The reason I chose this title for week seven is because I feel rewarded for what I have done so far for my project, my class blog! This week's posts doubled and students' comments on each others posts outnumbered those of last week. I am amazed not only by the number of entries but the level of serious engagement; I even find posts from the quietest students in class and am surprised by their contributions. Up to this moment, more comments are being published.At the beginning of the week ,I shared with them the rubric that I shall use for the evaluation of their entries after which I agreed to add one more criterion that was suggested by them. This exercise showed them how they can be responsible for their own learning and knowing what to expect. I also found myself unconsciously emulating Courtney's style in responding to their posts; for example, I try to see a similarity between two students, so I respond to both in the same comment. Besides, I realized that an online teacher's job is certainly not easier than the face-to face situation. Having to respond to 25 students is not simple , but it is worth every minute when you see the exceptional results of the exchange.
I reversed the order of my post this week because I am excited about the preliminary results of my project!
I will now reflect on the readings...
The first reading on" What is Learner Autonomy and How It Can Be Fostered?" by Dimitrios Thanasoulas was the backbone of this week's theme.It had many references to researchers in the field of autonomy and presented an interesting history of theories of learning starting with positivism,then constructivism followed by critical theory reaching autonomous learning. Besides ,the conditions for learner autonomy to happen are worthy of mentioning:learning strategies,cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies.It ended with different ways of how learner autonomy can be promoted through self reports, diaries and evaluation sheets, and persuasive communication as a means of altering learner beliefs and attitudes.As I was reading this article, I thought of the webskills course as a true application of learner autonomy.
The second reading on "Learner Autonomy:Bird-in the-hand or Bird-in the-Bush?" by Samuel Sheu reminded me of a similar saying in Arabic except the second part says, ... better than ten in the bush!
It criticizes systems that are dominated by exams and those that aim at completing the textbook. This point made me think locally as our students have to sit for official government exams before entering any college which becomes a constant nightmare for both students and teachers . Some suggestions were given on how to adopt learner training activities accompanying the textbook.
The third reading on " Interconnections: Learner Autonomy Teacher Autonomy" discussed the importance for institutional change to happen.It advocates that informal collaborative work is the best milieu for autonomy to happen and the need for the existence of a certain threshold of willingness by the teacher to be responsive to learners' wants. It was advised that a critical investigation of the 'real' external constraints, and what is feasible in terms of self-directed work lead to learner and teacher autonomy .
The second theme was on the one-computer classroom; the links are practical and can serve as a beneficial resource of possible activities or projects dependent on the student population. The additional readings were a plus especially Deborah Healey's article that I saved on my delicious . It always feels good to see someone's written work after being introduced though online!
The disappointment and frustration this week, however, was when nicenet stopped functioning;I kept on trying but no avail until this minute. I wanted to discuss with my classmates further but I guess this technological failure has an underlying message that the teacher seldom fails us but technological failure is not in our hands. On the other hand, a technological highlight was the wallwisher exploration; I frankly did not know about its existence and now I can sense its value. It is useful in several ways like brainstorming,discussing in groups,collecting feedback and finally bookmarking favorite sites like we all did!
That was the end of investigations of the heavenly week!
Hope you all have a smooth start in writing about your projects,
Paula
Dear Paula,
ReplyDeleteWhat a heavenly week you did have! I am glad that your students are responding well to the blogs that you assigned them. Did you have any extra tip for getting them so involved? When I have done blogs in the past, students usually post their blog but they are reluctant to comment on other's blogs. How are you getting them to comment? Also, I wonder how you manage to find time to get around to commenting as the teacher on all 25 of your students' blogs. That is a big issue that I have. I wonder if it might be better to assign "blog teams" of our 5 people in each group instead of having the class post all together in one site. There might be one called group A, another called group B and so on. Then, the students would only be responsible for reading and responding to only a handful of posts. That would not solve the problem of responding to so many for the teacher, and it would limit autonomy for the students to choose WHO to respond to, but at least they might not feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of posts. I have never tried this technique, but I am just wondering that might be better. What do you think?
I hope that you enjoyed the week learning about autonomy. Even though Lebanon is still governed by state exams, I think that you found good ways to incorporate autonomy into your classrooms. You can just think about it as a bottom-up approach.
Did you start the project? I saw that Courtney shared a template that we can use. I am going to start cutting and pasting some of the old information we already did and then adding new information this weekend. As you said, this class is the perfect example of autonomous learning, so we need to be focused and try to get our projects ready soon!
Good luck!
Evelyn
Hello Paula,
ReplyDeleteIt is really great that your students are responding! The greatest rewards of all we can hope for is when our studnets see the benefit from what we are doing for them. The fact that they contributed with their own idea for the rubrcs is clearly indicating that your project is being implemented the way it should and heading for the objectives you set out at the beginning. I am really happy for you.
I wish you further luck and I am looking forward to your final report on the realization of your objectives!
Jasmina
Paula,
ReplyDeleteWords cannot explain how happy I am that you found heaven in week 7 through the progress you are seeing in your students with the blogs! It seems that your students are engaged and excelling with this tool. I'm also glad that in some small way I have been able to guide you through the process of responding to your students. Thank you for sharing that with me.
I share in the frustration with nicenet. You stated it very well when you said, "this technological failure has an underlying message that the teacher seldom fails us but technological failure is not in our hands", this is so very true. It also emphasizes the importance of a back-up plan. In face to face instruction, we cannot rely on technology and must be prepared with a plan B, just in case technology is not in our favor. In this case, I had to have a plan B technological tool, which is to use google groups for our class discussions until nicenet is back up and running.
Thanks for sharing your students progress with such enthusiasm and for a thorough reflection of week 7. Great work!