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!