End of Course Reflections

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