Week 8 Reflection

When Technology Befriends Education It Gets Even Better!!!

What I gained over this week in this course led me to assert the view I have stated it on my heading. Indeed, technology simplifies learning and offers learners with the potential opportunity for autonomous learning. Simply looking at myself can tell how far I have been benefited from attending this course over this short period time. How more wouldn't students with longer academic calendar learn! This week we have to go to the course website and adventure through the separate URL's indicated in there. I found how simple something that is of Educational material these days is to creat. I, for instance, have managed to create a class test by signing up at http://Easytestmaker.com. It was a really fabulous tool to prepare all forms of test items. Later I have gone to the Week 8 recourses and Technology tools to and added the link URL to my test:  http://www.easytestmaker.com/User/Test.aspxid=F7B527FF158349FA8903B280F73EFDD3&anch=SMK#I10

I also have signed for ANVILL, a very fabulous tool for online English lab. I felt I am so privileged to sign up for this tool. I also have read our moderator for this week on ANVILL, Mr. Jeff, Wow! he is really an expert. I hope I will benefit a lot from him. I will keep participating and I hope I will try to participate on the upcoming online talk on Saturday 9:00 A.M. pacific time.

The third and indeed very important task we have accomplished for this week was adding our drafts project report under our respective project partner page. I have added my draft report under the project partner page :Daniel and Vinay. Through this page I have got the privilege of reading into my partner's, Vinay's, draft project report and I could learn a lot of things from it. I have, for instance, learned through technology it gets to be much easier to keep track of one's students progresses through the portfolio assessment. It even is easier for the teacher to correct the papers of his students from anywhere. At times when there is no connectivity the software "Drop box" does all the trick, very inspirational indeed. I think I may try such a procedure for my class as well. I have also added the project report Check list on my partners work. It seems he has done all well except for some minor corrections.

 

To conclude, like the other weeks this week has also been very fruit full for me in discovering more of the web for educational purpose. Every time a new week breaks I expect something new for I know the course will provide. It has now become my habit to look into something new in the web that would assist my teaching.

 

Daniel's Week 7 Reflections

Learning in its Proper Sense

 

This week has been quite inspirational enough for me in all respects. To begin with the articles that I had to read particularly on Learner Autonomy augmented my already conceived understanding on the topic. It is understood that teachers may try the hardest to teach dominating the class environment, or as one of our dearest classmates, Ayman, described learners may develop the habit of being spoon fed from teachers. Yet, we can hardly conclude that learning has taken place. Learning only takes when the learners start teaching themselves. It is customary especially among the developing world to see students entirely dependent on the teacher for every means of learning. And that is what I think diminishing the students’ confidence. That is the main problem among students of my country. They end up being dependent throughout their lives having very little confidence. However, if we teachers work on ways that divert this traditional learning mode into granting viable methods whereby learners best  teach themselves  then we can conclude learning has taken place or learners autonomy. I also believe the methods vary according to the nature of the subject or topics. But methods suchlike PBL or authentic learning can be effective methods at guiding learners teach themselves.

Next what inspired me was the task where we have to investigate about wall wisher. The site wall wisher is something easy to sign up for and very flexible. Any file, URL, Video …etc can be shared and every one can participate in one wall. It is easier the only thing one does is click on the wall to share all what s/he would like share. I think students can use such a site for interactive purpose at sharing articles, texts or URLs for any topic they are learning. It indeed was very inspirational.   

The third was working on the project and recording about the progress for later reflection on the task. I have been busy implementing the project I have planned. In my view there nothing is inspirational than to see what has been planned on the real ground. For one obvious reason one learns better practically. And I can say I have learned a lot from my project in a way it grossly altered my understanding of technology aided learning. I will write my reflections briefly in my project report that I have to submit the first draft this coming week.

One final task I found quite inspirational was finding a partner for the project report. This is something we teachers should encourage doing in our class rooms. Especially for teachers who specifically focus on teaching the writing skill, they should encourage learners to pair. I think doing so first helps learners to work at their best performance, and their works also gets to be revised and edited before going as a finalized work. Thus this way perfection can be obtained. On top of this it is also highly interactive because learners work together at realizing something at the end.                                                    

As a conclusion this week has also been quite productive in all its reading materials, websites and tasks to be performed. In short it was a week of inspiration.