Week 10: Final reflection

Here I am at the end of web course. What to tell abou this 10 week experience in virtual classroom with about 20 teachers from all around the globe? It was rather intensive, I would say with lots of tasks that were sometimes more manageable, someitmes more challenging. Now, looking back at the time of the beginning, I may say that this was a great experince of learning from the people I have never met. This has become possible with the appearance and development of things the net has to offer.
It is sometimes hard to process a great load of information presented in our studies but with time, the "files" will be stored accordingly and I will access them without any difficulties.

In this course we had a good team of teachers who supported and helped with their practical advice. I can not avoid mentioning that even reading their posts on Nicenet or blogs enriched my vision of teaching profession and how important it is nowadays.
 Speacial word goes for our instructor Deborah. To be honest, I was very surprised to get good grades, and at then end of each week, I with anticipation waited for my results. Her professional remarks and comments moved our discussion in the right direction and all felt enthusiastic about sharing what they already know. The course is about to end, but I like the way people feel about this. "The door is open" I read in one of the comments. The door for communication and further exchange. All the links, wiki and virtual classroom stay accessible for us even after the course is over. This is good news.
All in all, the course went smoothly and very productivley!!! I will miss our discussions and sharing!
Good luck and many happy and motivated learners to all of my coursemates!

Week 9; Exploring Learning Styles

The course is coming to an end!It feels good that there is chance to know what one achieves after 10 weeks of online study and how one apporached this study.
This week is dealing with Learning styles and tehcnology application to address learners' differences.
Very interesting information can be found at  http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/styles.htm
We may conclude that peoaple learn and deal with new concept or inormation in a way that is suitable for them.

Recently I have also known about Multiple Intelligences.I have met this term befora and was interested in such a classification that is close to learning styles, after all we learn throughout our life. However, what technology tools can help to people who belong to this or that category is something new. After reading some useful tips at http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic68.htm I  learn what technolgoy tools might be helpful for different learners

There exists 9 categories

1. Verbal/linguistic
2. Logical/mathematical
3. Visula/spatial
4.Bodily/kinesthetic
5.Musical/Rythmic
6.Intrapersonal
7. Interpersonal
8. Naturalist
9. Existentialist

The names suggest themsleves what way people learn better. I think we can be a mixture of 2 or more. But no matter how we learn, what we get in the end is what matters!!!

Week 8: Teacher resources online

It is already week 8. The time flies. It seemed as though it was a few days ago the course started, and I felt anxious about all the upcoming tasks and assignments.
This week we have to explore some more sources for teachers available online. Among them, there are such tested ones like http://www.nicenet.com

a great online tool that lets to creat a class site for dicussions. We with coursemates had the chance to experience how this tool works and what it can offer, so it will not be difficult for me now to creat and manage one like this. The only think as Deborah mentioned, we need to search for good content filling our sites.
 Besides, course sites and discussion thread, we got the chance to explore and "taste" other tools for creating exercises, puzzles, quizzes and test.
Hot Potatoes is a good program that I have heard of before, but have not tried yet. What is good about all the tools and programs is that the expercises can be saved for printing out, so if there is not web connection, a teacher has always a plan B.

 I liked experimenting with http://www.toolsforeducators.com/wordsearch/ where there is a good variety of topics to choose from, Word searches can be supported with pictures which is good vor visual leaners and extra clues might be also  added.
Surely such tools will contribute to learner autonomy meeting different learniing styles demands and offering a wide choice of tasks and activitites.Though it takes time to learn how to use them, but it is worth trying!!!

Week 7: Learner autonomy

" The path to independence is not something students can embark on unguided"
                                                                                 Jon Taylor (teacher and teacher trainer)

I have already met the concept of learner autonomy before. I was engaged in writing ELA guide (English Learner Autonomy ) for British Council Learning Centers. When I ws introduced to such an idea, it seemed to me a bit challenging to reach and make the learners come to understanding that they can learn by themselves not totally realying on teacher as "knowledge purvoyer"

It was essential to know the basic elements of learner autonomy. I totally agree with the ideas presented in (Thanasoulas). He says that autonomy is not a ready made product, but the process. We used the word "journey" where motivation, attitude, and responsibility is the luggage a learner takes to this life-long journey.

But saying metaphorically no journey is possible without assistance of a guide. Here the role of a teacher  changes.
Thanalous proposes some ways how to encourage learner autnomy among which I  found self-reports (semi structured), diaries, and questionnaires.
Our job here , first of all raise awareness about language learning. Learners might not know what syles they have, what way is most preferable for them to learn, and what resources they  find more interesting. No doubt that  moving from "traditional classroom" is difficult task, most teachers are not accustommed too, but it is worth trying.

In our institution we practice a course report. This means that at the end of academic year we give to your students some questionnaires about the course and the teacher to fill in.
I think what should be done before the course starts is needs analysis; it will help to work out the way and tempo with which to move towards the learning goals. All learners are different, and we should take this factor into account when creating a lesson plan.

Week 6: Interactive Power Point

Summing up my coursemates thoughts, I can say that one of the things to make students engaded is Interactive Power Point Presentation. After reading the instruction to the task and some of the articles on creating such presentation, I was very willing to create something similar to what was described.

I used Power Point Presentation only few times and they were not made by me. Like was said about simple presentations wihout interactive elements, the ones I used were delivered simply to present the content and that is it.

This week I knew that there are many ways to make it creaitve, engaging and interactive for my students.

The following elements will make any Power Point Presentation interactive and more motivating.

1. Quick ConcepTest - the technique aimed at checking concepts (definitions, notions, vocabulary) 
2. Blank slide- the technique used to attract attention
3. Hyperlinks- to add special content and navigate to another document
4. Quick Write- the technique used to check students comrehension

Generally this information was rather useful as such tools can be used not only to accopmany PPT, but on a regular bacis during the lesson.

Week 6: Teaching large classes reflection

One of this week's discussions is devoted to Tech Solutions in teaching large classes.Although I never taught large classes, I know how stressful it might be. After several readings among which the article found at

http://www.uoregon.edu/~tep/technology/communication/inclassdisc.html/.

I got some crucial ideas on how to maintain, prepare and lead succefful discussion.
Also,on NICENET some of the coursemates offered their own solutions related to teaching large classes issues. Stephen suggested some interesting ideas like tracking and asssessing students online, keeping calendars, and engaging students in projects to make them work collaboratively. In general,while teaching large classes it is possible to divide the students into more working groups and assign one project to such groups. Within this group there may be one project leader who would manage the other students and preapre reports about project development and process.

One more interesting thing, better say tools are about collaborative learning.As large classes imply extended amount of students, this means that they could all work collaboratively as the teacher does not have sufficient time and resources for each of them. I realized that during this online course, we being in the role of students already experience and use such tools as Wikis,blogging,discussion boards. All of them, if used appropriately "allow students to exchange ideas in a manner that closely approximates the face-to-face experience".

Week 5: Issues that technolgy might solve

The world is constantly developing and we are filled with different sources of information that needed to be process. New approaches that make our life easier emerge and substitute for previous out-of-date techniques.

This week discussion was devoted to the issues that tehcnology could solve.
My colleagues offered a very detailed collection of ideas how tehcnology inspired changes might influence the quality and smoothness of their own classes adding their view on this or that implementation.

I thought that all what we have learned so far this course could be applied in practice with success. Though I have certain concerns and doubts related to use of technology, websites, online tools, etc., given the opportunity and right direction I would certainly try my best to use them all in my English lesson.

Among my concerns though is the availability of internet in my institution, unwillingness of authority to change things, and total reliance on the web.
But I hope with time, we would practice all the new things we are learning here in this course.