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!