Sunday, March 4, 2012

8th week reflections

8thweek reflections  (My online class) 


In this wonderful week we move ahead to achieve the goals of the course. Creating an online course site or an exercise to use online or offline. I was  enthusiasm about this. I stated creating online class for my grade 11 students (English for Me ) .

Discussion: Online tools for enhancing learning




After exploring ANVILL and some of the different tools and exercises for this week, share your ideas about how using these might change the way you teach and/or the way that your students learn. How could using these tools promote learner autonomy? What are the constraints that would make it difficult to use these tools, and how will you overcome them?

I posted on the topic :
Nowadays we are living in very small world due the technology. Things are being easier for all in small part of a room setting on computer connected to World Wide Web. These tools can be used in education. How do you use technology in your teaching? Why do you use particular technologies?

Thinking about these questions I am struck by the emphasis on technology and teaching as a starting point, whereas I have always thought that learning should be the starting point. What do we hope that learners will learn? As teachers we are first and foremost concerned with learning. So the first question is not 'how' you use technologies, but 'why'.

Nowadays teacher's role is to guide and assist students as they take on more responsibility for their learning moving the focus from teaching to learning. The time and content we as teachers can give to our students can be limited. Following a curriculum or (learning system) also affect the learning process and may not meet the students' needs and abilities. What about learners studying entirely on their own?

Learning autonomy can be the answer for this question. Autonomy is the ability to take charge of one's own learning' by (Henri Holec). It means making use of self/peer assessment. And the role of the teacher as supporting scaffolding and creating room for the development of autonomy is very demanding and very important.
Students can use blogs for example as we do now in the course. They can write reflections of their learning on their blogs and their peer's comments. The internet provides huge recourses for learning and being autonomy. Many educational websites, networks, free courses and even learning chat box.

"I have been browsing through different websites trying to find a link between teaching and autonomous reading. As discussed in the article "What is Autonomous Learning?" (http://prs.heacademy.ac.uk/view.html/PrsDiscourseArticles/113), autonomous learning is not teachless learning, but it is a habit of mind expressed through a range of activities and skills, acquired and developed through practice and teachers have a great role in teaching this habit of mind".

What are the constraints that would make it difficult to use these tools, and
how will you overcome them?

From my point of view the answer for this question is that student's lack of awareness of technology. In many time, I tried to apply the use of such tools in education such issue come up. At this time you need to teach them how to use technology instead of teaching the course. To overcome this we as teacher and facilitators need to simplify the technology use and show them the how of using it. Also, some schools are effectively using technology for teaching and learning while other schools are not due the lock of technology teaching tools. To overcome this you can use you own simple tools personal laptop and projector (one computer lesson).

 
 

Task: Create an online course site or an exercise to use online or offline

Create something that will be useful for your teaching. Use one or more of the sites on our course website to create an exercise, test, flash cards, or other tool. Share with the group: 

I posted on the task : 

I have created a nicenet class for my grade 11 students. the class key : E330Z82E85 (English for Me) because we are starting teaching form the last week. I will start using online tools from now.

Today i will take my students to the computer lab and start with joining the English for Me class. and getting to know each other.

  • I believe learners will benefit from such class :
  • facilitate the Learning process.
  • help the students to be more attentive.
  • add more enjoyment.
  • add variation.
  • get students' interest & add fun to learning.
  • help learning vocabulary.
  • and most important is to help learners become autonomy.

Nowadays students around the world are offered with so many materials and ways to be more independent in their learning they personalize language learned. Technology can serve learning autonomy a lot in many different ways. It potentially facilitates learner autonomy more efficiently as students make more of the decisions about how to use the tool. Students still need to be helped to understand how a tool might benefit their overall learning. Teachers can encourage learners to think about the choices they are making and reflect on how the program is beneficial.


It has been a great week for me. What about you ?
 


No comments:

Post a Comment