Week 10 - The Summer Ends

It's hard to believe our course has come to an end! The summer has flown by with engaging discussion, challenging tasks, new friendships, and lots of interesting ideas to chew on.

I can only echo Victoria's sentiments on Nicenet - I too am grateful to the US Dept of State and embassy officials for making this opportunity available to us. This has been my first online course, and I hope it is the first of many. I've learned that technology helps build connections - between learners, between learners and the world outside the classroom, between learners and teachers, between teachers and teachers, and between all of us as "netizens" of the world.

I've appreciated the fact that the course has served as a role model for online communication. From the beginning with the blog introductions and the discussion of rules, to the end with the posting of the projects and the summary discussion, we have experienced the experience we will be trying to recreate in some way for our students. The organization and flow of the course worked well for me and I appreciated the mix of theoretical readings and practical online resources, as well as the tasks we had to accomplish each week. This kind of "learning by doing" approach made the course interactive and learner-centered.

What advice would I give to my colleagues about technology? Well, I would encourage them to view the technology we have available to us as an opportunity. Technology can create a more learner-centered environment and one in which there is more communication and cooperation, not less. Technology can save time in lesson preparation, materials development and student assessment. Technology can also help us devise more diverse, creative and active lessons.

Based on my experience with the summer action research project, I would advise my colleagues to think of a problem they have when teaching, or a restriction they experience when working with the curriculum. Then consider how technology might fix the problem or overcome the restriction. The true potential of technology cannot be discovered when it is used for an add-on activity or as a time-filler. If teachers start small and incorporate one technologically-based innovation to their course that will increase learner engagement, autonomy or use of HOT skills, then they can build on that experience. Over time, we will all be using technology as a natural part of teaching/learning because it supports what we know is good practice.

As for us, we are very lucky we have had the chance to experiment with technology - either this term or in the next term. We are also lucky that the course materials will stay online after the course ends. We will be able to review the material and posts from the summer and upload new material to share with one another as well. It will be great to see progress reports from those teachers who move from the research plan to research action stage of their projects in the next semester. I hope we will continue to stay in touch and support one another as we explore new ways to engage our learners and ourselves.

Thank you Deborah and all the wonderful teachers taking this course! It's been fantastic working with and learning from all of you.