The End

Hi,

I can't believe this is the end. I got used to being a part of this online class so much now that it seems weird. It was a great opportunity for me to interact with other language teachers around the world and learn from them. I hope that the friendships we formed here continues.

Thanks everyone for their contributions.

Abdullah   

Week 09: Reflections

Hi,

Another week is almost over. As you look around and focus on other people, you notice that everyone is unique and has their own way of doing things. However, unfortunately for a long time education was based on the idea that everyone learned in the same way and the same teaching methods should work for everyone. Poor students couldn't learn because they weren't meant to learn, they were less intelligent than necessary. I was less intelligent than necessary in my Chemistry classes at high school. Or, I thought so until I watched a BBC documentary "the wonders of the universe". The visualizations of how "elements" were formed, along with the explanations helped me grasp the idea in an instant. I wish my teacher at high school would have used a similar visual other than mere text and speech to teach my chemistry! Now it seems that I was actually no less intelligent. I am a visual learner. Now with the help of technology, web technologies in particular, it is much easier to enrich our courses with various multimedia resources, both inside and outside the class.

Other sources on learning styles and technology:
http://time2learn.wikispaces.com/Pedagogy+2.0+re-shaping+assessments

          

Week 08: Reflections

Another busy week is almost over now and we are nearing the end of our course. This week has been as fruitful as the previous ones. In addition to creating online exercises and revisiting my old friend, HotPotatoes, I was introduced to a terrific LMS designed especially for language learning and teaching: ANVILL. Thanks to guidance by its creator Jeff Magoto, I learned about some cool tools integrated withing ANVILL, which are Voiceboard and TCast features that makes developing speaking skills a possibility in a collaborative environment. This week was a big step in my project because I prepared the draft project plan and my partner, Boris Cadena, has already commented on it. Now I am off to comment on his project plan.

Week 07

Hello there,

This week (7th) we talked about a topic that I value greatly: learner autonomy. Learning how to learn, what to learn, when to learn, and whom or where to learn from is an important  skill in today's world. In today's world, there is information abundance, and unfortunately not all information is reliable information. So, it becomes even more important to guide learners to safe environments and eventually teach them how they can themselves find secure environments where they can access reliable information. In language learning in particular freedom from teacher dependence is a must because even the perfect teacher cannot teach everything about a language so learners will have to walk without holding a teacher's hand and start running all by themselves.