My Learning Experience by MarĂa Eva Cruz DĂaz Introduction First of all I would like to say that I enjoyed the whole experience of being enrolled in this Diploma. It is the first time I have an online learning course. It has considerably exceeded my expectations, particularly because of its practicality and relevance to my teaching duties at secondary school. To approach Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the way we have done in this course specially focusing on Information Technology in Education (ITE) has been a happy discovery which I already started exploiting within my every day class activities with children. I gained soon after starting the course a compelling interest towards developing my technical abilities regarding computer technologies. I can honestly say they have improved quite significantly over the last few months. The benefits of being part of this course do not limit to improving different aspects of my communication skills and my use of new technologies. They will soon reach my students at the classroom making their learning more fun and exciting.
Cultural learning awareness Being acquainted with foreign Culture is important when visiting or living in another country. There are, of course, plenty of differences in values, attitudes and behaviors. For every culture, even our own, many assumptions and perceptions about life and society are learnt early on in our life. They are expressed in the way we behave and interact with others. Since these differences can be sometimes profound and not intuitive they can lead to misunderstandings and confrontations that must be avoided at all rate. This can be done if we develop a good and sound understanding of these cultural differences, and overall, if we value the importance of cultural diversity and respect traditions and beliefs from others.
I keep deepening my own understanding of English culture which I had already obtained through the experience of living and working in England some years ago. I know my students will be most likely exposed to American culture and language, therefore I keep learning about this country and also about some others like Canada, Australia as well as members of the Commonwealth. I love talking to my pupils about English speaking communities and sharing with them my own experiences when living in England. I talk to them about English traditions and idiosyncrasy, about their society and history and even about the weather, one of the top small talk subjects they would very likely face If they meet an English person. I try to promote understanding and respect for differences and point out at politeness and how it is important to achieve an effective communication. They usually listen closely to what I explain to them showing interest and curiosity.
New teaching strategies discovered It is important to realize that we have to apply appropriate technologies to instructional tasks in order to enrich the learning of technology based skills. It is clear to me we have to adapt these technologies to our own needs with a visionary and collaborative attitude, using multimedia tools to support learning of our students. We, as teachers, must face the acquisition of new technologies with courage and not hesitate to include them in every day classroom activities. We have to be practitioners of what we advocate. Communication technologies support and potentiate giving and receiving feedback beyond traditional methods. For example, allowing students to revise their work progressively. Digital tools expand the walls of the classroom and enable the integration of resources, scientific data, library collections, videos, films an so on from around the world. These pictures of the real world context coming from other cultures give students a broader understanding of their own environment and motivate them to further develop their own skills and education.
On exposing students to new information technologies like the internet care must be taken through, because children need guidance on exploring and exploiting interactive sites such as Facebook, Flickr, La mansion del ingles, Bookr, etc. I have already put into practice several activities from these websites, my students displayed a keen interest and enjoyed using the computer to practice their English. To be able to use interactive content from the websites cited above, it is required to make several adaptations in order to focus students on the main learning objectives according to the curriculum.
Reading teaching strategies Reading is challenging for students at early levels. Especially if they experience, as many of mine do, a lack of interest and find it hard because they are not used to read, not even in our mother tongue. This state of affairs undoubtedly represents a big challenge for teachers. Nonetheless, reading strategies learnt in this module can be of real help. Firstly, I will consider including images illustrating the main aspects of a text. They can give hints about how to interpret the text they are reading. My own experience on one of the websites activities was indeed fun, and effective. The use of interactive word games, I would think, can make the difference allowing me to grab their attention and for them to enjoy the process of learning. I think word games are neutral and should appeal equally to girls and boys. I still keep some reservations about multiple choice questions, but I think they might just be one of many evaluation instruments. What I liked a lot about the activities in one of the websites is that they get immediate feedback when answering the questions, so they can revise or analyze what they’ve done wrong promptly. It will also allow them to question themselves about their own learning. Hopefully accompanied with a bit of encouragement they will be more proactive and engage in the activity demanding deeper explanations.
Listening teaching strategies Among all activities I have applied in the classroom, listening and producing lyrics from popular songs seem to be effective and fun for children. I have had the chance to organize karaoke contests and children take it very seriously. Making them part of the logistics and letting them to take active part on decisions pays well to the significance of what they learn, they can see an immediate use of the language and appreciate their own accomplishments .
As for my own experience within this course, listening teaching strategies were as challenging as interesting. I spent a lot of time developing all the assignments. They helped me to improve my ability to understand and process what I listened to. Have had use real materials such as radio and T.V programs made this task more appealing to me. Also I have widely profited from all these recordings regarding minimal pairs, word stress, intonation, pauses and rhythm as well as tag questions, I will definitely exploit them with my students together with the reading along stories so they will be completely involved in listening activities and tasks in order to develop their listening skills, but being honest, they will find a hard time trying to make sense of this recordings as they haven't had the level to closely follow a real conversation or the rhythm of TV and radio programs.
Speaking teaching strategies The speaking teaching strategies to develop oral skills were very practical and useful for me. The engagement into authentic and relevant activities helped me to become more autonomous and self directed. I had to plan and practice a lot with Audacity software before I sent my recording assignments to the site. I did lots of reading and drafts to do the Voice Threat recordings and to get ready for the chat sessions using MSN to discuss different topics with other peers. The most remarkable activity was learning how to write a story and the use of the “Self assessment� rubric to see how I was improving. I have found Audacity software especially very useful to improve my own English skills and when teaching as well. This versatile program can be used to record and edit audio, convert old tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, and export audio files into MP3. With Audacity, students can cut, copy, split, and mix sounds together, change the speed or pitch of a recording, and apply other effects such as noise removal and sound amplification. These features allow us to create high quality audio files which can be used to practice skills such as listening, speaking, and pronunciation. I already have used this software in the classroom and my students loved to learn how to use this software and they were overly excited about hearing their own voices and those of their peers. Hopefully in the future they will be motivated enough to take advantage of the great array of features this program offers.
Writing teaching strategies I have seen my writing improved by studying all parts of speech, sentence structure and composition. It is well recognized that writing improves when reading and we did a fair amount of readings during this course. The exercises and tests from the websites contributed too. Useful and motivating activities and tools that helped me improve my ability to write were those related to write Tall tales. The use of templates can greatly support first incursions on writing. I plan to use this site and exploit the use of writing templates to assist development of my student’s skills. I am considering designing activities like writing poems and making a book of poems using Bookr, .making a comic strip file using Makebeliefs and creating a visual story with pictures using Photo peach. The article “How to write short fiction” from a remarkable site called “Scholastic” became a reference guide I put it into practice to do my own writing. It showed me how to get ideas to write a short fictional story, how to get these ideas down on paper, how to review my work and get some feedback from other people and how to edit and check my writing. Sharing and publishing my final work in the forum to be read for the participants and get feedback from my tutor turned out to be an exciting and motivating experience.
About ICT tools The use of ICT tools for collaborative projects to improve English skills is currently the focus of much interest and development for teachers. Many interesting new tools are appearing which make online collaborative projects a realistic option for learning. The Internet can be used for many collaborative activities such as holding meetings, ongoing discussions, working on specific topics, sharing information and a range of other tasks. I enjoyed using the following tools through the course. Voice chat, enabled us to speak with other partners. Text chat was used for having a topic-discussion. Teleconference was not possible for more than two people, I think, a different software may be needed for a real teleconference. We were successful though, at having a video call with a partner.
I would like to point out that ICT tools have a positive impact when looking for developing different language skills. Apart from those mentioned above we had the opportunity to experience Audacity software, VoiceThreat, Bookr, Makebeliefs and PhotoPeach which were not only fun but very effective when targeting secondary level students. I’ve done already some pilot lessons with my pupils, which show to be very interested and grateful of being experiencing new technologies in the classroom. We should not forget though that technology is only a means and not to rely blindly on it to cover all aspects of children's learning. Old fashion methods still apply, so we should combine them to enhance them either way.
Lesson planning Lesson plans are essential guides for our lessons. They contain detailed descriptions regarding student learning objectives, instructional procedures, the required materials, and some written descriptions of how the students will be evaluated. Acquiring the skill of creating our own lesson plans is far more valuable than being able to use lesson plans developed by others. Most of the time we don't need to discover the wheel, and it is good enough just to adapt those already provided by experts. But critical thinking should always be part of this process, and we must make the most of them by considering the background of the children, their environment, needs, expectations and over all trying to make them part of their own learning. It takes thinking and practice to develop this skill and it will probably be a long process. But taking the time to adapt lesson plans is a wise decision and make us better and more professional teachers. Class dynamics will move drastically and promptly towards technology based learning. Using IT resources is soon to become the status quo within educational institutions in Mexico. Therefore, we should be up to the challenge to meet the new standards expected from secondary school teachers.
Conclusion Internet and computers are becoming powerful tools for teachers to assist students learning. There are plenty of resources there to engage students in authentic and relevant activities for them. They become more autonomous and self-directed in their learning, leading them towards accuracy and fluency in meaningful contexts, as well as, developing the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. They also develop their skills in the use of new technologies that will make them more competitive to face globalisation and interdependent economies. Finally I would like to say that I have develop my technical abilities regarding Computer technology and I am working harder to learn more about how to use all these skills in the classroom. I was fully motivated through the entire course and I did most of the activities patiently and enthusiastically even if sometimes I was rushing a bit to meet the deadlines. I certainly will continue exploiting all these online resources and taking actions in order to improve my teaching skills, introducing new technologies into the classroom and carrying on adapting lessons plans to congruently synthesize class activities that are attractive for students, relevant to their learning objectives, suitable for their cultural awareness and let them practice computer literacy.