Week 10: FINAL REFLECTION

Dear all, 

It’s incredible that we’re at the end of the course!

The most useful tool that I will use with my students will be the Blogs. Another tool that I found interesting was the interactive PowerPoint presentation. From now I will create games by using jeopardy. My students will get fun! I’ll continuing using my delicious page, too.  For me, everything that I learned from this online course was interesting and useful. I want to thank to all my online colleagues and Donna for sharing all their meaningful experiences and help.  

Thank you very much!

Gaby

Week 9

This week has been excellent. I could finish my project thanks to my partner’s advice. And also I find out that there are different kinds of learning styles. The article Learning Styles and Strategies by Felder and Soloman has interesting information. I realized that we have to adapt our techniques according to the type of learners we have. It’s very challenging, though. Sometimes, we tend to overuse material because we like them. However after reading about learning styles, I think I can do a better job.

I continue implementing technology to my regular classes. Blog is a useful tool, my students are engaged and I feel that they are more motivated. They are getting to know each other in a better way by sharing experiences, and overall, they are practicing the language. I’m pleased for taking this wonderful web course. It helps me a lot to improve my classes. Thanks Donna, you are an excellent trainer.

Gaby

Week 8

Wow! This week has been challenging! I had to prepare the draft report, do the tasks and prepare my regular classes!! However, I realized how much I had progressed with this course. I began implementing technology to my classes and I have had excellent results. I’m reaching my goals thanks to all the things that I have learned from this Webskill course. I’m doing things that I never imaged I can do!

Blog is my favorite tool to work with. My students love working on their blogs.

Next step… I want to be expert using ANVILL. It looks nice!!!

Week 7

This week has been very productive. I have learned how to achieve learners’ autonomy. As teachers, it’s challenging to reach to this goal we need to have our students engaged in what they want to learn. The article by Thanasoulas helped me a lot in some points that weren’t so clear. Doing my one computer lesson plan was an excellent exercise for practicing activities in order to use technology with only one computer due to the fact that where I work we don’t have enough technological resources.

I continue working on my project, this week my students began creating their blogs. I was surprised how my students are interested in doing this activity. They give me lots of ideas for practicing the language through blogs. I’m pleased seeing my students’ performance!

Week 6

This week has been very useful. It’s true that is challenging to manage large classes. However, there are interesting techniques to help us with this difficult task for example: Think-Pair-Share is a helpful way to encourage our students. On the other hand, creating an interactive PowerPoint presentation has been a wonderful experience. I would like to be more expert doing this amazing activity. I enjoyed doing that.

About technology implementation for my classes, I started talking about this topic with my students. They are interested in getting a blog for the class. My students would like a space where they can improve the language. They just stated their first level so they want to practice presentations, leisure activities or share any kind of information by using basic vocabulary through blogs. These days I’m going to define with my students more details to star working on the blogs.

Week 5

Words for all of us....

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." - John Dewey

I have learned that with alternative assessment I can encourage my students to be involved in the evaluation process. In this case not only the teacher evaluates but the group itself. This kind of assessment emphasizes their strengths instead of their weaknesses. And also, it helps instructors emphasize the point of language learning in communications for meaningful purposes. Right now, I know how important is to have a student-centered classroom.

On the other hand, creating a rubric was an amazing experience; it’s a very useful tool for teachers. From now until then I’ll use this site in order to focus my students’ performance!

I can’t believe we’re finishing this week; this web course is more and more interesting I’m curious what’s next!

Week 4

This week was very productive. I had a mix of feelings doing my tasks. I felt nervous, excited, happy, worried, etc.

The article “Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books” by Mei-Ya Liang gave me a clear idea about how to encourage my students for the reading because the majority of them don’t like reading, but now I know some tips.

I felt scared when I had to create a lesson plan with technology. I have never done that before however thanks to information from the article “Lesson Plans” form the Innovative Technology Center at the University of Tennessee I could order my ideas. I hope to do it well. All these steps are useful in order to have my project outline.

In conclusion, the more tasks I do the more curious I feel. It’s amazing how useful is becoming this webskill course!

I’m lucky to be part of a great group!