Week 5 Reflection - Rubrics and Technology

I just realized I missed publishing this blog post...

What a week! I really think this was the strongest week ever on the course. I appreciate all the readings. I spent a long time reading about alternative assessment. I hadn’t realized the power of rubrics. We just need to be more clear about assessment criteria. I benefited a lot from Sean’s rubrics throughout the course. It makes learning more focused and helps learners stay on track. I was hesitant about rubistar but it is quite straightforward… or have I become braver? I do believe that this course continuously makes me feel more confident in using tools…

The technology based lesson plan was interesting and useful. I prepared a lesson based on my curriculum and material that I can use. I will try to incorporate it in my final project. Business presentations do worry me a bit. Students are shy and simply give up. They do not turn up for the class when presentations are due. Their fear might come from general lack of confidence when speaking in public but I believe that strong preparation might helps to overcome that fear. Students should be much better prepared for presentations. Skills such as public speech are not inborn. I should work more and dedicate more time in preparation. It can be done in pairs or groups. That might reduce some of the stress… 

I appreciate rhetoric in speaking. The examples that students will follow throughout the class will help them realize how important it is for them to prepare for presentations in Serbian, as well.

The key question for me was: How much technology? Should I prepare the lesson as I usually do? Should I try to be more creative? I realized that I need to be who I am and try to incorporate technology to a reasonable degree. Technology is means, not the end. I hope I did well.

Week 10 Reflection - The Course

It seems difficult to summarize what I have learnt in this course. Some of the tools were tricky, some of the tools were easy to make and use… I was thinking about them and the way they develop and come up… I realized that there’s no way back, the technology is there to a greater or lesser extent and we have an obligation to use it in our classes for several reasons. First, I believe we need to teach our students to use it for educational purposes. Second, we need to make them aware that the internet is not only about playing games or reading news, there is much more there that they can use it for (learning, professional development…)  Third, our students are already familiar with it to a certain extent. My students might be better than me in some respects, given that most of them will work with technology or developing it. This made me realize that we could work together – my students and I. We could discuss the tools and see how else they could be used in our teaching/learning context… why not? Collaboration is good. I have never pretended to be someone else with my students. They know that I am an English teacher and that I am doing my best to develop and follow trends in pedagogy and technology. I know that they are good at technology and together we can create class websites or blogs or nicenet or webquests… They can even start webquests for their friends to work on… Collaboration was the main topic in my mind during this course and I was thinking about peer collaboration among students… maybe it could work well if I collaborate with them more…

What I mostly appreciate from this course is that I learnt how to build rapport with my students. I was using Sean’s ideas about setting examples and models, peer correction, constant communication, extended feedback, encouragement… That has nothing much to do with technology as such but does help learners much.

The starting point of the course was unbelievable. Search engines and delicious… tools that I will be using throughout my professional development and will certainly pass on to my students. I will continue to fill in delicious with links and experiment with the search engines for my next task, which is the doctoral dissertation (a bit scared of that, but we’ll see).

I will use the padlet for distributing class related information and constant communication. I have used email and email groups but it didn’t seem to work well at all times. There are newcomers in the courses who are not on the mailing list, there are students who are excluded from them for administrative reasons (the mailing lists are prepared by the administrators and I am not authorized to interfere). Padlet would be suitable for that for sure.

I will definitely use interactive powerpoint more. I will try to have students prepare them. I believe they will be using it in their professional careers quite a lot.

Webquests seem to be a good tool to engage students in projects and groups. Students can be creative if allowed to be. I think they’ll enjoy some breaks from the regular classroom routine and course dynamics which is good, but needs to be different from time to time.

I hope I will be able to explore more of the tools and websites that offer software for games and puzzles… My students are not young learners, but they still have the right to have fun when learning, right?

I am really grateful for the opportunity I was given to participate in the course. It did change a lot in my view of teaching with technology, as well as learning with technology. The reversed role that I had in this course (being a learner, not an instructor) was a real eye-opener.

Sean, thank you for the time and patience!

Week 9 Reflection - Learning Styles

No new tools for me to discover this week… I would have thought that it would be a stress-free week that I would greatly enjoy… However, I realized that I got kind of used to discovering more tools and I am not that nervous anymore. This course has definitely helped me overcome some of my original distress when my own personal use of technology is in question.

As for the learning styles, it has always been interesting for me to read about psychology and how it affects learning. I had a two-semester course in psychology at my bachelor studies. I was surprised to discover that many universities which prepare teachers do not have that course. I believe that developmental psychology has the answers to many questions a novice teacher might have. Learning styles and strategies, zone of cognitive development, scaffolding… all these are elements of learning in general, not only language learning. I take great interest in psychology and pedagogy and it informs my teaching context to a great extent.

Learning styles were interesting to be discovered and thought about even without technology. There were many seminars and wonderful books which provided us with ideas how to implement tasks and activities which would be suitable for different learning types (professor Herbert Puchta had some excellent ideas which he shared with us at conferences and seminars). What I discovered now is that technology can help even more. It would not help much without a clear plan and instructions. I always fear that students using the internet for language learning, or any type of learning for that matter, could easily become distracted and start doing something else… So I believe, projects with clear instructions and objectives, as well as a role assigned to each group member would be things that I would have to pay more attention to when doing the plan that I prepared as a final project for this course.

Week 8 Reflection - Online Tools

A myriad of online tools to help me in my job… I always find the idea of having to learn how to use a tool a bit scary. Mainly because I do not think that I am a competent technology user. I really don’t know why since my English teaching colleagues find me more competent than themselves. I believe that the problem is that I am surrounded by professors and teacher assistants who teach Information Technology and I usually find myself in an environment where I do not understand their professional discussions much.  If was much more difficult at the beginning, six years ago. Now I can understand most of the tech phrases of their jargon, which is good.

I tried some of the tools. Nicenet seems to be a perfect tool for my teaching context. It’s almost like our university forum. I appreciate the fact that I can easily observe the interaction, intervene when needed and shape the discussion threads easily. I hope I will be able to provide students with more possibilities to engage in meaningful peer-interaction. They will be writing their responses, which would allow them to pre-plan and check their posts before publishing. I hope they will be able to become more confident when using English out-of-class for activities not related to English language learning.

I have used Survey Monkey to prepare surveys, but I might switch to googledocs. It seems challenging since I had not used them before. I will have to experiment with the other tools more.

I was also happy to discover software to create crossword puzzles. I have used them for a long time, even when I was working with teenagers. They were creative and engaged in learning in a way which was not very common. Even their parents were happy to see how engaged their children were when doing them as homework tasks. I would present the software to my students and encourage them to prepare some puzzles for their peers. I hope they’ll be motivated to practice vocabulary even without realizing that they had been doing so.

Week 7 Reflection - Learner Autonomy

I have always been interested in learner autonomy simply because I am aware that I could never teach students how to speak English on a native-speaker level by the time they finish their education. I have always believed that our role as teachers is to provide students with tools and mechanisms how to continue to learn the language on their own. I also realized that it does not come easy and that some issues are assumed. There are many assumptions where they need not to be. For example, using a dictionary. It is kind of supposed that people would know how to do that. But they don’t. They need some training, not only how to look up for words but we must explain what they need to do when they find several meanings to words… and that will keep happening throughout their lives. We also need to teach them how to read critically, how to self-correct their own writing or their translation… We cannot simply leave them standing there on their own…

This week was really interesting. I tried to analyze the definition of learner autonomy bit by bit and see if I understand it correctly. I realized that it is a complex issue consisting of several elements. Each of those elements sheds a different light on the concept. The key elements for building autonomy in language learning, as stated in the articles, seem to be: engagement of learners, learner reflection and appropriate target language use. I stopped to think how that applies to my teaching context. Here is the thing: I engage students as much as I can. I do not have enough classes to engage them more fully. I really need to use technology as a tool to kind of “buy more of their own time” in a way. Forum, blogs, projects… they need to participate more. Learner reflection is something that I have recently discovered myself, to be honest. I was aware of the concept but not really knew it… Now that I have fully understood what it means for my own professional development, I will strongly encourage my students to stop, think , analyze and verbalize what they discover… we will see how that goes, I hope they will find it useful.  Appropriate target language use seems to be straightforward. I use English in the classroom almost all the time and it seems it would be a good idea to migrate the practice online, too. Students would be exposed to English more.

I would also have to spend some time to encourage them to read extensively and listen to online radios or podcasts more by explaining that exposure to the target language is really important. It would also build towards them being more autonomous in their learning.

I believe I have discovered many issues to a topic that I find really relevant and I am glad that I am still thinking about it…