Farewell reflections:Recollection of the highlights of this course through my eyes

This entry will be a test for me: What has remained as knowledge or skills? How has my attitude changed towards the use of technology in my teaching?

 I started with the basics; search engines (noodletools, Googlescholar, infotopia, DuckDuckGo), good practices of seaching the web both leading to practical, useful, guaranteeing sustainable use of the web.

Then came my acquaintance with Blogger, delicious, scoopit, Nicenet. With Nicenet I had my classroom where I was able to discuss with my colleagues, exchange views, share ideas, questions. With Blogger I had my personal territory to reflect, write, share comments. Delicious and scoop.it to store, save or publish resources that can be of use to me and whoever might be concerned.

I had the tools but what for? I needed a purpose. Vague at start? It takes its distinct form with the ABCD method. How can I put this objective into practice? I had some tools available. Can they help? What literature has to say? Readings on CALL like  The pedagogy-technology interface in Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training or  E-mailing to improve EFL Learners' Reading and Writing Abilities: Taiwan Experience to mention just two and sites such as ESL Independent Study Lab , Many things , one-stop English  gave me a lot of ideas about what is on offer and how to use technology. My students need to be interested, their desire to learn is a prerequisite. How can they be motivated? PBL is a method that keeps most, if not all, students engaged and then I need clear guidelines and explicitly defined  assessment criteria that don't keep the target out of sight!
So much work and I haven't started, yet, poor me! Don't worry,  Rubistar will aleviate the anxiety derived from having to designing assessment rubrics and if a WebQuest can guide students with their research and easily lead them to the completion of a project zunal can be a helping hand and an interactive power point slide show can keep even a big class on edge. However the point is how I will make my students autonomous and independent learners and my teaching should address their different learning styles and give them opportunities to open up and discover the world. Skype, websites, wikis, virtual classrooms can stimulate students to move ahead. And there are resources to turn to if you are in search of activities to match to your students profile like Teacher Tap.

A fruitful journey in the world of webskills. I leave the course wiser, more knowledgeable, and grateful.

I am sorry, Robert, this time I can't answer your questions. I can't say what was most relevant, most useful, or what was missing. There may be things to learn, how else it could be, but I feel the water has taken its course. So I don't feel any awe anymore and I can move to discover many more about technology.


Thank you so much!