Week 10, Reflections

Hi,

It is kind of hard to decide which topic was the most successful or useful. All of them were very good, especially because of their practicality. I think what I liked the best was:

•  the compilation of Websites to promote different language skills
• the one-computer-classroom material (very applicable to our particular situation in Panama)
• ANVILL of course and
• the learning autonomy material

I think I will be able to use not just the ones listed above but many of the others. For example, talking about something as simple as PowerPoint, now I see it from a completely different perspective.  It is much more than a way to illustrate my lecturing. It can and should be adapted to promote students’ learning involvement, interaction, and collaboration. Its potential is huge.

 

I think the course should cover Moodle. However, like Robert said, it needs a server to work. On the other hand, it is a great online instructional platform. It offers lots of versatility and resources. Plus, I like it forum nested format.

 

It should also include the article Computer Assisted Language Learning: Increase of Freedom or Submission to Machines? I think it is pretty suitable for this course. It also contains a list of language skills related sites. It is a shame most of these sites are not active.

 

 

Other than that, I think the training is pretty solid. Resources were well-selected, explained, and implemented. I am more that satisfied with the e-course.

 

 

My special thanks to Robert. He did an excellent job. Classes  were developed clearly, smoothly, and productively. Plus, his encouraging words were a big plus. My classmates’ collaboration was another important aspect. People were up to help you and open to suggestions. I think we made a good team.

Week 9, Reflections

Multiple intelligences have been a key point this week. I liked it a lot because it gives a high sense of humanity to our technological training and our job as well. Every person is unique. We should never forget that. Individual differences need to be considered at the moment of planning and carrying out our class sessions. Technology comes to be an excellent tool to deal with those multiple intelligences since it gives us tools to add variety and fun to our classrooms.

Having Forum editors in our class has been a great opportunity to share ideas and experiences as well as making consultations to experts in the field of teaching English. That journal is an excellent source of information and ideas to put into practice. I hope they come up with a search engine soon. We teachers are busy people. It is kind of hard to find time to search for articles on specific topics published long time ago. I am sure Forum contains some of the best. On the other hand, whenever one finds some free time, it is a good idea to take a look at Forum material. That will help enrich our teaching knowledge and capacity a lot.

With so many up-to-date aces under our cuffs, I am sure our job will be not only easier but also more productive. Technology is a clear asset for everything we do these days, including teaching. What I like the best all the resources we have seen so far is the fact that all of them have been selected based on previous testing and evaluation. These means we will not be working blindfolded or suffering from infoxication from some many things existing on the Web these days.

I will dedicate the following two weeks after this training to carefully explore all these Websites in order to make a data base I can use anytime I need. I already had a long list of resources of my own. I will also include those. This is just too good to simply leave it behind.  
I already joined a Moodle course at http://www.integrating-technology.org. I would like to learn more about online instructional platforms. I think that’s a great way to store and organize all this material and have it available for current and future use. I will also take a close look at ANVILL. I think it is very promising for the same purposes. Plus, both of them give you tons of useful resources to effectively manage your online classes. I think there is no way back. I am giving online tutoring to 65 English students. The more I learn about technology the better my performance and my students’ results.

Finally, now that the Project is over, I feel very relieved from pressure. However, the step-by-step way we carried it out was very good. Instead of leaving all the load for the last minute, we worked on it little by little, getting input and feedback from the group and our project partners. That helped a lot. We  were able to get other people's points of views and suggestions. I am really grateful for Leena's help. It was a great pleasure to be her partner.

Week 8, Reflections

What a week! I am getting used to the hard work.

I have been pushing really hard to get my project to work as I expected. I am still struggling. Like I mentioned in the Nicenet Class Discussion, things have worked not at the pace I expected. Plus, we have face several constraints while implementing the technological solution. I still believe the idea is good, just kind of too much for the little time we have to put it into practice. I went too far I think. Anyways, I will continue working on perfecting it. Plus, now I know about ANVIL. I think that is just the tool I was looking for since it comprises everything I was using into a tool box , all accessible at the same site. No need to learn and jump from site to site.

I think I overestimated y students’ autonomy. We all are just getting into this new trend. It has to be very step-by-step. It is my fault to a great degree. I kind of expected too much. I wanted them to try everything , but now I see it takes more than 3-4 weeks.

On the other hand, I have heard very good comments about the 2 tools we have been able to use so far, Nicenet Forum and ESL Café Chat Central. Students feel free to express themselves. Plus they just like chatting.

 

I read my partner’s project. I think she is doing a great job. The idea of peer review is excellent. We not only feedback one another, but learn a lot by reading one’s partner’s work

I think time shortage has been a main issue. We all work and that demands a great deal of our time. But I cannot complain about the training. I has been great. I am just kind of oncerned with some classmates, including of course Elsa. We have not heard from her.

Week 7, Reflections

It has been a rough week because of time shortage. Luckily, I have been able to complete everything.

Learner’s autonomy has been a major topic of discussion this week. One point in common among many authors and our group is that it has to be fostered a lot more. That would be a quantum leap in education, that is, a lot less work for teachers and a lot better results for students. They would be working at their own pace and under their own learning styles, which means learning individualization, a great way to deal with students’ differences. However, students cannot be left alone. They still need our guiding. We are not there to impose things but to channel resources and put them at students’ disposal. In addition, we will never lose out monitoring role. That cannot be replaced.

 

The one-computer classroom has also been touch on in depth. You do not usually reflect on this since it is almost everybody’s current situation. However, a lot can be done with that one computer. Lots of ideas have been shared and discussed on this topic for the purpose on enhancing learning. We have to keep something in mind, one computer is not a limitation but an asset. Some peripheral pieces of hardware like a multimedia projector and a set of speakers can greatly potentiate the number of possibilities a computer offers.

Going back to learner’s autonomy, I’ve personally witnessed what happens when students’ autonomy is overestimated. I gave my Speech-one students some assignments to do on Nicenet over the week. I put not pressure on them at all just to see what happened. Guess what? They did nothing, hahaha. Let’s not forget our students are not used to that type of learning. It has to be progressively implemented, not all of a sudden. We need to break paradigms, but little by little so it does not turn into a traumatic experience for students and us.

Week 6, Reflections

Hello,

We are getting there, folks!

Lots of work this week. Working with large classes is a major concern among teachers, no matter the field. Getting students' attention, keeping that attention, and above all else getting and keeping them really involved in what is being dealt with is a major challenge for teachers. I honestly struggle a lot with that. Luckily, I have not taught large classes for a while.

Nevertheless, I do not feel alone anymore. I have seen lots of tools and techniques I am sure will ease my teaching life from now on. I am glad there are people doing research about the best ways to manage them.

I think one of the key factors here is involvement. Being a lecturer for a class of fifty-five students or even colleagues is no easy task. We all know that. Audience members tend to feel relegated if there is no chance for them to get involved. After all, true learning takes place through active work not through mere reception.

PowerPoint is a great tool we can use to deal with this type of teaching-learning context. It does not have to be just a way to transmit information to a large number of people. We as teachers need to personalize it, so our audience switch from receivers to participants. We saw a lot about already-proved techniques we can put into practice to achieve this goal.

Talking about the implementation of the change, last Wednesday, all my students joined a Nicenet class I created for them. They explored this tool in detailed, guided by me. I have posted helpful links, and I am working on a forum for them to start posting. I am trying to pick topics of their interest so they feel invloved. 

Not surprisingly, my students did really well with Nicenet. They created forum topics, posted to other people's forum topics, sent each other e-mail messages, etc. with minor difficulties. In other words, they can use the Web, but not necessarily in a productive way. Our role is to guide them then.

Week 5, Reflections

First of all, Rubistar rocks! Webquest is something, too.

Rubistar is quite versatile. I have been working on rubrics for a while. Some of them work; some other need lots of improvements. I will post them all before the end of the training so everyone can make comments on them and maybe pull out some ideas. I will do the same with yours. Do not sue me please. Maybe we can come up with some kind of failure-proof rubrics. That is just too much idealism, I know. Just saying ... However, I have seen pretty nice pieces of work at  https://sites.google.com/site/webskillswikiwinter2010/home/rubrics.

 

Webquest  also has lots of potential, especially because it gives you lots of ideas to follow, so you do not need to overexert your creativity or run the risk of running out of ideas. I am just exaggerating, but it is true. Talking about performance and results, it is not about working harder but smarter.

Talkinng about the project, I still see a long way to go, but I think we are moving at a good pace. I like the way we have approached it: describing target students, describing issues, and describing changes. I think it is a quite logical order.

It is a shame I could not find the time to work on the Webquest project. Again, it is very good tool and very user-friedly, too.

I appreciate people's comments and suggestions. For example, Shuhudha made me think about something important I had skipped at talking about the tecnology-enhanced change. That was really good. Same about you Robert and Marine.

I hope you like the sites I have forwarded.

JC

Week 4, Reflections

Things are getting even better. Lots of resources and tips to put them to work for teaching and learning purposes. We have covered the 4 areas so far. I like the lesson plan explanations found on http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/lesson_plan.html even better than the template we were required to use. I think they are pretty clear explain in detail the main components a lesson plan should have. I am still using the ABCD formula. It is working quite well for me since I am not good at this. It gives me a good framework. I am not a good lesson planner. Then, if anyone knows about other good templates, I will appreciate your sharing them with me.

I like the idea of making conections between the material we are dealing with and our actual classes. That helps give a practical purpose to all we are learning.

http://www.manythings.org/ is also good. I think I need to start looking for more techniques to use them in my classes. I need to avoid using the same techniques over and over. I need to add variety to my classes.

Link sharing has also been very productive.