Week 10 : Reflection

Finally, it's the very last week of this web-skills course.
During our course, what topics were most successful? Most useful for you? Which tools will you use in your classes? Which, if any, do you think were not relevant to what you do or will do? What other tools might we have covered or would you suggest that we could have looked at?

During this course, I found it the most useful to get to know so many tools that I could use for my classroom. Some of them were

Nicenet.org
Blackboard
Webquests
Delicious.com
Rubrics
ABCD Format of objectives(GOOD!)

 I still try to use them now, and will definitely use them in my own class. Especially, I would like to use Webquests to integrate different tasks in a row and to give students opportunities to get the feeling of achieving something through this Webquest.

Since the curriculum is strictly based on the national curriculum and textbook, I might have benefited a bit more if I had had a chance to integrate textbook material and technology. I think this is probably what I should focus on in the near future.


The assignments of this week were...

1. To leave a comment to future participants
2. To describe my own teaching in terms of technology integration using two criteria.

Firstly, I came up with some pieces of advice  before, during, and after the course.

Prior to the course, I wanted to recommend the future participants to check the requirements carefully before the course begins, tell others about taking this course to get some help, to prepare a thick and sturdy binder, and manage time in advance so that you can have a quiet time.

During the course, I would suggest them they check the due date clearly, prioritize your daily tasks, not being reluctant to ask for help, be positive and don't give up. Also, I wanted to say that it would be beneficial to organize your folder (or file) for future uses, maintain health(physically and mentally) and start doing it when you are confused.

After the course, I thought reviewing is the most important to remind oneself of what he/she learned, and to use what you learned right away. (even if it is the smallest thing) Also, sharing with others seemed very important.

Next, as for describing my own teaching, I realized that my teaching was a bit far from the the most favorable style that I have imagined. Having finished this course, I decided to make myself better at integrating technology into my own classroom.

Week 9 Reflection

We are heading towards the tenth week of the course, and I am so proud that all the teachers at this course are finally ready to submit the final plan or project. With great help from Linda from Hungary, I could better my plan. Without her, I could not have improved my plan. I could feel that she was so skilled and she had a thorough insights to picture the class in my plan.

Since this was the first week of the new semester at school, I am having a 'crazy' week getting ready for a new semester as a homeroom teacher, English teacher and a teacher working at student discipline teacher. Luckily, in less than two weeks, this 'working and studying at the same time' lif e would be over. I would never forget thlis wonderful experience with great teachers. :)

Anyway!!!

This week, the topic of the discussion was about different learning styles. Since I think I am a reflective, sensing, verbal and sequential learner, sometimes I find it uneasy to deal with active, intuitive, visual, and global learners. 

So, for students whose learning styles are different from mine, (and for my students who might be struggling with their verbal, reflective, sensing teacher:)) I thought about ways to meet those students' needs. First was Pictionary. Pictionary is not a proper name for a dictionary from a certain publisher. Rather, it is an activity that students make a real dictionary of the unit by using pictures. They can either draw the picture or download from the Internet. Anyway, this is more suitable for visual learners who like to express using pictures and in a creative way.

Second was making a video-clip and using online discussion board. As there are many student with different learning styles, I thought it would be good to give chances for both visual and verbal learners using two different sorts of learning styles. So, if I get students to make a video and comments on it on a discussion board, visual learners would experience verbal learning and vice versa.

Lastly, I thought about infographics. For some students who feel comfortable with summarizing(analyzing) texts and describing it with graphics, an info-graphic would be one of the good tools to use.

Also, personally, if a teacher tries to use activities using different learning styles, the teacher will be able to indirectly experience different ranges of learning styles.