But this time something happened differently; The first thing is that I saw that the participating students paid very good attention, took notes or asked relevant questions; In addition, when an activity was requested on the platform or applications, these were completed faster than expected and with quality results, that is, with good products.
Seeing this interest, the natural ability of young people and the ability to generate products (digital educational activities) with a better pedagogical approach, I realized that the new generation of ESFM teachers will be different; They will have basic technological management skills already developed and, in addition, thanks to these events, they will have the knowledge and skills to include technology not as content but as another means to teach and apply their pedagogical approach. This, because of my profession or perhaps because of my work at Alma, fills me with hope and happiness.
By:
Leonel Saavedra Caceres
Coordinator Beni – Bolivia