Sharing

Sharing information and experience is something I learned. I was affraid of people seeing my work because I was affraid of very negative comments. Now I know how to comment and to act and change my work according to someone else's point of view, because sometimes we believe that we are right and the true is the opposite.

I also learned that technology is human made. It won't eat us and we can command it if we just try. My classes are well done and updated thanks to technology. Although it is hard work to be on a course on line it pays back all the time you spend on it. As Victoria I would love to stay incontact and teach each other even more.

As Azhar and other collegues, I am also thankful with Deborah for her time and patience.

Johwyson thank you so much for helping me with my project.

Roxana

Learning styles a tool we can not forget

For next class I plan to take the chart of learning styles from http://www.chaminade.org/INSPIRE/learnstl.htm for my students to read and circle the way the learn best. From that I will make my lesson plans according to their learning style. As Stephen says "Digital technologies, with their propensity for facilitating multimedia-oriented and interactive activities, are tools that can be leveraged by teachers to create learning experience that are rich in perspective and form". So on line I will get different activities that will help my students learn the way they need. I also plan to take into account what Johwyson say that we can help students with their weak learning style, too. There are very good ideas on "Learning and Teaching Education", since it is not easy to apply different learning activities for language education that at the end have harmony.

Now I understand my students even better. I wanted them to learn the way I was teaching and not adapting my teaching to the way the learn best.

At the end of each class I will take into account Azhar's Sandwich Feedback Technique. I will praise, criticize and praise once more.

Roxana

The sites for teacher resources-exercise generation has so much to use. It is really a relief for a teacher because we do not need to spend so much time and money in audiovisual aids. Here in my country audiovisual aids are very expensive specially if it is audio. That is why I consider a tresure this type of sites. It is easy to use and it is available whenever you need it. There is also a common place like Googles which I really was not going to try untill I say the video that Azhar has placed on his blog. It is really easy to make. I will give it a try. I want to have my own google page people. As soon as I have it ready I'll let you know. I will take advantage of this because I will ask my students to go to the google page and read it.

Roxana

Autonomy and technology

The idea of learner autonomy is my dream. I want my students to be independent with their learning and I really want to serve as a guidance only. They are reluctant of searching for what they need. They are accustomed of getting everything from their teacher. Well this will change.

I'll be more patient with my students. I'll talk to them as persons not like learners.

What I've learned that it is easier to teach students to be autonomous of their own learning than to teach professionals in any area.

Since we do not have a computer lab. I will leave homework on nicenet. My students will be able to answer it at home or in any café. I'll use the computer as a cooperative learning tool. I'll ask them to write a five line folkstory each, and to paste it on nicenet. Or maybe they can write them in class and I'll paste them on nicenet. What do you think? Which is better? Then they can read each others´stories and choose one and change it if they wand and add more information to it. This can work as using the computer to do individual work, too. I do not want to add more tasks because they really are hard to cheer up.

As Azhar points in her reflexion: Rao say that with creativity we can make a change even if we just have one computer in the classroom. We just need to learn and teach basic computer skill to give it a try. I'm doing this believe me.

I have another group in Didactics and I share it with Edgar Perez. We are using nicenet there. In the conferencing we gave them the topic named "Contextualizing Language Instruction". We also gave them some reading links:
http://www.cal.org/resources/diggest/005contextual.htm
http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/francais/frcore/sec/in
http://educatinnorthwest.org/webfm_send/460

There are instructions there, but since it's something new for the students some of them are complainning saying that they do not know what to do. They do not have learning autonomy. They want the teacher to do everything for them. It is hard work. The nicenet key is )297789D85. If you can check it I'll be very happy. There are instructions but students don't seem to understant them.

Roxana