Thank you!

"The teacher is no longer just the master of their subject. They are much, much more. Their classroom is no longer defined by four walls and a blackboard, but stretches far beyond the physical boundaries of their school. We are global teachers, ethicists and moralist, masters of our subject and students of the world."

Andrew Churches inGlobal digital citizen - The role of the teacher

So many issues have been covered throughout these weeks and they were all so relevant for my teaching practice that it is impossible to choose a favorite. Besides, although I may have enjoyed ones more than others or felt more comfortable doing some tasks than others, everything we did was purposeful, meaningful, useful.

This course has gone beyond all the expectations I might have: I have learned a lot, I have become more aware of students’ needs, of my own strengths and weaknesses, I am a better teacher now, I think.

Week 2 brought lots of surprises with all those sites for web searching that I had never heard about. I use them all the time now and my life has become much simpler. Trying to write ABCD objectives was challenging, as it was something new to me and it made me reflect a lot on what exactly I want my students to do.

Week 3 introduced me to delicious and now I wonder why I had never tried it before. I became a fan and I now have some very nice stacks full of interesting stuff. This week was also great as we discussed aural / oral skills and how to help students develop them. There are many great ideas I have kept for further work with my students, as I want next year to engage my 8^th graders in a project on listening and speaking.

The following weeks were great and I felt really good dealing with reading and writing (two of my favorite things), discussing PBL, one-computer classes or teaching resources. I don’t want to seem immodest, but I think I am quite creative and I love planning a good lesson using interesting materials and tools. Sometimes my head is swarming with ideas and I can’t wait until I put them into practice, so this course was fantastic for me, because the contact with other people and new tools allowed me to take my creativity and my ideas even further and I have countless plans for future activities.

And I shouldn’t forget week 5 with the rubrics and alternative assessment, an issue it is important to reflect on and use in class, as our students need to be assessed fairly, according to the tasks or assignments they are expected to do.

Now that we have the whole picture, we notice that there is a meaningful sequence in the course, leading us every week to a new level so that we can now integrate technology effectively in our professional practice.

In a collaborative way, and with Robert’s precious guidance, we have built knowledge. And that's why I have chosen this short video to finish this post. It's called Thank a teacher and that's exactly what I want to do: to thank all the teachers involved in this course, the ones at Oregon University, but also all the others participating in the course. Without you it wouldn't have worked so well! Thank you!

My style

“How much a given student learns in a class is governed in part by that student’s native ability and prior preparation but also by the compatibility of his or her characteristic approach to learning and the instructor’s characteristic approach to teaching.” (Felder and Henriques, 1995)

While doing this week’s readings this was a sentence that caught my attention. I have always been interested in learning styles and read a lot on the subject, and the above quotation clearly shows that styles are not just about learning, but also about teaching. It’s important to know about our students’ learning styles, but it is also paramount to know what our teaching style is because we will have to work on both if we want to be successful.

This is me!

Reading about the different activities and tools that we can use for each of the learning styles or for combined styles was very important, too. I know it gave me a more complete insight into what I can do for them, it refreshed my mind and my head is now full of ideas I can hardly wait to put into practice.

I must confess that when I saw this week’s topic I thought our task this week would be to plan a lesson where all the styles would be addressed. I even started thinking about what I could do, but fortunately there was no such assignment, which was good as time was scarce with the final report to finish and tests all week. Still, there has been a good deal of sharing going on in the discussion board.

I do feel a bit relieved now that I have uploaded my final report. Maybe I could have worked a bit more on it, but I think I had got to that point of exhaustion: if I read it one more time, I would delete it. I thank my peer-review partners - Natasa and Ricard - for their valuable feedback that helped me improve my work, but I also thank all the others in class and, Robert, of course, because all these discussions have helped us throughout the different stages of deciding and developing our projects. This is quite a nice group!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Here I am again, including literature in my posts, but the truth is that these last weeks have led me through paradoxical situations and feelings. Some days everything was going great, work was flowing and I felt like I had a million-dollar project. Other days it was quite the opposite with students getting lazy, an overload of tasks to accomplish and the hours evaporating before me.

I’m better now, though. I’ve finished my report (there will be changes, certainly, but minor ones, I hope), I’ve read and reviewed my partners’ reports, I’ve participated in the discussion and I’ve created a quiz and a crossword puzzle. And now, before I get down to work preparing tests for six of my classes, a little time to reflect on the project and this week’s tasks.

The topic this week – online tools – is great, as I use them a lot and I also enjoy creating my own resources. I have some experience with HotPotatoes, Quizfaber, JClic, ActivInspire, Google docs and moodle, but I also use all the possibilities that Microsoft Office has to offer and I often create handouts using online tools. I think we have to take advantage of everything available in order to make our work easier and more motivating.

Different types of exercises and activities also appeal to students because they enjoy variety, it arouses their curiosity and it can foster their creativity and willingness to learn. Besides, everybody knows that students learn in different ways, they have different learning styles so, the more tools you use and the more varied they are, the more you will help those students learn.

This week Anvill also has an important role in our discussions. I think it is a great project and am sorry I cannot give it all the attention it certainly deserves, but there are mid-term meetings going on in my school and I’m at school almost all day. When I arrive home I have my own project to work on: kids are back on track sharing their penzu entries regularly and posting to wallwisher. I deactivated the chat and am now trying to set up a forum. And these lessons on error analysis and correction have to be well planned. Most of the students are really engaged and making quite an effort to improve. I hope they will!

Mission accomplished

I was getting used to being a regular here, but this week has really exhausted me. Dealing with three tools and activities at the same time isn’t easy. There are all those penzu pages to read and comment. I have to be often online to see who is in the chat and move things a bit and there’s wallwisher to check and notes to take down.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I decided to use some classes to work on error analysis and correction and it worked so well! I really came home yesterday with that feeling of “mission accomplished”! The students got incredibly involved in the task and by the end of the class they were already able to spot a lot more errors and find out how to correct them. They even asked for homework, so I gave them some more texts and excerpts to try and correct at home. Today I shared my dictionaries, vocabulary and grammar stacks with them, so that they can have some websites they can refer to in case of doubt. And then we’ll do the rest in class. Isn’t this the dawning of learner autonomy?

Today I received a penzu share that I really appreciated. 

The image is here, but maybe it will be difficult to see, so let me explain: one of the students went back to the page she had corrected in class, she edited it marking all the mistakes she had made and then she wrote the corrected text below. I think it was fantastic. I’m sure that after dealing so much with some of the mistakes she has made, she will probably remember what not to do next time. I think that this type of attitude towards work not only shows the student is involved in her own learning and working beyond the initial task, but it also makes the teacher feel that they are turning the assignment into something useful, relevant, real! Thank you, kids!

Week 7 - Sighing

This week there are two interesting topics for discussion: just wish I had more time to be there, but this project is really time-consuming, for the students and for me. I have already had to make some adjustments, as the way I had planned to correct students’ mistakes didn’t really seem very effective. I cannot simply correct or even point them out to students. If I want them to develop some critical thinking and some more autonomy I will have to let them find and correct their own mistakes. It’s important that they understand why it is wrong and try to find out how to correct it. Of course they will need support, but I expect this way they will learn and remember much more.

Tomorrow we will have a completely different lesson: I’m going to take some examples of their Penzu pages and some transcripts from the chat and, in pairs, they will try to find the mistakes they have made. I hope they will be able to recognize and correct many of them. Then I will help them find the rest and with the use of our course book, grammars and dictionaries, they will try to correct those as well. I know I’m going to get behind in the syllabus, but I have informed the school board and besides, I don’t think this is wasting time, quite the opposite, I will be gaining time in the long run if they learn to write better and to apply the grammar structures and rules they have already learned to real situations. I hope that seeing their texts will also make them aware of how important this project can be for them. I also hope they will feel more committed to their own learning and will learn to be more autonomous at writing. In fact, I think that this Writing Extension Project fits quite well into one of our topics this week.

The week has also been a mixed-feelings week. The first days were terrible and I was almost getting depressed with so little feedback from students, but maybe I was expecting too much: after all they were on holidays and it’s usual for people to spend carnival with their families in the nearby villages. Today things changed completely because they’re back to school and suddenly remembered what they had to do. 

Hope.com

Life’s not so grim after all. Little by little students are doing what I expected them to do. Some haven’t still done anything, though. Three tests this week? Fear of the unknown? Sheer laziness? I don’t know, but I don’t want to force them. Let’s wait and see. Still, the ones that had started by complaining a lot are now really involved. I knew they would be!

And the first conclusion to be derived from these first days is: their writing really needs to be worked on. When they write in class and in tests they are writing about something they have studied, they have prepared, and so you don't really see many mistakes, but here, at least in their personal journals and in the chat, they are writing about whatever they want and often on the spur of the moment and all those problems and mistakes appear. I had never imagined the situation was so serious or maybe I had, otherwise I wouldn’t have decided to do this type of project.

Here are two examples from their personal journals:

“Ok, so im starting my journal. I dont know what to say. Well, there's a thing that i can say: i think that all theese links that our English teatcher gave us mean that we ( my class, i dont know if she is doing this torture with other classes.......) are going to actually WORK!!!!!! OMG! I am not ready for doing any work. I DONT EVEN LIKE TO WORK!! But what can i do??...............”

“Today, is the first day that I am write there, but I have already writen in the wallwisher and in chatzy, it's a start! I'm not very good to write in English but, I'm trying.
Tuesday, we had a english class. There we knew the most of works that had did for english teacher, she are crazy! But is a form to win more capacities in writing.
The teacher don't like my reation about this, and now I agree with her! But, in the moment, I have thought that don't had time to do so things!
SORRY, TEACHER! :)
This project can better very notes in class and I hope be one of them! For this I have to work very much and I'm going able.Thank you teacher for leave me to do part of your project, and now the class project!”

You can also have a look at the first Wallwisher http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/ClassDMovies.

And all this data that I am collecting has already made me adjust the project. I first thought I would email them my comments and their mistakes, so that they could edit them, but now I’ve changed my mind: I’m going to use some classes, even if I have to set up some extra classes, to work with them using their own texts. Understanding why errors occur is essential to recognize them and learn how to correct them. And the more you do it, the better you’ll remember it next time you’re writing that structure. It’s going to be real hard work, but it’ll be good for all of us.

Passion

It’s not even 9 a.m. and I am already tired. This project I got myself into is nice, but it’s all-consuming. Kids are always posting things, emailing me with requests for help, doubts, things they want to correct… Then I have to be online all the time in case someone shows up for the chat. I know I should have set up specific times, but that’s not possible with some of them, so I’d rather be around.

But today I just want to talk a little about all the rest: large classes, how to enhance students and interactive presentations. I don’t really have oversized classes, but sometimes teaching 25 kids can be exhausting and trying to keep their attention and concentration high for 90 minutes is not an easy task. Of course there are all types of warmers, fillers and focus activities I use. There are some very good examples in our readings but I also the ones listed at http://busyteacher.org/. They can be really fun, motivating and they always add content.

I also enjoy presentations, but one has to be careful about how to create an effective presentation. We have all talked about it in the discussion board. Still I would like to share with you this presentation “Death by PowerPoint” and also a short video, which is just an excerpt from one of Don McMillan’s talks: “Life after death by PowerPoint”. They teach you a lot using humor.

As for Prezi I really like it and even if you are no expert, there are already many presentations online that you can use. I’ll just leave here an example I used at Halloween and that can give you some ideas on how to use Prezi:  http://prezi.com/nfpshjpths5a/happy-halloween/.

Although I think Prezi is a great tool that both teachers and students like to use in presentations, I think it doesn’t really allow a variety of interactive activities as other type of presentations or as Interactive White Boards do. I’m a great fan of IWB. There are so many things you can do!

Just to finish today I would like to remind you that what really motivates our students is passion, above all our passion and our ability to make them find that passion for learning within themselves.

Week 6 – Hope and disappointment

Here we are carrying out our final Project or trying to at least…

It seems so early and so little time for doing so. In fact, I cannot imagine a two or three-week project. It’s unreal to think that I can change much in such a short period of time. If I want my students’ writing to improve, I need a lot more time… and I will give it to them. This is a project to continue. I just feel sad I won’t be able to present real results in my final report.

Before the week even started there was a lot of hard work trying to narrow a bit more my options and settle on the tools to be used. Then some red tape: informing parents and the school board, emailing students the first instructions, setting up an extra class to make them a bit more familiar with the tools and to explain the tasks.

The expectations are high, but the first day I suffered the first disappointment with two students complaining heavily about the extra work, almost as if they were sorry to be in the project. They are really good students and I understand they have now lots of tests and need to study, but still, it made me sad. I just hope they will see the fun and point of it all once they start.

But yesterday evening I felt better when two students joined me in the chat. One of them is rather weak at English, but he made an effort and that was good. It brightened things a bit. They are also starting to participate in wallwisher, so maybe there's hope.

I decided to do the same as my students: I’m using penzu as my log book. I started yesterday and this is what I wrote https://penzu.com/p/3c26684f.

I feel I need some motivation. Things never seem to be good enough for me. I always wish I could do some state-of-the-art project, but I don’t have what I need to accomplish it. I have to be realistic. Let’s hope it will be elegant and simple!

A PBL guru?

Aren’t you all a bit obsessed about PBL by now? I know I am. And as soon as I saw Courtney’s question “What kinds of projects could incorporate the websites that students already frequent such as You Tube and Facebook?” I suddenly felt very proud of a project I carried out last year with my 12^th grade students.

The idea was to do some research on someone they considered an icon in terms of Democracy. As I didn’t want any copy-paste kind of work I told them they would have to present their work either by creating a blog impersonating the character or by creating a fake facebook page that they would update for a certain period of time, adding more and more information, comments, etc. It was a fantastic activity. They all got involved in it, interacted with other groups, learned a lot about the person they had chosen and in the end presented their pages and findings to the class.

I wrote an article about it for InEnglishDigital where you can find more details about this activity (Research work: an upgrade, page 20). Check it out here!

Ah, and there was a very careful and strict planning and assessment. They knew I was checking their pages every Friday and something new had to be there, they knew what type of information and material they were supposed to gather, they were expected to interact with other groups and comment their blog posts or status updates and they had guidelines for the final class presentation.

Maybe I am a bit of a PBL guru and I just didn’t know it. ;-)

The road less travelled by

The week is quickly coming to an end and I still have so much to do. I have already promised myself I will slow down for a while after I finish this course. My husband laughs when I tell him this, my kids just disregard it. They think I’m crazy and that I’ll never change.

But let’s get serious. This week came as refreshment, as I got involved again in PBL and I paid a bit more attention to WebQuests. I had done one or two some time ago, but then I kind of forgot how challenging they can be for both students and teachers. I think I’ll get back to them soon. I just wish I had more time to work with my students! I feel I’m putting a lot of pressure on them, giving them a lot of hard work that will have to be done mostly after school. Just hope the parents won’t start complaining.

The truth is I got so enthusiastic about this whole thing that I’ve done some research and I found some interesting sites with WebQuests ready to use. Check my WebQuests stack.

Another important moment this week was my brainstorming for the final project. I have listed a few tools I may use and I have decided what I’ll be using them for. There is hard work ahead, though. I feel I am at crossroads; there are so many roads ahead and I’m still not sure which one to take. It reminded me of that Robert Frost poem:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

In a way I think it summarizes my situation, probably yours, too. I’d like to do something different (the road less travelled by), I’d like to make a difference, but if I choose wrongly it will make all the difference too.

Assessment was another buzz word this week: rubrics, alternative assessment, even self-assessment. Although I find that self and peer assessment is important for students, I don’t really feel it’s necessary here. This is not a competition or, if it is, it is a competition against myself: I want to be better, do better, inspire more.

But, going back to students, I really believe that the way we assess them can make all the difference. You can bring out the best in a student if you are fair and thorough in your assessment. Testing is important too, but you only get part of the picture; there are so many other skills, even communicative skills that you only perceive and assess through alternative activities and alternative assessment methods.

In our minds there is always this idea of an ideal teacher we would like to be. I definitely think this course will help us get closer to that idea. Thank you all.

Week 5 - Joining the Quest

Here we are in week 5, immersed in students’ tests and with an extra task that everybody will try to do, so I cannot be the exception. Aren’t there time banks where we can get a few extra hours too?

The week started with some readings on Project Based Learning, a subject I find fascinating although I must confess that I haven’t really spent much time reflecting on it. I am familiar with the theoretical principles underlying this instructional approach and I have tried it once in a while, but I have probably never been consistent enough.

I understand it has multiple advantages as it makes student more autonomous learners and helps them develop critical thinking, decision-making skills, team work, while it helps them build knowledge in a much more realistic, collaborative and effective way. It is also challenging and extremely rewarding for the students when they complete it. This type of activity makes it possible to evaluate students in a different way, focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses, emphasizing the process rather than simply the result.

It made me think of a film I often use in class: Freedom Writers. Has anyone seen it? It’s great to talk about integration, discrimination, racism, education issues and project work. It’s what that teacher did and it worked wonders.

While looking for more information on the subject, I came across this nice video about PBL that I share here with you.

There is still a lot of work ahead this week analyzing and trying to create rubrics and possibly a WebQuest, but I will come back later in the week to tell you more about it.

The reading mother

In spite of all the hellish work this week, I must say that it has been one of my favorites so far. Why? Because we’re dealing with reading and writing, two of the things I most enjoy. 

I started a Reading Project a few years ago with my students and the first ones to integrate that project are already at University. It was great to see them reading and enjoying it. I started with very short and simple stories taken from Short and Scary and Short and Spooky by the late Louise Cooper. Then we moved on to Roald Dahl and other writers of teen fiction. Last year, when that group was in the 12^th grade, about to leave school and move into higher education, after six years with me, we could see a good number of them reading complete, original works and presenting them in class with enthusiasm. It is so rewarding when something like that happens!

I also use literary texts in class to replace some outdated ones in our course book and if those texts are well chosen and somehow relate to their own experiences, their response exceeds all our expectations. I prefer that to the Extensive Reading activities that our curriculum suggests. Literature has to be integrated naturally and not forced upon students as something extra and painful.

As I am a bit addicted to reading, I have quite a nice library at home and I’m always ordering new books, but there are also many websites where I sometimes find excellent material. I have shared them in my delicious account and you can find them in the stacks Reading and Writing. Have a look and see if there’s something you may like or use: http://delicious.com/stacks/limaluisa

Writing is also important and sometimes one of the most difficult skills to develop. I like to start early and have them retell stories and do all kinds of activities. Sometimes I tell them to write 15-word or 50-words stories – it’s quite difficult and they really need to be creative. I like to give them pictures or a group of words and they create a story using them. I love using writing prompts, but what is really important is that they end up loving it too.

I seem to have made up my mind about my course of action for the final project. Well, not the whole course of action, it’s just an outline, a scribble, maybe, but it’s a start. I just hope that, with your help, I have some good ideas to put into practice.

And as this week was dedicated to reading I leave here a poem and the idea that, as there are not many reading mothers nowadays, maybe we, the teachers, can take that role (another one, why not?).

THE READING MOTHER

I HAD A MOTHER who read to me 

Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea, 

Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth, 

"Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath

I had a Mother who read me lays 

Of ancient and gallant and golden days; 

Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe, 

Which every boy has a right to know.

I had a Mother who read me tales 

Of Celert the hound of the hills of Wales, 

True to his trust till his tragic death, 

Faithfulness blent with his final breath.

I had a Mother who read me the things 

That wholesome life to the boy heart brings- 

Stories that stir with an upward touch, 

Oh, that each mother of boys were such.

You may have tangible wealth untold; 

Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. 

Richer than I you can never be --

I had a Mother who read to me.

Strickland Gillilan

Week 4 - Sleepless in Bragança

Remember an old film called Sleepless in Seattle? It’s almost 20 years old and it has nothing to do with our course, except for the title that enabled this word game. Because sleepless is how I feel: these two weeks will be hell as all my classes are having tests and I feel drowned in paper. Seven classes to correct and mark plus our tasks here – sorry if I don’t give you all the attention you deserve, but I’ve been sleeping much less than I need to keep my creativity up where it should be.

Besides, as I said before, I am restless until most of the work is done. I was also a bit worried about defining my students’ needs. There are so many things I’d like to do, so many problems to tackle, decisions to make… It was hard for me to start writing about it but as I was doing so, my mind sort of cleared and I was able to realize what my priorities should be. If we want to keep it “elegantly simple” as Robert very well put it, we cannot try to do everything at the same time. There are hundreds of tools out there to be used but, as much as we may like many of them, the secret ingredient for this project will be our ability to choose the most appropriate one(s) to reach our objective. I know now it will be impossible to solve all the problems, but I will have to start somewhere and then move on, continuously, planning, adapting, rearranging, learning, teaching.

Let’s not “power down”!

This week has been exhausting, but also terribly challenging. First there were all those readings about Computer Assisted Language Teaching and the reviewing of some websites on listening and pronunciation. I think these issues raise several questions, though, and I’ve hinted at some in one or two of my posts. As much as we can agree that CALL is useful and reliable, we also know that there are many speakers of English as a foreign language who are fluent and have reached a high degree of perfection without ever using these methods. For some, the learning of a language seems to be almost innate, no effort needed. I have that experience with my three children: they are all quite good, but one of the twins seems to take everything easily and he hates studying grammar rules. He relies more on intuition and he is usually right. He never had special classes or training and still, he is more fluent and he pronounces most things more correctly   than the others.

And then there is the question of which English or which accent we should teach. I agree with David Crystal and think this is another challenge for us, teachers. I’m sharing a short video where he talks about this issue, but there are many others you can watch on YouTube.

While testing some of the activities on pronunciation in all those websites Robert suggested, I suddenly remembered a video I had shown my students not long ago. It is quite nice and they even tried to learn some bits. It also made them aware of how difficult English can be and how important it is to learn it right. Here it is in case you’re curious.

Another task that I enjoyed doing was reading and commenting on one of the projects from last year. It’s always difficult to judge on someone’s work when we don’t exactly know what is behind it, who are the people involved, etc. I hope I have not been unfair because I realize that creating and developing a project is always difficult and there are many variables that we cannot control. However there are always lessons to be learned, even when things don’t go as well as planned. Or especially then.

To conclude this week’s overview I just would like to point out that in every job, in every area of our life, people need to be challenged, they have to remain awake. I remember something I read by Prensky: in his book “Don’t bother me, mum – I’m learning” he says that some students don’t like school because they feel they have to power down when they get there (as many of the things they do and learn outside school are much more challenging than what they do there). I think this course won’t let us power down. Nor will our students, as I sense, in all of us, the will and the power to make learning a real challenge!

Week 3 - A different type of CALL

Week 3 is still in its early stages, but I feel like sharing a story with you.

As I have already said in one of my posts, reading about Computer Assisted Language Learning, language labs, voice recognition and analysis software and all that made me go back in time and remember how we learned this almost 30 years ago. There were no computers or language labs at college back then, so we had to rely on our ears, our teachers’ excellent pronunciation and their patience to correct us.

I remember one particular teacher who was, in a way, a trailblazer then. He was already using CALL, only it was a different kind. We could call it Candle Assisted Language Learning. Yes, he would have us take a candle to class and he would give us a list of words beginning with “h” that we had to read aloud in front of the flame. Then he would check our pronunciation just by looking at the flame – did it move, should it have moved? The first time he did this, we thought he was crazy, but it worked - we learned. And then other strange things followed: there were mirrors, physical exercise, endless repetitions, trying to speak with small objects in our mouth… I can’t remember it all.

Good thing we don't have to do this anymore. Things have changed and there are now so many different types of activities, software and resources to learn those skills. What I’m trying to show with my story is that sometimes we have to be resourceful, too. That teacher was quite peculiar, but he certainly was resourceful and I thank him for his efforts.

Sharing ideas

Having performed all the tasks for week two and reflected on them in my previous post, I woke up today thinking I would like to share a video and a quotation that I completely agree with and that mirror  a bit the way I feel about teaching and teachers' roles nowadays.
The video is an animation created for an RSA talk given by Sir Ken Robinson. I always enjoy his talks and his insights into education.

The quotation is one, among many others, that I enjoyed reading and that I feel is true.

" I will predict this: there will still be a place for teachers, because teachers are irreplaceable. It's still true that any teacher who can be replaced by a computer - should be. No amount of technology, self-study or user generated content can ever replace teachers. They will still be there to motivate and inspire, and they will still be there as pedagogy experts to facilitate and support learning. What they may do less of is - teach. There will probably be less 'front of the classroom' activities and more drawing alongside learners in project work, small group activities, problem based learning and technology enhanced processes. Most importantly, teachers will need to work more in partnership with their students."

2020 teachers by Steve Wheeler

Week 2

Here I am again, week 2 almost completed and so much to say.

I can’t help feeling a bit overwhelmed at the beginning of each week when I look at all the things we are supposed to do. I always think I won’t simply have time to do everything as well as I want to, but then I settle down to work and I seem to find the time for it all.

I believe this week has been most enriching for all of us. I know it has been so for me. I learned a lot and I seem to have become a bit of a bore telling everyone at school about all the new web search engines I now know of. Apart from the posts in the discussion boards, I have been trying some of them simply for fun and I’m amazed at the results. It is a time-consuming activity and it’ll be weeks or months before I have tried all of them, but that’s not the point really, is it? What’s good is that we now know about all these resources that are available to us and we can start using them as we need.

It was also great to work with objectives and read all those texts on the subject. I hadn’t really looked at Bloom’s taxonomy for years, since my times as a trainee teacher, so it was good to rediscover them, particularly this new adaptation to the new learning situations and all the new resources and activities available.  I must say that the most difficult task for me was exactly building measurable objectives with the precision our teachers were expecting. I had to put some more effort into the task, as we are not really used to doing it this way in Portugal, but it was challenging. I still have some doubts, though, which is probably good because it will make me more careful the next time I have to write objectives.

One of the things I like about this course is that it is making me reassess some of the things we tend to take for granted after so many years of teaching.

I also felt that our community is getting stronger with people interacting, giving feedback and encouragement. I just wish we could have our photos on Nicenet. I often feel it hard to address people whose faces I do not know, but with the help of our blogs and the photos we have there, it will progressively get easier.

Well, maybe I’ll get back here before the end of the week. Meanwhile, I can’t wait to see what is coming next.

Week 1

Week 1 is almost over, so I feel it’s time to think and write a little bit about everything that has happened.

This is my first all-online course and, if I want to be truly honest, I must say that I am both thrilled and afraid. I think it will be a wonderful opportunity for us to learn from each other’s experiences, to share ideas and materials, to build knowledge and develop our problem-solving skills together. But I can’t avoid that awkward feeling that sometimes I jump into too many things at the same time and will have to multitask every second of the day to keep it all going.

It’s my first time using Nicenet, but I don’t envisage any problems there. I am used to working with the Moodle platform and I have already created a classroom in Edu 2.0, so I don’t suppose it will be much different.

Although I love technology, I have a confession to make: this is my second attempt at blogs. I created one, some time ago, but I never really felt committed to it. Maybe I was a bit lazy, maybe I didn’t believe I could reach so many people as I do using social networks. I use Facebook a lot with a wide group of teachers and also with my students,  and that is where I share most of the websites and tools I use, where I sometimes write my own reflections and where I often share my students’ work (with due permission, of course). And then there are the online platforms that I like to use when our Internet connection is good.

I see this new attempt as my real opportunity to create a blog that will not only add meaning to my teaching practice and to the work of our group but also one that may continue after this course ends.

One last thing: I am happy to be part of such a diverse group and to meet people from so many different parts of the world. I’m sure it will be most enriching and that it will make each one of us a different and better person.

In case you want to know more about me as a teacher, you'll find it on pages 16 and 17 of In English Digital. The link is here:

http://issuu.com/britishcouncilportugal/docs/inenglishdigital_01/1

Hello!

The adventure is about to start! Still unsure and not knowing what will be expected of me, I am eager to start and learn. A teacher's role extends well beyond teaching; it is mainly a commitment to lifelong learning, to a constant attempt at improving one's skills and knowledge. Let's hope we will all learn a lot, both through the content of the course and through our shared experiences.