Week 10: Overall Reflection

Hi there!

Its our last week in this course... Although these past ten weeks have been very busy and demanding for me, I think I'm going to miss all of it... the Nicenet dicussions, the course site and wiki, checking my grades in Blackboard, and of course posting on this blog :)

It's been a great time full of meaningful learning and deep reflections. I've learnt so much during this time that I feel I'm better prepared now and I have more tools and resources to plan my classes.

I definitely recommend this course for those teachers willing to update their classes with the new technologies; and I hope I have the chance in the future to do another course as good as this one!

Last but not least, I'd like to thank our instructor, Courtney Cunningham, for her committed support, her good advice and all her comments and dedicated feedback.

Love,
Lore from Argentina

Week 9: Final Project Report

This week's main activity was to send our Final Project Reports. Developing the project and writing the report have been hard word and time cosuming, but the big effort was totally worth it both for my students' benefit and for my own benefit as well.

I've learnt a lot from every single step of this project: thinking about an issue, finding the right technology tool to solve the issue, receiving feedback from the course instructor, implementing the tool, watching the students reactions, observing the results, writing the first draft, doing the peer review activity and finally putting all things together to finish the final report.

It's been a great learning experience!

Lore from Argentina

Week 9: Learning Styles

This week I learned about Richard Felder's "Multiple Intelligences", and how to take advantage of new technologies to satisfy the needs of different learning styles. I knew about the existence of a variety of intelligences, but I had never heard or read about Felder before.

As mentioned in the article "An interview with the father of multiple intelligences", it is true that adapting teaching practices to deal with different cognitive capacities can be really daunting, especially if we have 30-35 students in a classroom. However, since we live in the era of new digital media and the internet, it is much easier to individualize our students' learing styles.

A good way to know about our students' intelligence types is to have them complete a questionnaire at the beginning of the school year. While reading information about this concept, I came across two websites that fulfill this purpose: The VARK Questionnaire and Multiple Intelligences Self Assessment (Edutopia). School year in my country is almost finished now, but I'm definitely going to apply these in the first class next year!

Lore from Argentina

Week 8: Teacher Resources Online

Hi!!

This has been a very productive week with a lot of work which luckily was worth the effort!

First, I completed the first draft of my project. The fact of having to write a report on how I implemented the technology tool and the impact it had on my students, made me see its strong and weak points from a different perspective and better understand the overall results.

The peer review task was very helpful as well. I had the chance to read about a colleague's project, and how students from a different part of the world reacted to it.

This week I had the opportunity to explore some very interesting online resources for teachers. Since there were a lot of resources listed on the course site, I chose to focus on two of them: Hot Potatoes and Padlet. I used the first one to create vocabulary exercises about the family, and the second one to create a collaborative activity with a wall on Padlet. I'm really looking forward to using these tools with my students and see the results!

Greetings,
Lore from Argentina

Week 7: Learner autonomy and the One-computer classroom

Hello!

This week I've learnt about learner autonomy and the one-computer classroom. I had previously heard about these concepts, but I had never interiorized in them.

Learner autonomy doesn't mean that students have to learn in an isolated and detached environment. It means students take cgharge of their own meaning.

Autonomous learning can better prepare students for today's fast-changing world because it promotes students' flexibility to adapt to changes. Besides, it helps students to develop the capacity of critical awareness so they can solve problematic situations in an easier way.

Regards,
Lore from Argentina

Week 6: Project Step 5 "Implementing the change"

Hello again!

This week's project task was to implement the technological changes or ideas we planned last week.

Two of the resources that I chose last week, and which will be part of my project to motivate students and change their attitude towards the learning of English are: 

http://lyricstraining.com/   and   https://www.blogger.com 

What I did this week was to introduce my students to Lyrics in Training. First, I shared the link with them and described the site. Then, I explained to them why it will be useful for our classes and how it works. After that, I listed the different ways in which they can take advantage of the site by doing something they really enjoy; i.e, listen to their favourite music. Finally, I asked them to register at Lyrics in Training so they can keep track of their results and focus on their weak points.

The students' first reaction to the site was one of interest and wonder. Also, they felt very excited about the possibility of working with their favorite bands and singers. They wanted to start playing right away!

I feel really positive about these results. I hope that my students feel the same way!

They didn't have time to create a blog yet. Besides, I wanted them to become familiar with one site at a time. So this will probably be next week's activity.

Greetings,

Lore from Argentina

Week 6: Interactive Powerpoint Presentation

This week, we also had to create an Interactive Powerpoint Presentation. The one I did is about "Rooms of the house and furniture" with vocabulary practice for begginer students.

Students really enjoy watching presentations, especially if they can interact with them. Powerpoint offers many interesting tools and functions which may turn a boring or difficult topic into an attractive show.

Lore from Argentina