Wrap Up (week 10)

Hello everybody,

Well, this was our last week four our Building skills course. I can say that I feel satisfied with what I have learned in these ten weeks, and that I feel ready to put into practice the different tools and techniques we learned. I also believe that now, we are able to surf the net and find out what else we can use in our classes.

In the near future, I would like to share what I have learned in this course with my colleagues in my country. It is necessary to encourage teachers to start making a change and using technology as a resource for their classes. We have learned in this course that It is not necessary to be very skillful with computers or to have a well equipped computer lab to be able to use technology in our class. We just need their willingness to change our old patterns and engage in an effort to make things better for our students.

Finally, I would like to thank our instructors, Deborah and Sandra for giving us the chance to learn how technology can help us make the difference in our classes, and in the students lives.

Cristian

Teacher Resources (Week9)

Hello everybody,

This week we discovered new sites which will help us a lot in designing activities for our classes. I really enjoyed learning about all these webpages and creating all kinds of exercises for the learners. The one I enjoyed the most was learning how to use hot potato, which gives the chance to create interactive exercises which the students can access any time and enjoy while learning. With this software you can create multiple choice quizzes, short answer quizzes, jumbled sentences, crosswords,matching exerces, and gap-filling exercises. It also allows the teacher to include feedback to guide the learner, and you do not have to be very skillful with computers.

One aspect that I find very important when using hot potato exercises is that it encourages the students to take control of their learning proess and that can lead to students to feel more motivated to learn. The exercises can be done over and over until the students get the answers correct, and that helps the students take control of their learning.

Now, I am looking forwar to putting all the actvities and techniques into practice with the different classes, and sharing all the information with my fellow teachers, so we can give the students more tools to be used in their learning process.

Cristian

Learner Autonomy and One-Computrer Classroom (Week 8)

Hello,

This week we learned about learner autonomy and one-computer classroom. Nowadays, many teachers talk about the need to encourage the students to take responsibility for their own learning, but we do not have give them the tools they need in order to take that responsibility and become autonomous learners. Students come to our classes with the motivation and the desire to learn a new language, but after a while, they feel frustrated and feel that they cannot achieve their goal. As Dimitrios Thanasoulas states in the article "What is Learner Autonomy and How Can It Be Fostered," motivation plays an important part in the learning of a language, but there are other aspects that we have to take into account. For example, we have to teach the students different learning strategies for them to succeed in learning the language.

This week we also learned about some activities and ideas that we can use in a one-computer classroom. There are different activities teachers can use to get the students involved in a one-computer classroom. As I have mentioned in previous posts, we just need some creativity to explore the different uses we can do to technology in our classes. I liked all the ideas presented by my colleagues taking this course in their lesson plans. Most of them are easy to use and I think that we can adapt them to our classes.

Cristian