Week 7 – Focus on the leaner autonomy

            One more week and lots of learning! The readings about learners’ autonomy were really useful. The teaching experience that Samuel P-H Sheu presented in his article called “Learner Autonomy: Bird-in-the-hand or Bird-in-the-bush?”, proved that it’s possible to make a way even when we face hard obstacles like the teaching system that he mentioned. Thanasoulas in his article “What is Learner Autonomy and How Can It Be Fostered”, many ideas to motivate and create an autonomy environment to our students. And as my colleague Basu, I could learn the several ideas that involves the meaning of autonomy and how these different meanings influence the way that we are going to develop it in our students or not.

            The list of suggestions to use only one computer in the classroom presented in the other two readings was really practical and objective. Both were answers to our anguish when we have an important tool in our hands but many students to share. I really like the readings.

            But that’s not all! We also had a very good experience using the Wallwisher. After reading some of my colleagues’ ideas how to use it, now I want to implement it in my classes.

            Well and to finish with the golden key, I just want to say that I already have my project partner, I mean, partners because I have two: Livia and Lila.

We are going to share our idea to develop our students’ skills on listening and speaking using the web resources.

           

 

            I’m really excited to move to the next week. It’s just getting better and I want much more.

                         See you there!
                            Claudia
 
 

The life after a broken computer: Power Point & Company improving the interaction on Week 6

  What a week!! Just like my colleague Pamela I’m whacked out, but because of my computer. It just stopped to work and all my life stuck. After this forced “break” I realized that our lives are really connected to the internet. After we start to make part of this world when you’re not connected,  it’s like you’re missing something. But at the same time, I took a look at my books, my old drafts of interesting seminars that I attended and checked my old notebooks with some ideas on different projects. It was like to review my teaching life and confirm that with the internet, it can be much better. But to reach that it’s necessary to train our eyes to see what’s important or not.

That’s what I answered to my colleague Sitaram. He was wondering if one day we could use all these technologies that we are learning about. Of course they have their importance and can facilitate our teaching life but let’s start from the beginning: what is our objective and which technology can help us to get there?

And this week I discovered (re-discovered) a useful technology that I use a long time: power point. The task to prepare one that has interactive resources challenged me. But it was really a pleasure to work with that. Also, the readings about engaging students helped me to discover that many of the suggested activities I’ve already worked with my students but I just didn’t know the name.

 

Also, after doing the reading “Teaching large classes” (http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/LargeClasses.html) and Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students, from Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw I could add some more ideas to improve my teaching. Both readings were really useful for me.

One of the activities that I found interesting was Just in Time Teaching because we can save a lot of time just by developing the students ideas that were already presented before the class. Also, it helps us to guide our teaching exactly in the points that students were not so confident.

As soon as I finished this reading I thought about another education technique called Flipped classroom, that has the same idea of this activity: to save the time of teacher talking and go straight to the “do” part. But there are many pros and cons about it. And if you want to know more about it my suggestion is to read the article The Flipped Classroom: Pro and Con  by Mary Beth Hertz

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/flipped-classroom-pro-and-con-mary-beth-hertz

There, Mary Hertz presents what she understood of this methodology and also its pros and cons.

 Well, let me prepare to the next week.

                                                           Week 7, wait for me!!

See you there!

Claudia

Week 5 – Zuuum, there comes the technology!

Hello y’all!

In this week 5, Donna presented us the topics about PBL, Webquests and Alternative Assessements.

The reading about these topics were very interesting and gave me some hope that my classes can be different, as they can answer many questions about my own teaching procedure and mainly my student’s needs.

One of the readings that I liked and also surprised me and my colleague Daniel, was Susan Gaer ‘s article "Less teaching and More Learning". After reading it, I could see the same needs of my students  that she faced in hers. And her  solution guided my eyes to a different way to see the problems in my class.

Susan Gaer’s solution was based on PBL. Using this, her students could make the link between what they study with their reality, creating enthusiasm and motivation in order to accomplish the suggested tasks. And it was so successful that other projects like hers were launched and making these students’ learnings meaningful.

Alternative assessments are also another possibility to our students be aware of their learning by assessing each others. One succesful example  happens with our colleague Daniel. He shared with us his experience on a  reading activity using alternative assesment and also using rubrics. And he tells us that his studens could reach a good level of quality in their learning. Also through rubrics the learners can clearly see what they are asked to do and it also helped him to assess specific learning outcomes and performances.

And what about Webquest?? The title of my post was inspired on it because with so many resources that technology brings us, the sky is the limit! I really loved it.

The website http://www.zunal.com/  presents a variety of devices to produce a webquest  and I couldn’t decide which one to use. I’m gonna come back there to improve my webquest.

When you are producing a webquest you can use many resources and two of them that I liked were Voki  (http://www.voki.com/ )  and Glogster  (http://edu.glogster.com/) . You can use Voki to improve oral presentations using avatars and Glogster you can use to create an interactive poster.

As my colleague Livia believes, one of the teacher’s role is to help students to create their own image and improve their confidence.

I’m sure that with all these tools the future of education is promising.

But, I don’t want to be like this man observing while the train passes.

 

 

              I want to be inside and enjoy the view...

                   Claudia

Week 4 - Learning and learning!

     

Welcome Week 4!!! One more week to bring new learnings and challenges! The time is passing really fast, but Donna is presenting the new subjects in a soft and balanced way, that I really don’t feel that I’m in a hurry to reach all the week’s objectives that she suggests. I’m learning so many things, and they’re not only about the technology resources but also about education, my way to teach, my way to write and present my ideas and also gently present my divergence about an idea. 

             

It’s really good to study and learn. And the readings of this week were very instructive for me. The first one that I read was Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction by Jarek Krajka. The author gives us a very good summary of previous research about the use of the internet in an ESL class. Also, in this article there are suggestions to work on writing skill using different kinds of genres. One of the suggestions that I liked was the 4^th one: A description of a person, where students describe the “Wanted” person with short and humorous information and the other friends have to try to guess who the person is. This article was excellent.

            The goal to present ideas to work with reading using the internet was the theme of the article Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books by Mei-Ya Liang. Although there are just three suggestions, the ideas are simple and easy to do. For example, the suggestion three on Evaluating Books, leads students to a higher order thinking activity as they have to evaluate some books, rank them and present to the class the reasons for that ranking. And using the suggested sites and guiding questions for evaluating the books we have a productive activity.

            And what about the tasks that are getting harder as the weeks are passing by? But what a relief every time that I finish each of them!! Just like my colleague Ayman, I’m really happy to accomplish all the objectives and see that all we’re learning is not only for us, it’s for our students, too.

            After reaching ( Yeahh!!) all this week’s objectives, I’m ready for the next week...

                                                      

                                                                       See you there,

                                                                           Claudia