Week 10-August 25-Final reflections

The course is closing and I have a very mixed feeling about it. On the one hand, I am very happy to have had a chance of fruitful collaboration with the colleagues from different parts of the world. All the participants are highly qualified professionals and I've learned a lot from their experience! On the other hand, I am very sad because we have to say goodbye and to stop our discussions and meetings online!
I am very grateful to University of Oregon for giving us the opportunity to get this amazing and unforgettable experience! I am very grateful to Robert who was very helpful and responsive to our needs! Robert provided perfect guidance and made this course very dynamic and exciting!!
All the topics were interesting and informative. It's hard to choose just one or two which I consider the most important. I really liked our discussions on the different types of learners and what technology and tools can be used with the consideration to different learners' needs. Web searching, Learning Objectives, Teaching productive and receptive skills, project-based learning, etc. all of these topics were beneficial in their particular ways.
There are so many tools I want to introduce into my classroom that it is difficult to enumerate all of them. I really want to see how webquests work, and to introduce rubrics into my teaching. I am excited about Voxopop tool and what opportunities they may open for my students' speaking development!

Thank you, my dear friends and colleagues, for your sharing and participation! It was great honor for me to work with you! Keep in touch and maybe some day we'll have a chance to meet face-to-face))

Week 9- August 21

The course is getting to its end. It’s amazing how fast 10 weeks have passed. I am very happy for having had a chance to work and collaborate with such professionals and nice guys as you are, my dear colleagues. It’s very sad to realize that our course is over. I’ll miss our discussions and tasks!

This week was very important and intensive because this week our final project was due on Friday. I had to go through all my ideas and writing again and see what was needed more clarifications and work on. The peer-check report was really helpful. I had very clear idea what I had to do and I want to thank my colleagues for their assessment and assistance))

This week discussions and articles were very interesting. Sometimes it is very difficult to come up with ideas how to make your lesson more dynamic or more visual so that all learning style could be involved and meet students’ needs.  And technology assisted class was very challenging for me in terms of make it effective in accordance to learning styles of my students. The articles we were given this week are abundant with the ideas and tools. All the strategies and tools were categorized and well structured, so it was very easy to understand what a teacher needs to make his/her lesson more effective and manageable.

I really liked the project which Robert shared with us. It was amazing! I liked Eduardo’s ideas: “…the use of musical / rhythmic talking about technology and multiple intelligences, the students are able to learn but using another methods, not only the classic ones that includes the teacher as the protagonist of the class and students like simple spectators, using music, or music videos we can improve the level of language that we are going to learn…”. I think it is a very effective tool. Music will help to arouse students’ schemata and it involves as auditory learners as visual ones if we use videos.

Good luck with your projects!!!

Week 8- August 13- Reflections on the progress

This week was very intensive. The course Is coming to its end and there is a lot to be done. This week we had our draft reports to be published on wiki and to proofread our peers’ reports as well. It was very interesting to know what my colleagues decided to change in their classrooms and how they were going to implement the change. I was very impressed by the projects I had a chance to read and I am proud of having had the opportunity to collaborate with these people during the course. I’ve learned a lot from the course materials and from my peers professional experience!

The topic of this week was very interesting as well. We’ve learned so many sites and tools which can help us make our lesson varied, learner-centered and what’s more important promote students autonomy. It is so easy to create different multiple-choice tasks, quizzes, puzzles, matching tasks which you can use at different stages of you lessons. You can practise any vocabulary or grammar target structures, consolidate or test with the help of the tool we were introduced to. It doesn’t take too much time to create something which is adapted to you class and you students.

What was the most exciting for me this week is to discover ANVILL with it voiceboards and other tools. I’ve never had even a slight idea that speaking is so easy to develop with the help of technology. Speaking skill are usually the most problematic for students. They are always unconfident and insecure when they have to speak up. I think online chatrooms, voiceboard, etc.  will build their self-confidence and help students feel free to express their ideas and thought on different issues. It will help them learn the cultures of the world and share their own experience. It may help find e-pals and students may continue their communication even when they are not in the classroom which is the main aim of any English course. They will use language in real life.

I want to thank Jeff for the detailed information about ANVILL. I was not able to investigate all the tools and opportunities it provides us with but I’ll do it in the nearest future!

studying process

Week 7- August 5- My deep reflections

This week was very intensive because we had two topics to explore and discuss. Both topics are of a paramount importance. I think learner autonomy issue, as well as one-computer classroom issue, have been disregarded for a long time.  The real attention and interest in the issues in question gained not so long ago.

Learner autonomy became topical when the communicative approach proved to be effective and initial. The problem of the learners’ over-dependency on the teacher was recognized. The more we teach, the less students will learn. They start learning when we stop teaching. Teacher’s role is to assist and show the way how students can improve, gain or dev lop their knowledge. At that very moment when the teacher realizes this important fact and starts taking measures as to developing students’ autonomy, the real learning will begin.

The main problem that the teacher may come across is students’ strong resistance to autonomy. Students already have some educational background and expectations when they start learning the language. If the previous experience was completely different (and most often it is), students don’t meet their expectations.

The solution we came up during our discussions was to integrate autonomy gradually (step-by-step), smoothly, without any pressure from the teacher’s side and in natural way. The most effective way is to encourage group works, pair works, peer-checking or correction, peer-assistance, project work, etc.

As to one computer class, I realized that my vision of that was absolutely limited. I’ve never had even a slight idea that one computer can open so many opportunities for effective classroom management, vocabulary or grammar presentation, practice (controlled); that it can serve as the administrative tool as well and can help develop and encourage students creativity and imagination.

The main issues for teacher’s consideration are:

-          Efficient classroom management

-          Good lesson plan with clear aims and objective as well as with anticipated problems and solutions

-          Clear instructions to the students

-          Make the process clear to the students

-          Be aware that students should be assisted and monitored

I think all of us are real one-computer classroom experts!)