Best posts made by Hendra

Hey everyone! I am Hendra Senjaya, from Indonesia. Currently teaching CIE Cambridge, AS/A Level Business 9609.

What are your current challenges being a teacher/educator in your institution/city/country? How do they influence (or even restraint) your teaching?

For example, one of the biggest challenges for teachers here is the complexity of regulations and curriculum that change from time to time. Sometimes, just right before we settle down with a curriculum system or mode, the regulations change again. It is challenging since the time constraint to adapt and implement can be quite short. While the practices at the schools have been implemented differently for the past few years.

It creates such confusion, uncertainty, and unnecessary exhaustion for everyone. Which limits our students to actually focus on what are necessary to face the 21st century learning environment. Even working environment.

Please share your thoughts, and experiences here. Thank you!

In my opinion, students should train and equip themselves with analytical thinking process, due to the information that will flood them from various, and easy to access sources of information. They should be able to identify, sort, and summarize the information based on their needs and necessities.

The second skill, that perhaps students should instil and become more incumbent in their learning process is on how to integrate the use of AI responsibly and positively. Refusing or underestimating the use and integration of AI into their learning journey and working process, will make them an inept learners. Being able to process and integrate AI in producing a high quality of works professionally will enable them to compete in the future.

Play with Purpose by @Samia-mhad18

Hi Ms. Samia! Allow me to post some feedback about your submission on gamification category. The best element of your submission and activities with your students is simplicity. It was such a delightful view to see how you successfully blended the struggles/challenges that your students facing in learning English, with the fact how fast they learn and master with controlling video games. Nothing will speed up the enthusiasm and excitement for students to learn than the ability to control and decide they feel will bring them closer to a winning spot.

You also share the benefits or perhaps, the advantages of each apps you use with your students. The four apps you introduced and explained on the video are very helpful for other educators who might are looking for alternatives to insert or conduct gamification in their classes. So, thank you for that!

The activities are also being broken down into easy steps that everyone could implement right-away. Again, the simplicity element in gamification activity is sometimes easier said than done, however you have implemented it elegantly. I love the honesty your students shared about their experience after one term doing gamification with you. Also, on your video, you actually mentioned something that could be overlooked by educators when they are about to design a gamification: focus on one skill each month. This is actually very crucial since gamification at times (especially with older students) would bring in several expected skills or contexts or sub-topics into its session, in which might deter the valuable objective of the activity. Thank you for such reminder that it is important to achieve one skill from the gamification session than just throwing several for students to master which could make them unfocused.

I hope you will keep inspiring others to implement gamification activity in their classes, and I also hope you will keep creating interactive and fun learning sessions with your students. All the best, Ms Samia!

Kind regards,

Hendra

@Oojala-Tasneem Thank you for sharing your experiences. What are your suggestion for those who might be in the same situation as you are?

How much support do the school and government offer for teachers to overcome such challenges?

I am Hendra Senjaya, I am from Indonesia. Currently I am teaching CIE Cambridge AS/A Level Business 9609. I am teaching secondary students, and this year I am teaching the Grade 10 and Grade 12 students.

My favorite part of my job is when I could lead my students to explore the deeper understanding of concepts and applications in business environment. Not only to cover our textbook topics, but also the recently activities happening around us. Business environment is a fast-pacing evolving, and a dynamic realm where a lot of different elements in a society interconnected with one another.

When I'm not working, I enjoy watching movies, and playing computer games. At times, I will just browse the internet looking for various interesting topics whether it relates to my subject of teaching, or just to fulfil my personal interests.

Good day, Irina! This sounds great! Forum like this will allow teachers and educators around the world to build collaborative works outside our rigid or restricted syllabus or curriculum.

Which perhaps would continue beyond the timeline of this contest.

While the common objectives of gamification are application of concepts, and enhanced learning, what are your most current attempts/approaches in inserting gamification in your classes?

1. What are your biggest challenge(s) in inserting gamification in your daily or day-to-day sessions?
2. What were your biggest accomplishments in using gamification in your subject?
3. What are your suggestions/encouragement for other fellow educators that are interested in inserting gamification as one of their learning tools?
4. Were they cost-effective, or how much did it cost you to prepare?

I am a firm believer that students will learn more and deeper when they could experience or implement the concepts using a medium while having fun with their peers. Even the duration of the gamification segment is short, however the impact of their learning journey will instill the true application of the topics/concepts.

So, let's learn and share together here.

@BUSHR43f4bb18a0 said in What are your current (or future) challenges in teaching?:

@Hendra Many educators face similar challenges like limited resources, high expectations, and constantly changing curricula. The most important step is aligning goals between governments and schools. Without shared values and clear direction, progress in education will remain slow and uncertain. We must work together to ensure education remains accessible, fair, and focused on real growth.

Your sharing resonates the struggles from a lot of educators around the world. The differences of objectives and limitations from the stakeholders around the school could even hinder the progress of education that is much needed.

Sometimes education community is trapped in between two raging parties with their own agendas. Their shared values cannot be aligned with one another, be it for a political reason, or just simply a factual restrictions on the field.

It has prevented a fair access to education, fundings, or even training. In a vast country with a large number of provinces, with their own regional culture values, struggles, and needs; it has created an unequality to education. Even in just two neighboring municipalities, we could find a contrasting circumstances where the struggles to access a viable and fair quality education is hard to obtain.

What we could do to offer supports for our students amidst these circumstances is to seek assistance and encouragement from other fellow educators to find more ideas, engaging activities, or materials for assessment. Government do offer assistance, however, to some extent it could be a slow process, due to some other limitations they are facing. There should be more consortium of educators such as this forum where we could arm in arm helping and assisting each other, beyond our country borders and timezones.

@Shaista-Begum Totally agree, Ms. Shaista. In the world where things move fast, and busy schedules, it can be very challenging to communicate the struggles the school is experiencing to the parents. Our attempts to build consistent communication, and clear planning sometimes are being hindered by the inability to setup proper meeting/session between schools and parents.

These challenges that we are facing should be shared with the parents. It is a dual fronts in which the two parties should always be in a good sync and consistencies. This will help students to navigate better in either preparing them or helping them with their own challenges.

Which methods do you think will work best in communicating these with the parents?

Learning Through Play: Gamification in My Classroom by @Noor-Fatima

Good day Ms. Noor!

I'd like to provide some feedback regarding your gamification activities with your students. As someone who also loves gamification in education, your video is very inspiring. Perhaps in the future you could spend time to provide insights and suggestion to other educators who are interested in implementing gamification in education.

Your video showed that you not only have one gamification model/set but several ones, and for different subjects! That is such an exemplary example for others! As a lot of us have realized, students LOVE hand-on activities that endorse direct engagement, decision making, and collaborative discussion. In such way, they sometimes dont realize that they are learning and implementing at the same time.

These activities would make them to remember and understand better and deeper rather than just answering some questions from a textbook or on an assessment sheet. Their actions and decisions would be remembered and teach them the valuable concept.

We all could see the excitement from your students when they had to engage in a direct interactive activity in your lesson. With such simple tools or materials, you were able to deliver a really delightful sessions of fun learning! I am looking forward to talking and discussing with you about gamification in education. Surely you are one of an expert on this field. Keep it up, Ms. Noor!

Kind regards,

Hendra

Cross-Cultural Exchange Session between Pakistani and Japanese Students by Ms. @Oojala-Tasneem

Hi Ms. Oojala!

Allow me to use this opportunity to provide my feedback on your work. In the world where news about hostilities and conflicts can be heard daily, this project of yours was a refreshing and touching one to embrace humility and compassion.

The way your students interacted with the students of Tonobaba JHS Osaka, Japan was truly a remarkable view. Not only the students were being exposed to a different culture, it also gave the chance for students from both schools to interact directly with one another. There were cultural aspects being learnt, and glimpse of introduction to things that both cultures do and celebrate. Through time, this kind of activity should be endorsed more and more into schools. With the vast progress of technology and ICT, a lot of similar activities could actually be implemented. This will help students to learn across countries borderlines in a much direct and engaging sessions.

Your efforts to arrange and plan this cross-cultural session is commendable. To bridge different cultures across different regions around the globe and starting it with young learners will be fruitful in the future. It instills the value of respect to diversity, open-minded attitude, and eagerness to connect with others for your young students.

I do hope this activity will become a regular project at your school and more schools around the world. Thank you for sharing such warm activity and interaction between these students. Perhaps to enhance the activity further, there could be some video recordings of some of the cultural celebrations from both nations. Could be at the school or local communities/families. Looking forward to seeing more of the similar project!

Have a good one.

Kind regards,
Hendra

@Oojala-Tasneem Thank you so much for your feedback, Ms! It had become my focus to find activity where my students (in business finance) would see the consequences of their analysis and decisions in real time. I am just glad that they could feel it from one round to another.

Yes, thank you for pointing that out, I actually have the same thoughts, that it should be accompanied by more classroom footage rather than just still images. I will keep that in mind! Thank you and have a good one!

From what I've observed, resistance to technology from teachers could be caused by several factors, however the majority of them is because the learning curves. There are so many apps and software that teachers could use for their teaching session. From creating assessment, designing simple games, to creating or generating ideas for presentation files. However, there are so much to learn, and teachers already have enough on their plates, which then hinders the progress to learn this other aspect of teaching using technology.

1. What are your experiences, insights, and suggestion on how our cultural values play significant impact on our parenting style, how parents perceive the future of their children's academics and achievements?

2. What are the biggest challenges in aligning educational concepts or pedagogy around you or at your workplace?

3. How strong these values influence the way your students see their future or layout their pathway into the career they dream about?

4. Do you have any successful stories in aligning these values with your efforts in guiding your students to have the appropriate field of study based on their interests and talents?

5. How far could you go, as their teachers, in giving the needed information and understanding to parents whose cultural values that dismiss the facts of their children's academics?

E.g. parents who insist their child to take biology or medical school while their child, even they're capable of doing so, has other interests or passion, perhaps in music, or entrepreneurship. Each time, there could be differences in assessing one's abilities and performances. While the parents have the rightfully place to make a decision, as teachers we sometimes hear more from their child when they share with us about their passions in life.

We live by our culture and its values, however, in education community, we sometimes have ourselves in a position where we should give appropriate feedback, that is not the same with the parents' plans or dreams.

My fellow educators, thank you for all of these sharing! From the responses, there are some repeating or similarities points or factors that most of us are facing or familiar with.

1. Lack of resources, due to internal limitations or external limitations (regulations, government's funding, political reasons, socio-cultural circumstances).

2. Academics and parental expectations that could lead to overloading and overlapping responsibilities, which at the end could create exhaustion for the teachers.

3. The ever-changing and growing curricula, which from time to time could create confusion and uncertainties of the future plan or progress for the schools and their teachers to focus on their apparent challenges and responsibilities. It is because, at times, the changes are not supporting positive progression, instead, it gives more unclear directions within our own region (local) or nationwide.

In my humble opinion, the most fundamental and most urgent factor is to aligned the involved parties in education. Both the government and schools or educational providers should envisioned the same values, objectives, and plannings.

As long as there are misaligned or even contrasting values or objectives, these challenges will always hinder the progress and growth of education. At times, the needs of teaching community could even be used as a vessel to gain some political objectives, which is actually sad.

Turning or directing these needs to private sectors could also serve as two-sided blades. At one side, the speed of progress could be said faster in some context. However, on the other side, the costs of practicing such approaches could be high. At the end, the parents and the students will be faced with such high tuition fees. In some regions, the high costs of education is preventing or limiting access to education.

Thank you for such detailed sharing! These points could serve as a to-do list, or checklist for us to deliver a holistic delivery of lessons!

One other challenge is for educators to find the most appropriate sources of learning and/or collaborating with other educators.

With the vast growth of ICT, and exposure to information nowadays, it could be an overwhelming situation where teachers are overloaded with options or possibilities. At times, it can be quite difficult to decide which could be the best and most appropriate source of learning.

Not only context-wise, but also the application of such enrichment process. Choosing sources would also mean getting the right feedback methods to follow-up of what we deliver in our classes/sessions.

The apparent flow of ICT possesses both advantages and disadvantages for educators and students. A group of students will have a wide variety of backgrounds, which influences the way students respond to topics, the transfers of knowledge, and the conducts of assessments.

What are your most evident challenges in preparing, or guiding your students for next decade?

From Screen to Interaction A Journey into Nouns by @Alwesha

Hi Ms. Alwesha!

Thank you for sharing your inspiring video with your students. Please allow me to provide some feedback to it.

Flipped classroom, in my opinion, is one of the activities that could help students to be more prepared and ready to learn further. Tho, in realization, at times it could be challenging for both the educators and the students. It is an awesome sight to see of what you have done with your students. It was clearly to be seen that your students had the needed and adequate knowledge of the chosen topic on English nouns! Their excitement in doing the activities in your class using the real life examples is really heartwarming.

As educators, we realize that in preparing flipped classrooms would require efforts to certain more length. That is the internal challenge, and the external challenge is the responses from our students. With such tight schedules daily and weekly, preparing flipped classrooms has becoming something that not every teacher or session is possible. So, thank you for such inspiring efforts and it really helps your students to learn further and in a much more engaging way.

I wish you all the best for your quest to be an engaging and fun teacher for your students!

Kind regards,

Hendra

@Mishael-Naqash said in Approaches in Gamification Across Subjects:

@Hendra
Speaking of Challenges,
Technical Issues: Integrating gamification platforms with existing Learning Management Systems.
Student Engagement: Maintaining student interest and motivation over time.
Assessment: Measuring the effectiveness of gamification in achieving learning objectives.

Thank you Ms. Mishael, these are on point! There are aspects that should be outlined before we make the decision on how the gameplay would be. Even the majority of students would be excited, there will be some of might lose the interest and motivation. They would rather just to watch and contribute passively.

The assessment part is the critical and most important one. In which, we are as educators should obtain the data to define if the gamification has successfully delivers the LO's to our students. While to some extents, and gameplay, their scores in the game cannot be just simply translated that they have master the topic entirely.

@Rafia-Khokhar said in What are your current (or future) challenges in teaching?:

What I experienced ,emotional and Social Support for Students is also a big challenge,
helping students with trauma, anxiety, or other mental health issues and acting as mentors or counselors without formal training
Any one who had such experience?

That is correct, at times, our students might experience or struggle with their trauma, anxiety and other mental issues, which sadly are caused by accessing social media accounts. Their young age are the most vulnerable segment that could be influenced or swayed easily by a few inappropriate postings.

Body shaming, insults, or other offensive remarks that are shared openly or privately through these means of telecommunication technologies are now, unforunately, happen a lot amongst students.

There have been several occasions on my end, where students would find us to be the place they are looking for comfort, advices, and support. To some points, several circumstances or I may use the word, cases, are beyond our capability since we don't have the proper qualitifcations and trainings.

However, the possibilities of these cases happening around us, amongst our students, are growing greatly. The freedom of choosing and using telecommunication means to communicate, share, or connect amongst teenagers could become double-edged sword for them.

It is such a dilemmatic situation for schools and their managements. These cases should be delicately handled, with proper steps or procedures, which most teachers are not aware of. However, to provide such additional coaching sessions are not always the most viable option. It will add more hours and workloads for a lot of teachers to handle while some have more than enough on their plates.

The facts that some students would just choose any teachers they are comfortable to talk to, also gives another challenges for the schools. The role and functions of school guidance and counselors would be blurred or overlapped by such notion from the students. While at the same time, the teachers could not instantly refuse or direct the students to thei school counselors.

In my experience, I would usually listen to their sharing. If things are beyond my ability to provide consultation, I would offer my students the options to either see and talk to the school counselors or experts from outside of our school such as psychologists.