Complete your Final Forums using the "comment" buttons on ONE of the following project pages -- Mini Projects 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 by Wednesday, November 27th.
Then the second forum is to critique the course on what was useful, and how it may be improved for future groups which should be posted under this blog post by using the "comment" button.
You
should review the instructions in the course syllabus on how to do your
forums as well as the notes found under the instructions to the first
forum. Don't forget to describe at least 2 examples of how you might use the mini project in your work as a teacher.
I think this is one of the best courses I've taken so far, because you do make the things and theory is actually in the background, so you LEARN for real. Now, I think the focus is on technology, thus content per se shouldn't be so rigorously graded as it's been. Why do I say that? because you have to spend A LOT of hours -most of them going towards content like making activities for instance, and not towards the designing of the projects- in small percentage projects, and the course ends up "draining" your energy for the rest of courses, and since it is a project per week one as student eventually loses his enthusiasm, and I'm not speaking only for myself but based on what I've seen from my classmates.
ReplyDeleteSumming up, the course is great because of everything you learn and create, but a friendlier evaluation for content would do an amazing improvement to students' enthusiasm, since it wouldn't make you spend so much time in that part and you could focus it in learning how to use these technological tools per se, which is the main goal of the course.
For me I really enjoyed this course, I think we learned a LOT of manners and tools for teaching. It is very important for us because we need to know how make our classes better and funniest. We as teachers have to be conscious that our students love technology so it´s our responsability to be updated in order to fit in their way of learning. I think that the course is very nice and helpful but there are MANY things to do that takes many hours and job and the porcentage given is TOO low. Also sometimes we loose points because we misunderstood the instructions or we really did not know how to do something. I think that teacher must take a little bit time of the class to explain ALL and be so clear what she wants. But to be honest even though we spent many hard hours working I loved this course and the most important thing is that I really learned a lot, I feel this time was not wasted because it is great knowledge now we have.
ReplyDeleteAs a student, I could say that I really learned very important information during this course. All the ideas and tools we learned to use for our future works are helpfull. I already used some of the ideas I got during classes with my own students, like the videos we made for the GoAnimate project, also, the poster we did in the first day of class was a very useful idea for one of my classes. I think that this course has been one of the most organized courses I've taken during my carreer. The communication flow between the teacher and the students was something that helped me to stay linked to projects and to the whole course. That is one of the most important aspects I learned here, to be close to my students and to keep in touch with them. I don't know if there is something I'd change to the course because for me it was easy to complete all the tasks and to get the ideas of the teacher in every class.
ReplyDeleteThis course has definitely helped me in discovering new tools to use in my future as a teacher, the way they have been introduced and and how they connect to each other was a good planning work from Tamatha as the organizer of the projects. The fact that we had to create teaching tools from the technological sites or software instead of just reading theory about how to do it is a better and more meaningful of learning. Now, I think that the number of evaluations in this course was too much and even though at the beginning of the course I was very enthusiastic about all the things we might learn, it was sucked little by little as the course marched on. This amount of evaluations lead to a diminution of their % value which ended up in projects which took a lot of hours and effort that were worth 6%. I know that the percentage is not the most important thing but then if we compare the relation of percentage with time spent in the projects, and then it stacks up with others courses projects which are worth more and take the same or less time and we give priority to them, affecting our performance on this course projects. I also think that the instructions were not clear enough and that in most of the projects we were in the dark with what we really had to do.Summarizing: It was a course in which we learned a lot, the projects were organized an well interconnected but the number of projects and the hours/percentage relation was unfair and the instructions were to simple and sometime not clear enough. Thank you for the course, I learned a lot and it will be helpful for the future.
ReplyDeleteEverything about this course was really useful. I have to say that a few teachers really use technology as it was used in this course and it really eased the course development. Technology really has come to change the way of perceiving and learning subjects as it was mentioned by Esperanza Torres (2010) in her article “Advantages and disadvantages of technology and computing”, the development of technology and communications revolutionize the way of working, learning and communication.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I really liked the course organization and also the balance kept between theory and practice. The course went since reading some copies with updated information and new terms, to using new tools for the first time. I must recognize that I had never used most of the tools of this course and sometimes I didn’t know about the existence of some of them. For me, it was really useful to face technology. When I say “face” it is because in despite of the fact that I am young, it is a challenge for me and I’m not into technology. People always think (it is my case) that some tools are difficult to use but we do not have to generalize because there are some of them that are really easy to use. Now, I have a different perspective about using technology for teaching, I really like how technology helps to organize in a better way all the necessary aspects to develop a successful course. Now, with a different perspective, I have to recognize that I’ll take into consideration working with a blog, which I consider is one of my favorite projects. I should also mention the Podcast project, it is really useful because the students can record themselves and try to correct their pronunciation mistakes and finally, the Goanimate video. I really had fun when I was developing the video with my partners as well as I enjoyed watching other videos. If it was that way for me, I can not imagine how it can be for a group of High School students.
On the other hand, what I’d like to change about the course for future groups maybe is to be a little bit more strict with the time to be spent during the presentations. I consider that almost no one respected such given time and that’s why sometimes we had to leave later than the established schedule. And finally, I think that some of the tools used or pages suggested for developing a specific project sometimes didn’t fulfill the requirements asked by the professor and of course, it made it difficult to develop some points of a project. For example, a free version of goanimate videos which just allowed to make a 2 minutes video (which is a very short time). Another example is that with the very last final project, some of the suggested sites do not allow to upload a Power Point Presentation and that is one of the things we have to do in order to get all the points of the project. Of course, some tools like the goanimate video had excellent resources but the thing is that we had to pay and we could not do it.
In general terms, throughout this course I have learned how to use a lot of new technological tools such as hang outs, blogs, podcasts and so on… that I would definitely like to implement in my classes, because they would help me to make my classes more dynamic and interesting for the students. Besides, for me this course is one of the most important because we as future teachers need to learn how integrate technology into our curriculum due to the fact that technology is in every aspect of life and education is not the exception. But also, I would like to add that this course will be even more helpful if the students would have a little bit more of guidance during the classes when learning how to use the different tools instead of spending the whole class presenting the projects, this sometimes is tiring for students provoking that students lose the interest and get distracted. As well it could be important for the teacher to use part of the class to explain in detail what each of the projects is about and what will be the steps they have to follow in order to avoid misunderstandings that could affect the development of the projects.
ReplyDeleteThroughout this course, we can explore our creativity in ways we are not use to, since we discover a lot of different multimedia tools we can employ as future teachers. Also, this course represents a great opportunity for us to start thinking differently and give our students new and distinct manners to learn in order for them to feel more comfortable in class. Technology is increasing day by day and we must be updated knowing that our students are strongly engaged with technology and internet devices, and we can use their motivation towards it to teach a new language. However, I think the teacher should worry even more about helping us to understand how to use each tool, I consider it is very important for us to begin seeing our teacher using these tools with us (students), at this point we will get familiar with each device, and after we have experienced the different ways to learn through these tools, we can start using them to teach.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely this course is a very good way to discover and learn new tools we can use in our classes, we could even discover unknown features of some tools we thougt we already mastered in their use. After taking this course we cannot say that there are not creative ways to teach the topics that we will develop in classes, this because in this course we've learned a whole new set of teaching techniques that can be used taking advantage of technology. Now, about what to change in the course, I would personally have to say that it has to be the evaluation. Why? Because it is very tiring to work in mini projects for almost each of the weeks. I think that for some projects it can be most useful to explain how to create it in the class and to create one example with the contributions of everybody. I say this, becuase some times it has happened that we don't really get how to do something in a project due to reasons like only presenting projects in a class and not talking about specific details of a project.
ReplyDeleteFor the rest, I would say this has been a very useful course. The communication teacher-students has been a key aspect to keep the rythm throughout the semester.
The course IO6042 (Communication Techniques for Teaching a Foreign Language) has been a useful for me as future teacher and current L2 student in different aspects. First and very important, within this class I was introduced to two methodologies I wasn´t aware of: “blended learning and CALL”, which are teaching methods that are more than necessary in today´s education. These two methodologies provide me a new perspective on how to address my future teaching. Second, I got a perspective on how necessary is for the teacher to be constantly updating himself in technological matters, the more the teacher knows the better students´ learning is. Third, I was pioneer to a variety of web applications I had no clue how to use before; the knowledge gained in each of those is invaluable for me as person and teacher.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to what could be improved for future groups I only have one point to mention in regards to proportion. There amount of mini-projects to develop is not proportional to the time the semester lasts, and the points each project is given don’t match the work and time dedicated to each project. Of course, I am saying this as student, as a future teacher, I have to say that learning all these techniques is very useful and necessary. You know I love your classes! hahaha
I have to admit that I didn’t like technology, maybe because I am not a technology person or because I don’t really know how to use it; I never thought it could be use this way, technology used with the specific purpose of teaching. Now I can say, that I like technology, and this course was the first step to incorporate technology in my future lessons, and I really understood that technology is all around and we cannot just stop using it, or not using it at all. The blog, the wiki, the voicethread, the podcast, the goanimate video, are definitely going to be included in my plans, and I am sure students will really like them. It is a shame that not every single teacher use these tools because they don’t know about the existence of such helpful tools, but now that we know they exist is our duty to improve our own technological skills to make things easy for our students and for ourselves. The only thing, personally, is that we had to make so many things in (sometimes) one week that it was impossible to keep the track of the other courses we are taking, and at the same time carry out good projects, so that we were some times, half proficient in this course and in the others. Also the percentage assigned to each project was below the amount of time and effort we spent on the projects; I think that assigning more percentage to each project and to take some percentage off of the final project will help, but that is just an idea.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that the course presented some new and interesting ways to teach different topics, vocabulary, etc. It showed us how easy and accesible is to create content for our students and present it in an interesting and customized way. However, what I liked the most about the course was the fact that every group had different ideas and proposals when exposing the same project. Some groups presented their projects with fun elements, while others used more profesional approaches but always keeping them interesting to catch the listeners' attention. Also, I liked the idea of providing feedback after each presentation for us to improve our classmates' projects and, of course, our own.
ReplyDeleteIt was nice to work as a team to achieve different goals and to be able to see how different we can be as teachers and as persons, and how we all can contribute to each other's learning. My only advice would be to reduce the amount of reading content (specially at the beginning of the course); I know that the theoretical part is always important and useful, but it could be substitued with more videos, audio ad other stuff that can be useful too.
It also reminded me how easy and fun technology can be if we used in the correct way. Thanks for that!
This course was a really useful one. I think that as teachers we need to update and try to implement technology in our classrooms since it has already become part of our normal lives. All the projects we learn to create during this class are really useful when teaching a second language for two reasons. First of all, it is a great support for teachers since they can develop the activities according to the grade level, the structures they are teaching and also to limit the amount of input according to the topic we are reviewing. Eventhough there are many online resources available, not all of them meet all the requirements specific group can have, so we could adapt our listening excercises, worksheets, videos and websites that satisfy our students' needs. Secondly, teachers can enhance students' participation in the creation of their own projects such as videos, recordings which will promote a participative role in the classroom were students are the builders of their own learning. Finally, the most important lesson from this course, it is that all these materials are really useful but they should not substitute the teacher's labor, instead we are developing blending learning where there is a balance between the activities carried out in the class, and the students active participation.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason why I liked this course was that it showed us different tools to create our own materials for the lessons. Now that you can simply download materials from any website, it is very important that we, teachers, create our own materials, customized for our students necessities and level.
ReplyDeleteAlso, creativity is put to test with these tools. We could use a blog just like textbooks are used in a regular class, but that is the least we should do. These tools should be complemented with activities that get students to analyse and internalize the knowledge from the topics we are teaching.
In my case, the readings content was not useful for the creation of the projects, mainly because as soon as you understand what CALL is about, the objectives for every tool and project are very clear.
In this course I learned a lot, even though some projects were driving me crazy, I did my best and they worked out at the end. I´ve gotten many ideas for future lessons, and we have now materials for a specific topic, that for sure will be taught for us. I love the flexibility of the schedule, because when you start working life is not as easy as it used to be. I did not like several things about the course basically because it is based on technology, and I am NOT good at it. I still prefer to create printed materials, do kinesthetic activities and play games in class, but I understand how appealing technological devices are for adolescents, children and some adults. So there is no choice! We have to learn and improve these new tools to support our students in their learning process and provide them the best of us. This includes creative and attractive lessons. One thing that I consider should be changed is the methodology, because we were asked to do projects that were simple, but seemed very tough at the beginning. I consider this happened because there were no demonstrations in class about how to do certain things. Instructions were only written and sometimes this leads to misunderstandings.
ReplyDeleteThis course is a must in the major. Technology is a great part in our lives, from TVs to computers. ICTs changed the way people communicate and learn. In this course, we learned how to introduce all these rechnologies in our classroom and it is really useful. When one look at most of the lesson plans made by partners, they all of them include some type of technological device in it. All the mini projects are very interesting and allow us to do new things in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteThe methodology for teaching the course could have been better. The professor explained a little of the project in class, then we had to have copies or to watch some tutorial videos and develop the project based on that. But those guides might not be enough; some very specific doubts arose during the development of the projects. The proposal is that the class previous to every project, the professor explains in detail how to make the project. For example, the teacher together with students develops a wikispace. In this way, we all are learning how to make a wikispace and many douvts would be clarified.
The use of technology nowadays is not a luxury action it is a necessity to survive in a world fully of new technological devices. Teachers are the most affected by this technology because we have to impress students in our classes. I believe that this course has been very helpful in to improve my technological skills and to get new teaching techniques for future classes. In some ways all the projects challenged me to manipulate websites or programs never used before which in my opinion is very useful and important for future projects and ideas to the teaching process.I think that two clear examples that are going to be use in my future work is the Blog Project and the Wiki one because in a blog teacher is able to present vocabulary and to give student assignments to bring for the next class. The Wiki can be used to assess the students development during a written assignment because many times in a group project students do not divide their tasks equally so by the Wiki the teacher will give a fair grade at the end of the assessment.
ReplyDeleteWhat I believe that is important to take into consideration is the amount of points per project which is kid of low for the amount of job done.
It is not a secret that we are living in a highly technological world, in which every day new platforms and tools appear. Our society rapidly adopts new technologies and devices, then those become part of our lives and we imperceptibly make them part of us. Education does not escape from this phenomenon. Undeniable, most of our future students were born in the digital native generation. Therefore, they are growing up surrounded by technological stuff and they quickly learn how to use devices and software. Then, we as teachers should be ready to use effectively technological tools in our classroom, that is why the course IO6042 (Communication Techniques for Teaching a Foreign Language) is so important, since we are provided with excellent tools to promote student´s participation within the classroom, as well as, to enhance and to engage student´s attention with effective and authentic materials. Thereby, we have learn as future teachers a bunch of tools such as internet portals and videos that definitely will be used soon.
ReplyDeleteEven though sometimes we might face some troubles when using electronic platforms, we can easily overcome those problems by experimenting and looking for tutorials online. These sources can be very useful within the classroom, but we should not abuse on the use of these tools, that they become more relevant than us as teachers. Instead of that, we should implement the blended learning, so that we can combine this technological help with other sources in class.
At the beginning I was a little confused and maybe not so happy with the idea of taking a technology course. Since, based on its name- I don't know why- I expected something different. Maybe I read the communication part in the title as just verbal, face to face communication. With no doubt, this course has helped me change the panorama I had about IT. Now, I feel more confident and convinced about the importance of including technology to foster my students possibilities to grow in the linguistic and personal area. Consequently, I have been doing some of this work in my classes already. I have been using internet communication to share and remind assignments to my students, online components of the courses I am teaching have become a living tool my students - as well as I- are getting used to and starting to love and take advantage of. Furthermore, with this course I have discovered many features that programs I thought I fully used had, for example: including videos in Word, PPP, and all the other things I can do in these programs. This course has helped me widen the range of activities I can have my students do. Making it nice and somehow bearable to study grammar (which is puzzling most of the time) vocabulary and any other skill I want to focus in a specific class. I am positive my notion about the course has changed on the way to today. I have been able to discover and "master" (up to certain point) many apps and programs I didn't even know that existed. Moreover, teamwork has been reinforced throughout the course (an ovation to that), because before this course I had the idea that the best way to work was alone, and I have understood that working in groups releases you from a huge part of the burden conveyed in a Licenciatura course like this. However, I am stilled disappointed with our performance in the Webquest project, since none of us could really understand what a Webquest meant. But, I will argue a little more of guidance in this specific project could have led us to better outcomes. On the other hand, I can't adduce lack of guidance in any of the other projects.
ReplyDeleteThanks for helping me get "hotter" classes from now on.
Nowadays, technology is very rich. Every day, new communities have access to the World Wide Web, and tons of applications, software and platforms are available. For this reason, it is important that teachers manage numerous technological tools that can improve the teaching and learning process. For instance, this communication techniques course has been very useful and necessary for our English teaching major. I think I have learned a lot of what Blended learning and Computer assisted language learning represent and how and what we as English teachers need to consider when implementing these tools. When designing most of the projects, I found the importance to encourage our students to be interested to technology and strengthen their competences.
ReplyDeleteI would also say that most of the mini projects guidelines were clear enough, but in some of them, I think, it was necessary a clearer and concise explanation during classes, further the readings, YouTube videos and the web sites; this with the purpose of dropping out misunderstandings.
This course was a subject that really made us explore technology in many senses. We are involved in this process, providing us with this sort of knowledge will help every of us perform a better job, applying what we have already learnt. There are many ways in which we could use technology in our side. The materials and the tools we were given would give us the material to work with students from all ages. Providing students with technological material; which is different from the normal type of teaching style. Throughout the whole course, I have learned many things that I could not imagine I was going to learn. Learning is a process which involves the student as well as the teacher. Comments for this course would be: keep teaching these nice and helpful topics, although its important to say that the projects we actually did took a lot of time and effort and we could actually feel the preassure, specially when we are taking other classes, so my recommendation would be: give more time to develop these projects since we actually wanted to be creative and give you nice looking project. Giving us just one week to prepare the project was a short time. Well, not all of the projects were long, but some of them required many details to complete it, so I guess evaluating the way the projects are given is my advice.
ReplyDeleteThe course helped me a lot to have ideas on how to present the topics in the classroom in a more interesting way. However, the course was a little bit challenging for me because I am not very good at technology, so I had to give an extra effort to understand some of the projects. I have never been into technology, so that is why I have had trouble with some of the projects. I consider those projects are a very useful tool to apply in the classroom. I hope this course wil stay for the next students from UCR since this course provides very good bases for teachers to implement in their classrooms. I have not made my teaching practicum, so I am willing to implement some of the projects with my students next year. The two projects I would use with my students are the wiki and the blog. Those two projects will be useful to have my students solving their homework in the wiki of blog. Besides, they can complete extra class homework and I would grade it there too. Also, I consider those projects a good way to take care of the environment, since by using this technology, I will almost eliminate the printed material.
ReplyDelete