Friday, March 4, 2011

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.





6 comments:

  1. Thank you for providing the link to Integrating Technology. It looks really interesting.

    I think it's great if you can dedicate two weeks for going through our course material. I'm planning to do the same and bookmark some more sites on Delicious. But I'm going to take some time off before doing that!

    All the best - it's been a pleasure working with you!

    Leena

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  2. Dear Juan Rivera,
    I agree with you about that every human is unique and I also like the way you presented your view about this week. I got multiple intelligences in other sense before reading the article but it changed my perception. Thank you for providing the link about integrating technology. I will book mark it on my "delicious" page.
    Naqib

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  3. Dear JC,

    I also need some more time to continue exploring the sites and digest the information we have been exposed to in this course.
    You are an amazing learner,we haven`t finished this course and you already register in a new challenge. Wow! Keep up your energy!
    Love your illustrations!
    Hope to see you soon, face to face at the Panama TESOL Congress 2011.

    Ana

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  4. Hi
    I do agree with you the multiple intelligance is a great science that help us to accomdate individual differences. We all need time to read more digest the information we are getting in this course. Good luck.
    Hala

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  5. Hi Juan,
    I am also interested in learning and using MOODLE. So thank you so much for the link. I have just taken a look and it is free I think. In my project, I am trying to use MOODLE with my students but there are times I experience problems with the technical aspects. So this website you have mentioned may be helpful for me. The unique problem I have had so far in designing activities on MOODLE is that it requires too much time as I am new for the time being.
    And I will be happy to hear about your experiences on MOODLE.
    All the best
    Aysel

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  6. Hello Juan,
    Your blog is very explicit and instructional.
    I have heard about multiple intelligences but never being applied to English teaching. Yes, you are right. Technology is an excellent tool to deal with multiple intelligences.
    I am interested in learning and using MOODLE, so thank you for sharing this link with us.
    You are ahead from us. Congratulations!!
    Regards Ava Norton

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