Overall Reflection

Ten fruitful weeks

What I learnt in this time? - easy! Use technology in an effective and productive way.

So many tools available since the very first week: online resources for teaching like Blogs and social networks, ABCD Objectives, Effective web searches, Delicious, tools for aural/oral development, CALL and tools for reading/writting development, PBL, Webquests, Rubrics, multimedia tools, theories about student centered classes, learner autonomy and learning styles, LoTi, and so much other things that come from experience.

I am really thankful to Donna and my e-classmates with whose experience and knowledge I learnt a lot.

I will always remember everyone of you: Abdullah Saykili who impressed me since the very beginning of the course, Makiko and Tomoko whose names sound similar to me but by the content of their blogs (so much interesting) and their photos on them I can realize the difference; Marialoly, José Carlos Manrique (Jota from Cultural Arequipa), Boris, Galo Palacios, Mr. Holguer Heredia (the three last from Ecuador), Sylvia Moncayo, Mónica Vaca whose names are very familiar to me for being Spanish names and being Latin American colleagues, Malu from Brazil, Karolina De Vrgna who is the only one from Eastern Europe I think; Nehir, Athar Hussain, Akifa,Yea-huey and Meita I remember your posts and your blogs, Kamal Raj and Hari Maya my two project partners I remember your posts and your blogs (Kamal Raj to whose blog I cannot access); and ofcourse, Donna whose guidance was all the time Highly exceptional.

Dear Donna, I learnt a lot from you. Thank you so much for your support and all the things I learnt these ten weeks.

Wish you all the best.

Loti

It is interesting put in practice self-evaluation and grade myself about what I am really doing in class in terms of LoTi and what Arthur W. Chickering and Stephen C. Ehrmann say in their artcle about The Seven Priciples Technology as Lever.

I can say that I wish I were in Level 6, which is a truly high level of students-learning and students-production of content learnt and teacher effectiveness. However, I barely get up to Level 2.

This situation makes feel kind of unconfortable but challenged to keep working on my new goal: Get to Level 6.

I am going to start by re-checking the material studied in this course and aplying the techniques and suggestions gotten. We are a great group of teachers and I learnt so many things from you. And I am definitely going so scan on every post to get details and ideas to work on this new goal.

I want to thank Donna for all the support I've been given and all my e-partners from whom I learnt a lot. I wish you the best.

Dalton

Learning Styles and Technology

A really productive Week # 9 with something I barely read and skim through: Multiple Intelligences.

I remember having read Daniel Goleman book about Emotional Intelligence a time ago, and afterwards the book about Social Intelligence and even Ecological Intelligence; and now, having read something about Multiple Intelligences and the research made by Howard Gardner broadens my capability to interact with my students and their individuality.

I aim to remark now the term individuality, which emphasizes the concept that we are all different, with individual learning styles and information-process pace that need to be respected at every place or activity.

We, the teachers, have much responsibility on sensing and respecting those different styles by designing class activities that go with both, active and reflective learners, a time for thinking what to do or say, and a time for taking it to praxis. Taking care of visual/verbal and sequential/global learners, or even assigning tasks that can involve different types of intelligence to mixed groups of students.

I remember an activity I worked with a group of students that were into a folklore music band. It was just amazing how motivated they were having known that they were going to travel to US for a presentation and how much important English was in their careers, and even better, designing activities linked to music really took them into classes.

I can think of an activity in which my students can make some kind of internet research, so active learners join reflective learners and allot the surfing work to active learners, and the process of discussing and making the report by email/blog to reflective learners.

There are so many things we can do. Some of those activities are well listed in Teacher Tap website: http://eduscapes.com/tap/index.htm, some others can be created using the tools we've already used in the Webskilled Teachers course like ANVILL, webquest, blogs or social networks, or Power Point for activities in classroom.

Dalton

Online Tools for Enhancing Learning

Week 8 was quite startling about the amount and quality of tool we can use for English Teaching.

I really like how ANVIL works. I didn't know there was such a tool available for teaching. With all those components that give students a tool to practice in real and meaninful context the language they are learning and supporting their autonomy not only for aural/oral skills but also for writting and reading skills through the forum where students can practice vocabulary, grammar and syntax.

What I might use in class? Well, I once used Moodle for giving my students extra practice with the topic I taught in class, however, it didn't work that well because lack of motivation I think, know I am thinking of giving the tool a new perspective by using it in class and then giving my students an asigment in that matter.

I really love what Jeff Magoto, an e-partner in the course does using cartoons to set up a class topic. We can also use real information taken from news websites as we discussed in previous weeks, we can use sequences of TV series or programs to involve our students in developing their language skills by asking them to narrate what they got from the media and promoting in this way the skill of connecting ideas to make communication meaningful to them.

All of this resources are quite useful in diseminating knowledge and information, creating a collaborative community for ideas that can be exchanged, and assesing the progress of students.

From the websites I checked, I have just tried Hot Potatoes tool.
As I said in a previous post, I have a problem with student's tiredness in class, consequently, I aim to develop tools that I can use in class to wake their excitement up for English learning in classroom environment.

I really love having known about this tools.

Dalton Mendoza

  

A way to Student's Autonomy

This was an amazong week with such great knowledge to learn.

I learnt that Learning Autonomy, the ability to take charge of one's learning, it is a skill we are not born with but is something we can develop under certain psychological and environmental factors. These factors set the basis for students motivation to be actively involved in their own process of knowledge acquisition.

Different strategies can be assumed in this process; some cognitive strategies as repetition, translation, note-taking, deduction, among others; and some metacognitive strategies come to take part of it as well. And, in order to promote Students Autonomy, teachers must be autonomy practitioners.

What we, as teachers, can do to promote students autonomy to learn is basically motivate them to get involved in the process of learning, helping them to identify and be conscious of their objectives, giving them the tools that support their process of learning, making them feel aware of what they have learnt and the abilities they have gotten. Teachers are just facilitators in this process.

We can provide students with the tools to support their learning process: it can done through technology which provides us with information and tools (internet, power point, electronic surveys, multimedia content, etc.) that only need to be organized and properly guided; on the other hand, non-electronic sources of information and tools are also available: books, letters, cards, newspapers, pictures, classroom storytelling, and others can encourage students to lead their own process of research and learn.

A one-Computer Classroom provides teachers with these tools: Power Point, Internet, e-books, digital magazines and newspapers, social networks, and so many others facilitate our lesson plans with giving students Authentic and Meaninful Information to work with.

However, non-electronic material is also necessary on this stage: books, magazines, papers, and even posters from a concert in town can become a great source of information to work in class.

I would say that mixing electronic and non–electronic resources might become the best way to motivate students autonomy for learning.

I prepared a Lesson Plan for a One-Computer classroom. It's published using Adobe Acrobat. You can get access to my Lesson Plan clicking HERE.

Power Point to Support the Learning Process

I remember the time I was a student my classes used to be in a classic teaching way: a room filled up of students, a teacher (the knowledge owner), and a blackboard. Studying that way was really different from it is now.

Once I got into the institution I work for, I learned the concept of Student-Centered Class and I thougt, "This is wonderful."

Having technology to use in classes, and having attended to numerous speeches where Power Point was the common thing, I took it myself and started doing my own.

I remember my first slides, haha, they were like primitive but attention-getting. None of the students at the language center had attended to a class designed in Power Point.

I think that Power Point Presentations give a lot of interaction to the class as long as they are well designed, and the design should be created in such way that the student is the center of it.

Lately, and thanks to this course and Donna Shaw, I realized that there is a great world of digital resources I can use to make my students get interested in learning.