Week 10, 11 December 2013

This is the last entry of the course blog but definitely I am not going to stop using this tool – as I stated in my project, it is going to be used with my students next semester so I do wait impatiently to see how much they will like itJ

First of all, I would like to express my awe for these great people – the devoted educators from all over the world and, first of all, for Courtney for such a wonderful course. My thanks also go to the US Embassy and the University of Oregon for letting me participate in this course.

These 10 weeks seemed long at first but with the passing time, you can see it’s over now and although we were given quite a lot of work to do, now I could have a feeling of missing something. But of course, the learning experience, discussions, sharing knowledge with other course participants enriched my teaching and learning skills.

Honestly, it is difficult to choose the most useful topics of this course as all of them led us to the final product – it was like puzzle elements to be put together to see the whole. Blogging, wiki or creating online and offline exercises will become part of my teaching now and I won’t be afraid of using it any more in the classroom. Besides, I learned a lot about new sites to explore.

All in all, I feel that all these topics and tools we were presented with should be incorporated in this course as teachers not only benefit from learning about them but also they can reflect on their teaching. For sure, technology is and will be in the classroom  and our task is to take advantage of it.

Once again, thank you.

With love and best wishes,

Ewa

Week 9, 4 December

Reflecting on week 9 assignment, the discussion dealt with learning styles and how they may be enhanced through using technology in the language classroom. As always, we were given several reading materials to discover, discuss and next reflect about the use of technology to enhance learning styles.

Gardner distinguishes 9 types of intelligences nowadays:

1. Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence (speaking, listening, reading or writing)

2.    Logical-Mathematical Intelligence (reasoning, problem solving and numbers)

3.  Kinesthetic Intelligence (making physical exercises, movements)

4.    Visual-Spatial Intelligence (visually delimiting the space)

5. Musical Intelligence (hearing or producing sounds)

6. Interpersonal Intelligence (discussing, working in groups or cooperatively)

7. Intrapersonal Intelligence (working in isolation or by reflecting on their emotions and feelings)

8. Naturalist Intelligence (the contact with nature)

9. Existentialist Intelligence (philosophical reflections about the human beings’ existence)

After reading articles on Gardener’s work, it is important to say that by identifying learners' strengths and weaknesses, teachers could re-design their classes by integrating multiple intelligences in order to cover different learning styles in the same class. This fact could help teachers facilitate their students' learning process.

It is true that technology can help provide a range of learning styles in the classroom. Each of our students is different and when designing a lesson or a course, we should take into consideration different intelligences and learning styles as well. Photos, music, logical exercises, puzzles or experiments – all these things once brought into the classroom by a teacher can be now replaced by a computer and the Internet. Catering for different styles, we should try to use a variety of tools that technology provides us with, for example:

-          Photos, films, PowerPoint presentations, flashcards or pages with maps for visual learners,

-          Puzzles, crosswords for logical / mathematical

-          Music, films, reading online stories, jazz chants  for musical ones,

-          TPR in a film for Bodily/Kinesthetic,

-           Vocabulary and grammar exercises, spelling sites (http://www.spellingcity.com/) , reading, stories and poems for Verbal-Linguistic,

-          “sighseeing” the sites about nature, “virtual travelling” to far-away places for Naturalist

-          Using social networking, peer teaching (checking by posting on a blog) for interpersonal

-          Journal log = blog keeping for intrapersonal

If we vary the activities that we use in your lessons, we are sure to cater for learners with different learning styles. What is important, the learner’s profile is changing and all the intelligences work together, so we should not focus on one only.

Finally, the last and the most important part of this course is the final project report to be submitted   on 6^th Friday!!! Still some work to be done but thanks to peer-reading by our course partners, I do hope to polish it. Thank you Akbar and Muhammad.

Warm regards

Week 8, 1 December 2013

Another week passing by: still so much to be explored and tried out with students in the class. This week was really interesting after having a chance to look at some sites with practical tools and exercises to take and use in the classroom. To be honest, this week gives an insight of what technology really is. After learning about the Nicenet, Blogger, google sites or powerpoint presentations, I can simply state that technology should be used in the classroom and it is really easy and convenient to integrate technology in to classroom. All the information we got either from our teacher or all learners involved in this course is really useful.

This week we were assigned to use different tools and implement them in the classroom. All of them for free and simple to use, though at first I had a completely different point of view.

The suggested sources I checked are:

1)      I also had a Chance to use WebPosterWizard, which I may use in my projects –http://poster.4teachers.org/worksheet/view.php?id=169516.

2)      SMILE – another interesting site to visit – gives a choice of web-based activity generators. The application I’ve checked is WORKSHEETS, unfortunately it takes time to learn how to use them. But definitely I will try to use it.

3)       http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html – very simple and easy to use, every topic or grammar can be checked here; suitable for different students’ levels.

http://www.mywordsearchmaker.com/play/2013-11-30-QCP9GP.html

1)      http://bogglesworldesl.com/ - a great source of various activities: crosswords and word searches, flash cards, verbs, songs. Besides, one can chose from lesson plans and work sheets. Great for lower levels of students.

This week I do plan to create a class site using Nicenet and a class blog. The technology changes I am going to introduce are connected with writing thus I think that these two tools would be the most appropriate for them. I will start using them next semester, in February, so still I have some time to test and chose the best applications, sites and online exercises that would work with my students. Besides, they still can benefit a lot from other sites to practice the general knowledge of English, like to have some practice in nouns, verbs or adjectives.

After sending the draft of the project report, still a lot to be done in my case. It is not easy to come back to your duties after almost a 3-week absence. But I will try to do my best and catch up with the other course friends. I am working now on the final version of my  Project Plan report, and the timeline is not finished yet.