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Working with and for students
Dubai Men's College lecturer Belinda Palubiski recently won the Nikai Award for Teaching Innovation. Amelia Naidoo finds out more about the devoted educator
- By Amelia Naidoo
- Published: 22:58 November 1, 2008
- Dubai Men's College lecturer Belinda Palubiski recently won the Nikai Award for Teaching Innovation.
- Image Credit: Supplied Picture
Belinda Palubiski, lecturer at the Foundation English Department, Dubai Men's College (DMC), could have chosen to ignore her students' obsession with social networking sites; instead she embraced the phenomenon and uses it as an educational tool. Facebook is most widely used by her students and she realised it had potential for classroom use. Her innovative teaching methods won her the Nikai Award for Teaching Innovation, which included Dh25,000 and a plasma television.
What is your background?
Currently I am teaching English in the Foundations Programme at DMC. I have a Master's in TESOL from the UK. I have been at DMC for eight years now, in different areas including a couple of years in education technology. I have a law degree and so have also been able to teach a law course at DMC. I enjoy the variety and it helps keep priorities focused on learning.
Where else have you worked before joining HCT?
I have been teaching English as a second language for over 20 years, in various countries (the USA, Japan, Sudan, Italy, Scotland, and now the UAE).
Why did you join HCT?
My family was living in Scotland and wanted to move to a warmer country! We heard about the HCT and thought it would be an interesting challenge. I was lucky to be offered a position at DMC.
What is your area of expertise?
My areas of interest shift – but always centre on ways to create exciting, interesting learning opportunities for the students. This may be through educational technology, soft skills, reading activities or many other ideas.
Currently I am interested in using Web2.0 technologies to enhance the classroom – bringing learning in line with what the students are already doing by trying to narrow the gap between the classroom and their world.
How do you use Facebook to enhance learning in the classroom?
Facebook is becoming increasingly popular – it is growing extremely fast in the UAE. I was looking for an easy way to pass website links to the students and thought FB might be a good solution. I use Facebook to inform the students of activities, websites, exams, news articles. I use a closed group – only the students of a specific class can use that specific group.
I do this to enable me to focus on the needs of those students, some groups might be interested in certain news articles or might be following a certain theme; others might be working on spelling or a grammar point. I can tailor the site to the group.
Most students are now using FB independently; they use it out of class as a social network as well as our class network. The skills being used are obviously technical but also there is a lot of reading happening; students also need to use critical thinking skills to determine the merit of the various applications, choices need to be made who to interact with, comments and messages need to be written.
There is a wide range of skills being used – mostly with no particular awareness of practising them. I like the fact that FB is part of the real world – it is how people are communicating or interacting.
Do social networking sites really have a role to play in education?
They seem to be more of a distraction than anything else.
Everything can be a learning tool – even potential distractions! The fact is that students do use social networking sites; they use chat rooms, blogs, emails, MSN. As a teacher, I can choose to ignore this or ban it or include it. Whatever the students are currently into, I try to put to good use – as a learning tool. The previous winner of the Nikai award created an application for learning on mobile phones – which is another example of using what the students are comfortable with to enhance learning. We learn all the time – it is a case of exploiting the latest trends to maximise learning opportunities. I would rather work with the social networking side of the internet than fight it!
Are there other innovative teaching methods you use in the classroom?
I would like to think so! I work with a team of amazing teachers – all of us use a range of innovative ideas to help create interest in learning. We teach because we enjoy it – part of that is always looking for innovative ways to engage the learners. I am working with Facebook again this year, and adding levels to it. I am also working on a reading site that I am quite excited about. I use a lot of web-based material, especially news stories to look at current events. Our students are constantly changing and so must our materials and teaching methods.
Are you conducting any research in these areas?
I am currently researching various reading skills and reading genres used by my learners. The research will be used to create a reading website and will form the basis of a paper I am currently writing for an HCT publication.
Why do you think you were chosen as the winner of the innovation award?
I think the project I submitted showed a blend of technology with pedagogy that offered a solid platform for the classroom environment by using a very current web tool.
What do you plan to do with the prize money?
I spent some of it immediately with my children; we got a Wii and 'Rock Band' for Wii to use with the Nikai television I won. We are having fun with that!
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