Dear moms and dads, teachers, grandparents, nannies,

Of course, as we entered the museum, Stefan had only one mission. The dinosaur exhibition, thank God, that was on the same floor, so he quickly saw everything he was interested in and asked to go to the souvenir shop to see if there was a toy dinosaur there too.

We tried to visit other exhibits, but the only thing that sparked his interest were stuffed birds because he recognized quite a lot of them.  He loves Larousse encyclopedia with 1,000 animals a lot so that’s why.

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This story was originally published in our Facebook group #Care4Kids, where we share our challenges in raising children. There are parents, grandparents, teachers, but also uncles and aunts – everyone who wishes to be the best possible support to the children in their lives. Follow THIS LINK and join the group!  

The post My month of “teaching challenge”: Stefan and I visiting the museum appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

My favorite part about birthdays, besides spending them with the people we love, is that we can use them to achieve something really good and meaningful like spreading awareness of something we care about or doing something to add to the cause we care about.

Here is what I mean by that:

Growing up, I was so lucky to be given the chance to have a good early childhood education, as well as to grow up with love, care, and support from my parents and family. I cannot begin to describe how meaningful these early experiences were for me because they have shaped me into the person I am today. And I am beyond thankful to all of my teachers and later professors for guiding me and teaching me about all those wonderful things around us.

Because of them, I have never stopped learning. They taught me how to expand my thinking and because of this, my curious and knowledge-hungry mind always seeks a new challenge, a new book, a new skill to learn.

“The influence of teachers extends beyond the classroom, well into the future. It is they who shape and enrich the minds of the young, who touch their hearts and souls. It is they who shape a nation’s future.” – F. Sionil José, author

That is why today, I am happy to dedicate my 32nd birthday to help support the professional development of teachers in Serbia who have such an important job in front of them: to help shape our young minds into champions of tomorrow.

Why teachers inspire me so much?  

Teachers have always been the most significant moving force in the world. They shaped whole nations, inspired great and wonderful deeds, sparked curiosity in their students so they could make the most amazing discoveries this world has ever seen. They shaped champions and leaders, and yet, we almost never talk about them and how important they are.

So here is what I will be doing for the next month (and I might even take it further and make it a year-long challenge), and I’d like to invite you all to join me on this journey.

The Challenge

Every one of us can be and is a teacher. It doesn’t matter that we may not have the best pedagogy degrees under our belts, but we too play this role every day in helping our children become the best versions of themselves.

The whole point is that teachers don’t always have to sit in a school to make a difference. Each one of us has a great opportunity to impact someone’s life by only taking time to share the wisdom, lessons learned and the knowledge gathered. You and I, we too have the power to help shape the world into a far better place.

Here is what inspired me to do this:

Ever since I’ve become a mother, I have noticed how much information my little ones are absorbing from all the people that surround them: grandparents, family, neighbors, teachers, nannies, and friends included. They simply thrive on this kind of care.

Grandparents who share their life lessons with our kids in a form of lovely bedtime stories that I’m sure Stefan and Tara will remember for years to come. Uncles and aunts who always offer to help out whenever they can and without whom our little family gatherings would never be so memorable.

But let’s not also forget the nannies who dedicate their every minute to help not just our little ones but the whole family by easing us into the new life of parenthood. Then our teachers and tutors who always find the way to motivate our kids and us too, to learn even when we don’t feel like it.

And what about our kind neighbors? They too are such a great help because they always offer their understanding and support when they see us having a tough time teaching our kids about extreme sides of emotions. And they help us out without knowing by showing us that it’s ok to not always have a happy child all the time.

Hats down to all you, and to all of them, for being the most amazing teachers our kids can hope to have! Each one of you makes our world a better place every single day!

So here’s the big deal:

For the next month, I want to do a “month of teaching” challenge. I will share stories of what I did with my kids: Stefan and Tara, and how I tried and failed or succeeded to teach them something. I will share experiences we had and how they helped us to become better parents. Or at least the best we can possibly be. And I want you to join me by sharing your experiences too. We can all learn from one another and help each other on our way.

I promise you, things won’t always be rosy with us, but the truly great teachers never give up. They try to adapt their teaching in a way a child can still grow and prosper in some way, and that’s what I’m trying to do every single day.

I admire all of you — parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, friends, teachers, tutors, nannies — every single one of you involved with the raising of our children, and I can’t wait to learn from you too!

I’m already getting really excited about this! Are you?

Follow my stories and share yours with me and other parents in our facebook group: #Care4Kids

Good luck to all of us!

The post My “month of teaching” challenge appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

Web-based open courses are leading a change in disseminating the knowledge and transforming society at large. The SocialEDU is a new education initiative led by EdX and Facebook that aims to provide students in Rwanda with free access to a collaborative online learning experience.

There has never been a better time to get an education. Years ago, looking at the American college options from a war-torn Serbia, it was difficult to access any learning materials online. Courses reviewing the GRE, GMAT and TOEFL tests were not available even in traditional classrooms in Belgrade. For many, the doors of the world class universities remained forever closed.

With the development of online technologies, quality education is getting more available to a global audience. From various test preparation courses to poetry, finance and entrepreneurship classes, it seems the whole world now is going online to get an education.

These days, I am at the Yale Broadcast & Media Center filming an online lecture series in The  Moral Foundations  of Politics for Coursera with legendary political theorist, Dr. Ian Shapiro. It will produce a wonderful opportunity for students around the world with nothing but a wifi connection to get a sense of what it’s like to be in a Yale classroom. Exposure to the ideas and teaching methods of the most influential thinkers will be a mind opening experience Online learning is driving educational mobility to a global level.

Open Education: Democratization via Coursera and EdX

The world of educational technology continues to develop rapidly. Web-based open courses are leading an innovative change in disseminating knowledge around the world. Over the past few years, several Ivy League universities have started with Open courses. Yale, Stanford and MIT have all used technology to produce video recordings of their most prominent faculty members lectures. A step in a new direction was a creation of unified online learning platforms such as Coursera and EdX.

Coursera was founded by two Stanford University professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng who united around a shared vision for utilizing technology to expand educational opportunities worldwide. The other online learning platform, EdX was founded by Harvard and MIT. Recently, EdX partnered with Facebook to create the SocialEDU that aims to provide students in Rwanda with free access to a collaborative online education experiences. Facebook and EdX want to use the power of online social tools to help students reach their educational goals. This has all served to illustrate how new technologies and educational initiatives can potentially tackle inequalities and transform societies.

Low cost access to knowledge

While the costs of traditional education are increasing, the expansion of online learning is simultaneously taking place. Online education provides opportunities to people who may not otherwise have access to a university-level education to enhance their skills. For example, Open Learning Initiative offers online courses to anyone who wants to learn and teach. One of their goals is to provide tangible credit bearing opportunities to students in order to reduce the burden of college debt and make it more feasible for people to complete their degrees or go back to school.

Whether one seeks to go deeper into a particular subject or learn something entirely new, technology allows for an immediate access to knowledge at any place and time. I am talking to Sean Lip, one of the developers of Oppia-a newly released tool for creating interactive online activities that enable students to learn by doing- about how the whole platform came to be.

“From previous teaching experience, I’ve found that students learn better when they have opportunities to demonstrate their understanding. However, when I tried to create some interactive learning material online some time ago, I could not find a tool that made it easy for me to do this. This is how Oppia came about: it’s an open-source project that allows people to create interactive educational activities that allow others to learn by doing. I think one of the ways technology can help most in education is by making it possible for students to access educational experiences which otherwise wouldn’t be available to them. The oppia.org  exists to make it easy for people to construct interactive educational activities and share them with the world, and to allow these activities to be collaboratively improved so that they can become increasingly useful for learners over time,” says Sean Lip.

Look into the Future: is Technology the Answer?

New developments in online learning, interactive textbooks, and open educational resources have significant strategic implications for educational enterprise. The question many are raising is whether or not online learning can replace face-to-face campus experience. However, the purpose of technologies is not to replace the traditional education but to enhance it. Communications tools such as e-mail and online discussion forums, allow students to post their reading responses. Synchronous technologies such as webcasting, interactive video content, and chat rooms help approximate face-to-face learning experiences while allowing students to learn at their own pace.

Through experimentation and measurement of educational online platforms, better ways of teaching could be developed over time. As technology develops, we can expect to see a growing trend in the translation of online lectures into more and more world languages.

Ours is the digital age. We date online, read online, shop online, and make friends online. Why then would innovation in teaching, learning and research be an exception to that? Meet me in the worldwide classroom.

Photos (CC)

1. NYC #3  by Thomas Leuthard
2. ï £ ¿/  by Thomas Leuthard
3. Clever Girl  by liquene

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Whilst all schools have their own policies and expectations regarding homework, in my experience, even giving simple tasks the label of “homework” can whirl both parents and pupils into a state of concern. Ascribing a recommended 15 minutes reading under the umbrella of homework turns, what is highly beneficial and what should be highly enjoyable, into an arduous task. This is not an attitude towards learning that we want to project on our children at a young age. We need to look beyond the label of homework to what is being asked of the children and understand what the purpose of homework in primary schools is.

Homework should not be a series of pointless and boring tasks, the sole objective being to force children into learning at home as well as at school. Its purpose should not be to impose the teacher’s power over a child’s free time and it should not be something which should be rushed through in as little time as possible.

When executed well homework should:

• Allow children to consolidate and practice concepts covered in class maximizing teacher contact time in lessons.
• Comply with the adage that ‘little and often’ allows children to retain new information and concepts more securely.
• Provide teachers with information as to how well children know or understand a topic or are able to apply their learning.
• Allow children to widen the breadth of their learning through research which there may not be time for in class.
• Encourage children to be self-motivated and independent in organizing their own learning as well as instill the attitude that hard work leads to results.
• For younger children, homework instills the habits that they will need further on in their academic career when it will be a key determinant of their success.

Homework should not be a series of pointless and boring tasks, the sole objective being to force children into learning at home as well as at school. Its purpose should not be to impose the teacher’s power over a child’s free time and it should not be something which should be rushed through in as little time as possible.

So, how can you support children doing homework at home?

Never present homework as an onerous or negative task. This instantly makes it something which is then not seen as a positive learning experience.

Make it part of the daily routine.

Whether the task is learning some spellings, reading or an essay on evolution, carve out an appropriate time for it in the day. Producing written work in the car on the school run is not going to be the most productive environment but might be a good opportunity to discuss the topic and for your child to tell you what they already know, giving them an opportunity to subconsciously sort through a task.

Provide a distraction-free environment.

Homework needs to be done in a comfortable, distraction-free environment. The environment needs to be suitable for the task – if it is a written task, it should be done at a table but if it is learning something, the environment might need to suit your child. Whether it is playing catch and your child has to give a new fact every time they catch the ball (bit by bit building up the speed) or playing pairs to match vocabulary, it needs to be time well spent and accessible.

There is absolutely no point in standing over a child at a table forcing them to complete the requisite half an hour if nothing is going in. Little and often is best for learning something. Use post-it notes around the house so that they have constant reminders when they are brushing their teeth or putting on their coat. This will encourage the information to stick.

Do not do your child’s homework!

As a teacher, this is one of the most frustrating things to see. For starters, if the parent has answered the questions, I don’t know what the child can do on their own (the point of the task) and the whole exercise is a waste of everyone’s time. It can also damage their self-esteem as they feel unable not only to do the homework but to have any control as to how to manage that. If a child is stuck on a task, the teacher needs to know this. You can, however, help by talking and asking questions about the topic or ask questions which might jog your child’s memory. If you can see that your child has made some mistakes, don’t point them out.

Encourage them to check through their work and you could try questions such as: Tell me how you answered this question. Explain your method. How did you find this answer? These might enable your child to recognize their mistakes but if not, it is information to the teacher that the child hasn’t understood the work or can’t yet apply it independently. You could always jot a quick note to the teacher or arrange a meeting if you feel concerned about a piece of work or to let them know that they were struggling.

Never present homework as an onerous or negative task. This instantly makes it something which is then not seen as a positive learning experience.

Encourage an enquiring mind.

Learning doesn’t have to be confined just to ‘homework time’ and done on worksheets. If your child is interested in something, in particular, encourage them to find out some more. Encourage them to work out the cost of things when you go shopping and how much money to hand over. Ask them to read instructions from the cookery book and weigh the ingredients or read the signs around town to practice their reading skills. This enables children to see the reasons for the skills they are learning and practicing at school.

Don’t push it too hard.

Tears are not conducive to good learning. Take a break, come back to it and even if your child can’t finish the task, encourage them to try their hardest and have a go. If the recommended amount of time for your child to spend on their homework is half an hour, don’t push them to complete the task if it is going to take them an hour as this could put them off. Equally, if your child is enjoying their work and is engaged, there is no need to cut them off after half an hour but allow them to continue.

If you have any concerns, talk to the teacher.

This could be about the amount of homework, the time it is taking, or that you are not sure that it is pitched at the right level. Working together, you all want the best for your child and communication can be the best way to achieve that.

What are your experiences of homework and what are your tips for making it a positive learning experience? We would love to hear your thoughts.

The post Helping Children with Homework appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

Some areas and industries develop faster than the others. In my profession, for example, changes are literally made on a daily basis and it is not easy to catch up with all these new things…But it is definitely a great challenge!

In terms of knowledge and education of children, we must focus on the innovations in education and knowledge improvement for educators, kindergarten and school teachers, professors. The job of a teacher is to transfer knowledge to children for whom the whole world is still a mystery. In this early age children learn some great things. They discover how to make this world a better place, they become aware of their desires and ambitions, wishing to become pilots, doctors, athletes, teachers and scholars one day when they grow up. Thus I believe that the job of a teacher is one of the nicest, but at the same time one of the most responsible occupations in the world. Therefore, the future of the whole society is in the hands of the educators our children first meet in their lives.

However, further education of teachers requires some resources that we sometimes lack. In most cases it requires investing time and money. In this post I want to share with you some practical ideas, showing how to become better teachers and educators – without much time. Also, no money is needed!

Over the past years Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) as models for further education, have spread all over the world. MOOC is a unique concept where relevant educational institutions share knowledge for free via the Internet, through specialized courses with everyone interested.

Click for full-size picture

One of the most popular MOOC projects in the world is Coursera, founded by two professors from Stanford University in 2012. At the moment Coursera partners  are hundreds of the most prominent educational institutions such as Berkley, Columbia University, Stanford University, National Taiwan University, National University of Singapore, Princeton, University of Geneva, Zurich, Yale University and many others. Nearly 5 million users attend hundreds of courses that now run these institutions via Coursera website. According to very influential media such as the Guardian  and the New York Times, MOOC model will change the world – it offers top education carried out by top lecturers from top universities – entirely for free, at home. Each individual is now able to acquire knowledge and develop to an unprecedented extent. Whether you are interested in economics, information technology, medicine or history – Coursera opens the doors of knowledge for you. See the list of all courses that are currently at this link.

Registration for this service is free, as well as all the courses. There is also an option to pay Coursera for making, verification and delivery of certificates of completed courses. The people who run this service say that this model has been designed for learners who quickly finish the courses they pay for, no matter how much they cost.

One of the topics Coursera deals with is early education. On Tuesday, October 22, a new course starts: Effective Classroom Interactions: Supporting Young Children’s Development, conducted by four Doctors of Science from the University of Virginia. The course is designed for kindergarten teachers, but it can equally be useful to school teachers. The program duration is just 4 weeks, and it will take you only 2 to 3 hours a week.

The program structure is as follows:

• Week one: Creating “Emotionally Supportive” classrooms
• Week two: Building Positive Relationship with Children (The dimension of Positive Climate)
• Week three: Providing Individualized Support to Young Children – The dimension of Teacher Sensitivity
• Week four: Supporting Children’s Independence and Sense of Self

What the lecturers say about the course:

During the early childhood years children gain knowledge and skills that provide the foundation for later learning. Young children learn many of these skills through interactions they have with their teachers. This course is intended to increase teachers’ knowledge about specific types of teacher-child interactions that promote young children’s development. The course will focus on helping teachers to offer emotionally supportive interactions to the children in their care.

Course will consist of video lectures (up to 15 minutes), quizzes and Test Your Knowledge quizzes at the end of each week. Homework assignments and extra lessons are available to advanced participants in the program. You can apply for the course Effective Classroom Interactions: Supporting Young Children’s Development using the following link.

The sentence “If there is a will, there is (always) a way” has never been more true than today, in the era when we are all connected and when we easily share different values. In case your educational system and official institutions do not provide enough challenges and opportunities for development, use some of MOOC programs to acquire top level knowledge. Then try to think how to share your knowledge with other colleagues using the internet technologies. Record a video about your experience, write a blog post on the knowledge you acquired, share a link to the sources of knowledge – these are just tiny steps that we can easily take, in order to make a big one towards the development of the whole society.

I wish you all the best while learning hard to become better teachers!

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