Hi, Everyone. Congratulations on a successful end of the E-teacher course. I have enjoyed working with and learning from you all! Thank you for being such wonderful classmates! Thank you, Courtney, for this interesting, productive and effective class. I learned more about integrating technology into the classroom during the past 10 weeks than I have in the past 10 years. I am so thankful that I was given this opportunity!
As a teacher, I always hope that students will answer honestly when asked for feedback on a class, so I hope that my blog will be as honest and helpful for future development as possible. So, here goes.
Most Useful Things I learned in this class:
1. Blogger: Setting up this blog for reflection was very helpful. I hope to continue the blog even after this course finishes.
2. I loved accessing all types of platforms such as our class site, Wiki page, Nicenet and the blog rolls.
3. RubiStar: What a great tool for creating rubrics, and it can easily be made with students’ input this way! I also loved reading about alternative assessment.
4. A-B-C-D Outcomes and Bloom’s Taxonomy: Writing outcomes are key to any course or program. I learned how to better write outcomes not only for my class but for my entire Centre as well! I also attended some professional development workshops offered by CTLE at my university on this topic, and I was able to contribute a lot since I had learned about this with my fellow E-teachers first!
5. Independent learning: This topic holds true and dear to my heart, so I loved learning about what others do with IL and how they address autonomy in their classrooms.
6. I loved all of Deborah Healey’s stuff!
7. Final Project: I love the step-by-step approach we took and how we were forced to implement the project (action research) into our classes. It also tied in nicely with Project-based learning! I also enjoyed reading the final projects of previous students of this course. I loved working with my partner too!
8. Technology-enhanced lesson plan: There were many good readings about integrating technology into specific classes for reading, speaking, grammar, etc. I learned a lot of new sites that I could use for this. Then, I created my own lesson plan, which was very helpful.
9. Interactive powerpoints: I loved creating powerpoints and learning about how to make them more engaging for students. I tried a couple either in class or during presentations I made, and they were big successes! I also made a Jeopardy game and a Prezi, which were fun to make and fun for students!
10. Wallwisher: I love all the applications you can make with this!
11. Online exercise generators: I like the Hotpots and other sites we explored. I think Anvill might be really helpful for a speaking class (even though I did not try it yet).
12. Learning styles: It is important to know students’ learning styles when creating lessons, so as to address the needs of all students.
Least Useful Things I learned in this class:
1. LoTiConnection: The Digital Age Survey was relevant for high school teachers but not for anyone else. The questions were not applicable to university EFL settings. I did like the “Best Of” series, though.
2. Noodletools: I liked the possibility of using different search engines, but I think I am just too lazy to do that. I still use only Google!
3. Delicious: I definitely think this site is probably useful, but it was hard for me to use and to get practical use of. I think with repeated exposure, it might grow on me. However, for the past 10 week period, I did not really use it as much as my classmates did.
4. Working with large classes was not a useful discussion for me because all of my classes are small. I think that I already do the suggestions about making classes more interactive that were given here.
5. Webquests: I liked the concept behind them, but they might not be so applicable to university settings. I think they would work well with elementary and secondary school students better.
Things I would have liked to learn in this class:
1. I want to learn how to use corpus analysis and concordances in the language classroom. I spoke with Douglas Bieber about this but found no clear solutions even from those discussions.
2. Video creation and editing
3. Voice recognition programs
Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I would give it a 10 from a scale of 1-10. Most of all, I enjoyed meeting my classmates. I feel like I made a connection with several people and learned so much from them!
Well, I am off to Shantou, China for 5 days and then New Zealand for 3 weeks for winter break. I hope you all have a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Hope to see you again in 2013.
Evelyn
