Week 10: Analyzing the Past, Looking Into the Future

Truly great ten weeks. Learning to learn and learning to teach. Every week brought something peculiar and helped me discover new methods and techniques for future progress in the teaching field. Special time with special people. A little sorry that it’s all over…

A lot of topics have been discussed and quite a number of posts published (more than thirty pages of MS Word drafts before posting online!). Still more to reflect upon and ‘digest’… It all will surely take some time. To sum up, my UO Webskills Course discoveries look like this:

Week 1. Nicenet.com (!!).

Week 2. Noodletools.com. ABCD Model for Behavioral Objectives. Digital Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Week 3. Delicious.com.

Week 4. A technology-enhanced lesson planning. 

Week 5. PBL and WebQuests. Rubrics and Alternative Assessment (!!).

Week 6. Interactive Power Point.

Week 7. Learner Autonomy.

Week 8. Online course sites.

Week 9. Learning styles (!!).

Week 10. Tiers of technology integration.

This is a course to be recommended without any hesitation.

It filled me with great ideas and practical advice.

I had a chance to ‘meet’ nice people and professionals ‘on fire’.

I was honored to get acquainted with the American system of online university education.

I am happily tired and inspired and full of enthusiasm.

I would like to thank my dear course mates – Omar, Valeria, Pablo, Mariale, Diana, Sosthene, Daniela, Kum-wu and others for a great time of communication and fruitful collaboration. I do hope to stay in touch with you guys. If you don’t mind, of course! ;)

Courtney, thank you for BRINGING THE CHANGE. You are wonderful.

The course is over when a new academic year starts. Analyzing the past, we are looking into the future…

Week 9: Learning Styles and Motivation

Yet another week to reflect on motivation. I am convinced that teachers must encourage and support their students to perform to the highest standards and realize their potential. A purposeful and meaningful teaching job is likely to have a more personal impact on students and give them a sense of achievement and personal growth.

One of the theories that promote motivation is the theory of learning styles. It was new to me and I decided to try it on myself and test my own learning styles and see if the theory proves to be true. So I took the test at ‘What Is Your LearningStyle?’ and found out that my learning styles are:

Intrapersonal – 75% (Those with intrapersonal intelligence do well in careers where self-management is important, such as being a writer, a teacher, a counselor, a police officer, or a pilot);

Linguistic – 67% (You have the ability to use words effectively for reading, writing, listening, and speaking);

Interpersonal – 56% (You enjoy teaching and sharing your thoughts. Careers that require insight and the ability to read what someone else is thinking or feeling – such as teaching, psychology, or sales – would be a great match for those with interpersonal intelligence.)

Other styles showed the results of less than 50%.

I felt the results of the test were correct and proved once again that I am a natural-born teacher. It is a good idea to give this test to students at the beginning of a course to see how to plan lessons more effectively. Taking into account their learning inclinations and tendencies, a teacher will inspire and motivate and students will accomplish the tasks they like faster and with more aspiration which, in turn, will bring higher final results.

Learning styles theories have become the foundation on which to build adult learning. It has been known for some time that students retain more knowledge and are able to better

transfer knowledge to the workplace when they have been taught in their preferred learning

style. What are these learning styles (just in short)?

• Visual (Graphical Representations, Photos, PowerPoint, etc.);

• Aural (Learn by Listening, Enjoy ‘Lectures’, Need Directions Read Aloud);

• Read / Write (Written Word – Read or Write, Textbooks and References);

• Kinesthetic (Learn by Doing, ‘Hands-on’).

The important aspect of Learning Styles is that a variety of training strategies need to be in place to accommodate the different ways that we prefer to learn. A ‘one size fits all’ approach will not work and will consequently affect motivation and achievement of successful training.

PS: Other nice articles on Motivation and Learning Styles:

Motivation, Personality, Teaching and Learning Styles

The Relationships of Learning Styles, Learning Motivation and Academic Success in EFL Learning Context

Web-Based Learning: Relationships Among Students Motivation, Attitude, Learning Styles, and Achievement

Acknowledgements to London Permaculture and FreeDigitalPhotos.net  for the used images. 

Week 8: Classroom: Offline or Online?

To brush up my WebSkills Project, I chose to create a class blog and a Nicenet discussion. I have been blogging with educational goals for a number of years already while the Nicenet platform is new for me.

Why a blog? Well, a class wiki or a Google site can be easily designed as an option. However, the objective would be quite similar:

(C) Having registered at an applicable web site, (A) a teacher (B) will construct, design, plan, and maintain a class site (D) supplying it with relevant information, updating it regularly, and controlling online discussions, if necessary.

OR:

(C) Having registered at an applicable web site, (A) a student (B) will design and maintain his / her personal blog (D) publishing new works, video- or podcasting, blog commenting, and collaborating according to the pre-set rules.

Nicenet transfers discussions from a classroom to the online setting. Of course, it saves time for more live collaboration and, moreover, it gives students a possibility to practice:

-         

        reading,

-          critical thinking, and

-          writing skills.

 

Lots of theses have been written on how to use online tools for the benefit of students. What do we have to do? The answer is rather obvious – adapt them to our teaching goals and never cease using them because they are truly helpful and advantageous. And there is no need to argue what is better - offline or online. Both aspects complement one another and we cannot imagine our offline classroom without online activities in the digital 21st century.

Week 7: Still Looking for Details

Being a linguist, I pay a lot of attention to words and what they mean. The main word of this week turned out to be ‘detail.’ Let us see how some authoritative dictionaries define this word. Here, I have chosen some (not all given) definitions that perfectly describe my present situation and continuous work on the UO project. So, here we go:

1) Cambridge Dictionaries Online : the small features of something that you only notice when you look carefully.

2) Oxford Dictionaries: an individual fact or item.

3) Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English: the information that helps to complete what you know about something.

4) Macmillan Dictionary: one of many small facts or pieces of information relating to a situation. 

5) Merriam-Webster : extended treatment of or attention to particular items.

I mark red the most significant elements in the definitions. First, I AM to look carefully at every stage of the project to make it complete and beneficial to my students. Second, every individual bit of information makes the project function smoothly and without failures. Third, filling the project with details helps me complete the task. Fourth, I add every little fact to the project with total concentration on the topic of my future course – ‘Communicating Across Cultures.’ And last but not least, the final stages of the project require total – or extended – attention and treatment.

Every definition mentioned above describes the process I am going through at the moment with precise accuracy. A very short linguistic analysis shows how important details are not only for the current project but also for any task we undertake and plan to become more professionally advanced…

Week 6: Great Expectations

The course I am going to teach next semester is called ‘Communicating across cultures’ with the target audience of the fourth year International Economics majors. The course is absolutely new and the head of my department gave me privilege to structure the course the way I see it. I am very grateful for her confidence in me and I am full of expectations to implement the new methods and techniques I have been discovering since the end of June.

Following the general plan of the manual (Communicating Across Cultures by Bob Dignen, CUP, 2011), I will make a ‘technological framework’ to supplement the contents of the book. Two main goals I want to achieve are (1) to raise students’ motivation and (2) to introduce concepts of effective time management both for teachers and students.

There are two functional aspects that will cover the whole course. First, it is alternative assessment. I will have rubrics for every oral and written task and – optionally – I will have peer assessment. Rubrics clarify the teacher’s expectations and clearly explain how every part of the task is graded. Peer assessment activates students’ attention and responsibility. Second, it is blogging. Students will be asked to create their personal blogs to post their works there, comment on other students’ messages, and share external links and tools they find helpful. The course information will be consolidated in the class blog.

Every week the students will have a technology-enhanced task devoted to different skills: speaking, listening, presenting, critical thinking, etc. The tech tools are:

VoiceThread A tool that can be used to communicate a message using voice, video, and text. Topics: Becoming a better listener. Managing conflicts: (1) Ways to avoid potential conflicts. (2) Strategies to manage conflict situations.

Present.me An easy-to-use tool that allows to upload files and record voice messages. Topic: Differences in communication style across cultures.

Podomatic A tool to create podcasts and share them online. Topic: Dealing with difficult communicators.

Voxopop A voice-based e-learning tool that helps to develop speaking skills. Topic: What is the connection between cultural diversity and creativity?

Glogster A web platform that is used to create interactive posters loaded with text, graphics, music, videos, and more. Topics: Personal development plan to improve communication skills (conclusions on Webquest 2.) Negotiating across cultures: (1) The challenges of negotiating across cultures. (2) Language of influencing.

Prezi An online presentation tool. Topics: Presenting across cultures (final classroom Webquest 1 presentation.) Dwell upon a quote on culture / business / communication (the list of quotes to be provided) (final assessment classroom presentation.)

Zunal An online webquest maker. Topics: Presenting across cultures. Profiling your intercultural competence.

The fifteen weeks of the course under consideration will be accompanied by Nicenet discussions and weekly blog posts. The variety of activities will supposedly light up the students’ enthusiasm. Besides, as a large part of assignment will be allotted to homework, it will help them manage their work load according to their time preferences.

A lot of work is to be done before the course starts and I am still looking for details. However, I have great expectations connected with it!