With the Covid-19 pandemic, schools in Bahrain like 80 per cent of schools worldwide are closed, and teacher-candidates who were supposed to do their teaching practice this semester have no option but to continue their professional development through the use of technology and the Internet.
There are two main assignments these teacher-candidates need to do to develop their skills and demonstrate that they are ready to graduate, and start their profession in government schools.
The first is to observe and reflect on teaching situations, and the second to design lesson plans and teach in front of a class.
However, with the sudden appearance and spread of Covid-19, Bahrain Teachers College (BTC) at the University of Bahrain had to find immediate alternatives for students’ school placements to ensure continuity of learning, and hence no disruption in students’ plasn to graduate in time.
For this, the BTC faculty met and found ways to substitute the physical learning environment, in this case the schools, with online resources and innovative ways to use technology to perform these assignments.
In the case of observing a teacher, the agreement is to ask students to:
(1) Watch televised lessons delivered by teachers from the Ministry of Education (MoE),
(2) Use the archive of videos done by BTC graduates in previous years, and
(3) Watch web videos of teachers in action worldwide which, as we speak, are made freely available to everyone through this massive online list of educational resources during school closure: http://www.amazingeducationalresources.com/
As to delivering designed lesson plans in front of a class, BTC management and the faculty decided to ask students to do video-records of simulated teaching in the comfort of their homes using any technological means at their disposal that could pedagogically serve the purpose – including laptops, mobile phones, computers, Ipads or even TVs to project lesson activities designed on power points.
For three weeks, teacher-candidates have been busy doing their teaching practice assignments. They have also been in continuous interaction with their BTC supervisors to seek support and feedback through Microsoft teams and MOODLE. So far, they have showed a great sense of creativity in using the different means of technology not only to design amazing lesson plans but also in teaching these lessons inventively.
Dr Dekhinet is assistant professor at Bahrain Teachers College, University of Bahrain