Bird-in-the-hand

Learner autonomy and one computer classroom seemed to be our challenge this week. I believe we have reached  the point in education where we have no other option than to realize the importance of learner autonomy and therefore include learner awareness training exercises in our school curricula. The competitive requirements of the global environment have made us realize that the lack of skilled workers might affect the future of our countries and as the employers are increasingly demanding, we also need to equip our students with  "soft skills" such as effective communication.

Thinking about it, we could even say that the learner autonomy training is a prerequisite to any further education or graduate employment. Self-esteem and desire to learn seem to be the most crucial elements not only in the process of learning the second language but in the whole career development of a person and the trainings provided in the language classrooms have a significant impact on the social nature of the learner. Conversely, a lack of self-esteem and lack of motivation can negatively affect students' future choices and decisions about their future life. No doubt then that the modern education needs to offer up to scratch preparation.

Technology For Education

Is there anything a teacher can do if they don't want to see the painful expression on the face of the student when the writing or speaking task is announced? Perhaps they should try using technology in their classroom?

There are several things a teacher can do to enhance student learning and one of those things is to engage them in student centered online learning. There are a lot of tools available at the moment, which can be used to meet these goals and can be time intensive, and all of them serve different purposes. The first group are the information visualization tools   that allow users to view, analyze, manipulate and/or communicate complex information, such as historical, spatial, and statistical data. They are freely available nd can produce simple visual representations of small data sets to proprietary tools that can manipulate complex data.

Another interesting group are collaboration tools
- using them the students work together to solve a problem, create a product, or derive meaning from a body of material. A central  question or problem serves to organize activities and  facilitate application, analysis or synthesis of the course material. Wikis, Project Management tools, Real-time communications are all available to  the teachers and can be easily activated.

There is a vast list of all other tools

which are also freely available to the teachers and which can serve such purposes as online assessment, student comprehension assessment, lecture webcasting or podcasting, and also concept tests, which monitor and support student learning.  For those who would love to practise speaking or writing outside of their classroom there are numerous discussion boards where, as many instructors would say, some of the most important learning can happen.

'Less Teaching and More Learning'

I loved the post from Basu this week and especially his quotation of Susan Gaer's work 'Less Teaching and More Learning': the writer that "has helped motivate students to learn language for a purpose." and who "has also found that this methodology promotes community among class members".
On the whole, I'm very enthusiastic about the PBL as it provides a very nice getaway from the routine of the classroom and boredom. Another obvious advantage is that it is always authentic, - students search through authentic pages used by the native speakers of their target language, and also often interdisciplinary. Besides, projects can be appealing to different types of learners and serve various learning styles.
I also liked Sonia's comment when she said: "webquest is truly a quest for learning a lot of things. It is like a maze, it baffles, dazzles and puzzles, most of all it makes you think."

One would have thought it would be possible to solve all the problems in the classroom just with one technology tool but unfortunately it is not as easy as this in practice. Having said that, I give serious consideration to trying to use as many technology tools as I can  to solve the problems and issues related to motivation and the students’ participation in class discussions or group work. I would like to see that their performance in the classroom and during the self-study time was more of this: “ We are committed, we’re motivated and we believe in what we do.” I very much hope  this change is achievable.

Apparently, the best solution might be to get them all involved in regular tasks done in pairs or groups in which their particular performance will be evaluated and for which they will have to force themselves to work harder and perform better. What I have in mind now is setting a number of web-search related activities that would be evaluated with the help of rubrics. What this will allow them to achieve is  gain more confidence in autonomous type of learning and I do hope they will slowly be able to do much more work without the teacher's guidance. I believe that in the longer term the benefits are clear - this type of education is bound to prepare them for their future lives of constant learning.

The readings and what you think about them.

This week it was Juan Carlos who had this idea that we should write about the readings we've done for the course.
Well, I had predicted there would be a lot to read and I was right. We always have to read long articles for our classes.

When I was reading the first 
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krajka-WritingUsingNet.html  
and the second one, 
 http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Liang-ExtensiveReading.html
I was trying to visualize  my classroom and my students in it. I also tried to connect the first article to the other and my real world of teaching and this is when a number of questions started to come to my mind.

The most important question was whether the articles give any practical solutions or suggest ways of dealing with problems and how technology can solve them. I tried to clarify this and came to the conclusion that the Liang's article seems to be a perfect solution for your lessons if you have a class full of so called "bookworms", who love spending all or most of their free time reading books.If , however,  your class is full of "party animals", it's a flop.

The Krajka's article, on the other hand, proposes a bunch of broader in context solutions, discusses the benefits of different types of activities, the role of the teacher in the wired classroom, the resources needed as well as considers if and how to incorporate it into the curriculum. If I had to evaluate both , I'd have to admit that the Krajka's article gives a better perspective on what technology can offer for the classroom and thus would get my vote.