Blogosphere is a uniting virtual carpet

Nune Movsisyan

Digisummary 2011-2015

It seems to me that I am not saying something new; I am just consistently trying to put into life what I have already said.

During the 2011-2012 school year in one of my articles “What does blogging give or what will it give” the following developments of blogging were mentioned:

• Turning the school subject blogs into interactive websites
• Creation of united educational community through blogosphere extension 

There was an idea in the article: “In case of working together and in a coordinated way it will be possible to create an educational blogosphere, a blog net which will enable us to create a complete educational community, and the school subject blogs will provide us with an effective and interesting educational environment by turning into interactive websites, therefore they will become the teacher’s number one assistant and adviser.”

The idea of having the learner’s own page in one united virtual space was outlined in the article “Digi Summary 2013-2014. “In the course of time that will become a uniting platform for gifted learners, where everyone will introduce himself/herself and present his/her inner world: ideas, picture, creation….”     

The Educomplex experience in organizing education made it possible to pass on to a new qualitative stage in the 2014-2015 school year: Organization of education without obligatory home assignments.

 The biggest advantage of organizing education in this way is the organization of self-education and its encouragement with all its merits: with self-organization and activities liable to observation, self-assessment and reconsideration of own results and with many  other visible and invisible qualities.    

I consider the article “Hegel and we” to be pivotal. In this article there was an attempt to outline some effective ways for the formation of the learner's free will according to Hegel's pedagogical views (inner freedom is meant here). The main method is to be regection of compulsion and interference.

The thing is that man takes responsibility for what he does and says. If a person hasn’t chosen something with his own free will, or it has been chosen by others (in this case it can be the teacher), others have made a decision instead of him, in my opinion no serious results can be expected. The argumentation is very simple: the learner himself hasn't chosen it and , naturally, he doesn’t take any responsibility for doing, speaking or writing about this or that. There is only one way out: before giving a learner an assignment we should give him a chance to choose so that he can decide what to do with his own will. There are some compulsions while doing exercises in grammar or literary criticism, but they are completely excluded when we deal with creative work. The quality is affected as soos as some conventionalities are taken into account. For example let's take work done by the electronic magazine Shoghakn. The learners are completely free what to read, what to write, when to publish. They can publish some work partially or release the whole work.

We have only two main conventionalities:

• The most important thing is the quality of our publications
• False notes which have not any connection with reality, may be accepted but may not be published on the website mskh.am 

Now I will try to answer the question how it is possible to achieve certain results. To understand this let's turn to another phylosopher, George Gurdjieff for help. According to him one should overcome some psychological barriers before starting to work with a group of people:

1. The first demand made to the learner: to tell only the truth, that is to say, to defeat lies. “ Victory over lies is generally the most difficult thing. Man tells lies so much both to himself and to others that he stops noticing it. Anyhow, it is necessary that we should defeat lies. And first of all we should get rid of telling lies to the teacher.”
2. The second demand made to the learner: to be frank. By the way, ” Being frank is an absolute demand, for if one goes on telling lies in a group like one does to oneself and to others in everyday life, he will never be able to tell the difference between the truth and lies.”
3. The third demand made to the learner: victory over fear. “Lies and fears: this is the environment in which an ordinary man lives. Victory over fears like victory over lies should be individual. The first positive thing that a man begins doing is the inner struggle against fears and lies.”          

Gurdjieff considered team work to be the corner stone of education and observed three directions of team work in education: work for oneself, work for the group, work for the teacher or for the work result.      

By the way, this ideology of George Gurdjieff's is mainy applied by the organizations that carry out monitoring. The companies, which have implemented his principles and ideas, are a serious success in business and economy.

Let’s go on to read the article Hegel and we: “A number of learners have started, and I think that they will successfully implement the project Blogging as a means for self-education. (I am encouraged myself).” The results of the project Blogging as a means for self-education are visible and tangible. Here they are:

• Translational blog: A Book of Fables, (Tigran Abrahamyan and friends, Grade 9)
• Electronic magazine: Shoghakn, (Erik Telunts and friends, Grade 8)
• Film Library for Children and Youth, (Shushan Yeprikyan and friends, Grade 8)

These are the projects which were distinguished out of a dozen of projects thanks to the project supervisors’ effective work and the learners’ active participation.            

General observations

I think that success in the implementation of projects is also provided by the following:

• Specificity and lucidity
• Clarity and lightness
• Speed and flexibility

At the beginning of the project the learners clearly know what amount of work they are going to do and what period of time they will need for it. The assessment system is clear and feasible. The main demand made to the learner is clearly formulated. The assessment of activities relates to various assignments and situations, with which the learners take the opportunity to acquire knowledge, apply the acquired knowledge, skills and ability to think. The assessment is done taking into account tangible results and observable activities. This approach encourages self-assessment and revision of one’s own results and demands that the results should be published and assessed. 

Further developments         

The Educomplex blogosphere should regularly be turned into a virtual handmade carpet where every pattern, every color, every style will have its own unique place, significance and especially conceit. The electronic magazines Partez, Lusastgh and Shoghakn will become the uniting platforms of that virtual carpet.

The Shoghakn should have enough strength to involve the learners and teachers of other classes as well. (It doesn't matter whether a teacher works with the learners of 8.3 class or not.) Other classes should join in as well regardless of the school subject.

We should be able to expand the activity boundaries of such platforms by involving the learners whose final project product is not verbal. For example, the learners who have designing inclinations or are engaged in drawing or sculpturing. In the course of time these platforms of self-realization and self-expression should be turned into virtual areas notifying skills which will be necessary for the learners’ future professions.             

The minimum compulsory part of the public education shouldn't be the main aim; it should serve as a means or platform for discovering the learners' preferences and for the implementation-development of the content core of the author programs.