Week 10: If there's anything I won't use????

Is there anything I won't use?

To me, I was succesful with all of the contents and tasks that were assigned along the course, and I think this is due to the clear and specific instructions we always received on what was expected from us to do. This together with the readigns which were carefully selected to be connected to the weekly tasks helped me to have an excellent balance between theory and practice. If I have to higlight some contents as especially sucessful, it would be the ABCD objective, the padlet post, the assesing technology integration, and the final project.

In terms of the usefulness of the material covered, I must say again that all will be useful. However, I am specifically planning to implement in my lessons soon the blogs, the technology enhanced lesson plans, the creation of exercises to be used online or offline, and (my favorite) the Padlet postings.

I cannot say that any of the contents studied was irrelevant because about 90% of them were totally new to me, and I have even started to use some of them in my classes such as the delicious page and the alternative search engines.

So, to the question if there's anything I won't use, I can say NOTHING at all!

Thank you very much Donna and all the people working with you at University of Oregon for setting up such a wonderful course for so many teachers around the world.

If one day any of you come to El Salvador, do not book a hotel because my house is your place to stay and you will be more than welcome!

Warmest regards

Lorena

El Salvador

Week 9: The New Side of Learning Styles

Hello all!

I enjoyed very much the readings this week because they not only reminded me the theories about learning styles and multiple intelligences but also allowed me to update myself regarding the new research on these topics. 

After reading the article entitled “Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits,” I felt the burden need to put some of these ideas in practice in my teaching. I hope to be able to do it soon. Actually, I did put an advice in practice for myself. On Friday, I was reading an article about listening skills. I read for about 10 minutes sitting in my office…when I felt a little exhausted I stood and went to a different place. I can say that it definetely helped me to be more efficient and better concentrated with my reading.    Now, I want to find ways to apply some of these new and revolutionary trends to support better my students’ learning process.

Lorena

Week 5: Rubrics, PBL, Technological tools and more...

Hello,

This week continued to be highly productive to me. I am impressed by the friendly interface of http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ To build up a rubric was very easy, and I like the flexibility it has for you to adapt the rubric in whatever way you want. Then reading and talking about Project Based Learning reminded me how meaningful this type of assignment is. PBL is one alternative assessment tool that may cause a great impact on our students' learning.

Lastly, to determine a learning problem from my classroom and a potential solution helped me to explore a wide variety of technological tools. I must confess that again, I felt a little overwhelmed for the quantity of tools available online. However, I am eager to try some of them gradually.

Let's enjoy our week 6...

Lorena
El Salvador

Week 4: The Discovery

I feel simply impressed by the amount of information available on the net related to the things I am interested for. This week, I discovered the ESL Independent Study Lab -Writing at http://legacy.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/writing.html

This page has an excellent list of websites to do all sort of activities to develop writing skills and sub-skills. However, once I started exploring things here and there, I realized the websites have much more than writing. For example, Tune in to Learning http://www.tv411.org/ has not only excellent writing interactive lessons but also Reading and Vocabulary and more.

Now, for some reason I feel beyond impressed a little overwhelmed because I have the sensation that what I have discovered is just a microscopic piece of the huge immensity of things to be found on the net.

Week 3: Delicious mmmm...

This week I discovered the nice website Delicious.com. I must say that at the very beggining I felt kind of reluctant because I did not understand the purpose of putting together my favorite websites in one website page. I thought it was unnecessary because recently I realized that through my gmail account, google accesses to all my bookmarks no matter what computer I am using.
Then I looked at Donna's sample, and I got it! Aha! The purpose of creating a Delicious page is to share it. I think it is a great tool as you can easily create a collection of your favorite websites and share it with whoever you want and have access to it quickly. I've started my collection and from now on all I need to do in order to share it is to give people the url of my delicious page https://delicious.com/teacherlore

With the other activity about reading one of the sample projects, I was able to clarify myself regarding how my final report will look like, and the content it needs to include. Also, I learned a lot from Aleyda's experience such as ideas to implement a technological tool, achievable objectives, and general considerations to take into account when formulating my project.

I continue to be fully thankful for being part of this course.

Regards

Lorena

Week 2 Reflection

Week 2 is gone, and it brought amazing things to be learned.

First, I discovered the impressive world of search engiges in which you can find information from all types of sources. I truly appreciate this discovery as it will become from now one of my best elements in my teaching tools kit. I am sure I will continue to discover many more useful things as I explore the Noodletools website.

Second, I read about and practiced an effective and simple way to write learning objectives. The use of the mnemonic strategy ABCD makes almost impossible to forget the four element a well-stated objective should have (Audience, Behavior, Condition, and Degree). This strategy will be useful not only for me as I write my own objective but also as I teach my students (future teachers) to plan their lessons. The negative connotation most teachers have regarding writing objectives can be beated if we apply this strategy. Thus, this knowledge has come to stay with me as long as I am a teacher. 

Finally, I wrote a description of one of my classes in which a technological tool could be implemented. Now that I think about it, I realize that I hardly ever reflect on the nature of the courses I teach. This exercise has helped me to think on the type of students I have and the access and limitations we have to computers and Internet.

Lorena

Week 1: What I learned this week

Whew!!!

What a week! I am absolutely amazed not only with the quantity of tools available for free online but also with the fact that these tools can be efficientely used for learning purposes.

I like very much the nicenet ICA...even more! I did not know the term Internet Classroom Assistant (ICA). I think it is a wonderful way to keep students interested to discuss the contents of a class, to mention just one of the possible things to do with the ICA.

I also learned that I can have my own course website. I enjoyed exploring our class website because it is nicely organized and contains all information students in this class need in order to know what to expect and what to do.

Last, but not least, I created this blog. I had tried blogging before but did not do a lot about it. I'm looking forward to working weekly on this, so I can start using it in my own classes soon.

Week 1 is gone :)