WEEK 7: A WEEK TO EMPHAZISE ON NEW LEARNING AND TEACHING APPROACHES!!!

It is incredible how fast time is passing by in this course. This week’s reading was basically about two topics: One-Classroom Computer and Learner Autonomy. For the first topic, I learned many different strategies that can be used for a one-computer classroom. This link http://www.lburkhart.com/elem/strat.htm  provides lost of strategies to be used in our classrooms and even though these strategies were created for US schools, they can perfectly be adapted to any teaching context.

As part of this topic, I had to create a sample lesson for a one-computer classroom, which was posted on our Nicenet course. My lesson’s topic for this task was: A PLACE I WOULD LIKE TO VISIT NEXT VACATION. As I am an EFL teacher, I use the CLT approach and my objectives always focus on communication and it was stated based on the ABCD method for writing objectives: “Having studied the second conditional (form, meaning and use) and a rubric to assess conversations, students from the intermediate level will be able to create and self-assess a five-minute conversation about places they would like to visit next vacation.”

For this lesson, students had to search information about four places in beautiful Ecuador: Azuay-Cuenca, Napo-Tena, Esmeraldas-Atacames or the Galapagos Islands from this web site http://ecuador.travel/en/about-ecuador.html and finally they had to present their conversations about a place they would like to visit.

I took this photo in Cerro Colorado Galapagos Breeding Station on San Cristobal Island last year. This is just a small example of all the incredible and unique flora and fauna you can see in Ecuador. I invite ALL of you to come and enjoy it!!!

The second topic I read about this week was about Learner Autonomy. I the article written by Dimitrios Thanasoulas and published at http://iteslj.org/Articles/Thanasoulas-Autonomy.html there are some definitions about Learner Autonomy as well as guidelines to help our students become autonomous. The author also clarifies some misconceptions that can derive from this topic such as misunderstanding autonomy and thinking that it means that the teacher leaves students alone during the learning process or thinking that it can just emerge without training our students on how to take more responsibility of their own learning. Learner autonomy involves many factors such as: students’ motivation, needs, learning strategies, and language awareness. The article’s author cites Leni Dam who defines that an autonomous learner is the one who “independently chooses aims and purposes and sets goals; chooses materials, methods and tasks; exercises choice and purpose in organizing and carrying out the chosen tasks; and chooses criteria for evaluation.” So this evidences that learner autonomy is a process rather than a product and it needs to be developed with the correct guidance of the teacher who should act as a facilitator.

This week my web mates and I also had to continue working on the drafts for our Project or Plan Reports and we had to choose a partner for peer-review. This was kind of difficult since we all have established a very good relationship and some of us felt like working with everyone. Anyways, we had to make a decision and now the teams are established and everything will be all right!