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.