Week 10: Reflection

I can’t believe this is the end of Week 10 and the end of the course. Time indeed flies!  

The course has been really productive. I have learned a lot about how to use technology to make lessons more interactive. The most interesting topics for me were the following:

• The use of blogs for teaching
• Carrying out effective web searches and bookmarking sites with Delicious
• Project-based learning, WebQuests and rubrics
• Interactive PowerPoint
• The one-computer classroom.

I liked those topics because they provided me with new ideas and tools I can use in my classroom. Also, I liked that, while exploring these topics, we had some practical tasks that encouraged me to try and implement the knowledge I gained. But for these tasks, I might not have become confident to apply this knowledge in my classroom. 

As for the tools I am going to use in my classes, there are plenty of them. First of all, I am going to start using WebQuests to make my teaching more interactive and student-centered. Then, I am going to use Rubistar, EasyTestMaker, HotPotatoes and various websites that provide resources for lessons, such as BreakingNewsEnglish. Finally, I have created a discussion class on Nicenet that I am going to start using next academic year. I also want to create a class wiki. I have lots of plans and ambitions in terms of integrating technology into my classes and I do hope I will be able to implement all of my ideas. 

To conclude my post, I want to thank Donna for developing and facilitating such an interesting and useful course and other course participants for sharing their knowldge and experience with me. I really enjoyed this course and had fun working with you all.  

Anna

Week 9: Reflection

The highlight of this week was our final project. It took me quite a lot of time to prepare the WebQuest and then write the first draft of my final project. I put in a lot of effort trying to make it as explicit as possible and therefore, I was really glad to receive positive comments from Sawako, who was my partner. I had to make only a few slight changes in the first draft before publishing it. Namely, I decided to include the questions we were supposed to answer. In my first draft I didn't have the questions, but having read Sawako's first draft, I noticed that because of the questions she kept in her draft, it was much easier to follow her ideas. So I decided to include the questions into my final draft as well. 

The readings about the theory of multiple intelligences and learning styles were a good reminder of what I learned before. I took the learning style quiz at http://www.edutopia.org and found out that my strongest intelligences are linguistic, intrapersonal, and visual/spatial. This was not a surprise to me because I had taken similar paper-based quizzes before. However, this was the first time I did it on-line and I really liked how quickly it was, so I added the link to Edutopia to my Delicious page. In my English Language Methodology class we talk about learning styles and multiple intelligences and I usually ask my students to take a quiz to find out their own style. From now on, I am planning to ask them to take it on-line rather than on paper. 

Anna