Week 10. Keep climbing the ladder!

I can’t believe we are at the end of the course and I would have to start “taking steps” autonomously in exploring more web tools. We’ve talked a lot about developing students’ autonomy in learning now I feel in their shoes. This course and community of teachers has been a ladder on which I was encouraged to climb to get to the heights I haven’t been before in using the web tools in language teaching. Now it is important to continue climbing this ladder alone, feel confident and not to climb it down for the fear of falling.

I have greatly enjoyed all the topics of the Course Weeks. Every week I would learn something new. Starting with the first week’s creating a blog,  every week there was something we had not only to learn but to apply as well. Of course for me some of the weeks were easier than the others. I felt at times that some of the tasks were overwhelming and I tried and tried and nothing went right and then it would work and it was the most rewarding thing one could experience. My favourite week was Week 6 when we learnt about interactive tools for large classrooms. I found that very useful for my classroom even though I teach small groups. Interactive ppts, games work well with small groups. I also liked the Alternative Assessment tools. I have found out about some automated assessment tools like Turnitin but I have also learned how to create a rubric. I think this is a very useful skill that simplifies the work of a teacher and in the same time makes the task and what is required more comprehensible for the student.

In a way every week was insightful. Every week I would feel like Archimedes who shouted “Eureka” only I would discover things that were new for me alone with no novelty for the humanity. 

Everything we learnt is relevant to a classroom that is going to be shortly a reality in Moldova. Just because we do not have computers in the English classrooms yet that does not mean that we should not use what technology has to offer in providing efficient tools for language learning outside the classroom for the time being. Many of the things that are common nowadays used to be new and unconceivable for a classroom only some time ago yet they have slowly came into use and have become something we cannot do without. The same with webtools: I can start using them outside the classroom as a home assignment and then they will slowly come along with the computers in a Moldovan classroom as well.

The other day I was preparing the activities for the class site and I needed a comprehension quiz for a listening activity. I remembered that we covered this topic in one of the weeks and I found it. I created a quiz using http://www.easytestmaker.com. I knew where to look for the tool I needed. Although I had to struggle a little bit with the final step of printing/publishing the fact made me realize for the first time what a great enriching experience this course brought in my teaching practice.

There are a lot of new things that I have learnt in this course. However I have heard Sam from Japan speak about Moodle as an alternative to WebQuest. He said that it has more options included than some separate tools that we got familiar with. Maybe the future participants could learn how to use Moodle along with the WebQuest.  I found the idea of Moodle interesting although I still need to explore and learn about it a lot.

 And lastly I have heard my colleagues talk about finding a way to keep this discussion group "alive". I would be more than pleased to do so as I still have so many questions and sometimes I need a hand to climb a shaky step.

Week 9. Multiple Intelligence or a Global Mind

This week’s topic about Multiple intelligence has raised a lot of questions. And while some of my colleagues argue that it is of no relevance to the large groups I can see it being efficient in my case. Most of my groups are small and I know all of my students very well. I teach them from the beginning to the end (with some random exceptions) and I can definitely identify each of them as having one or other predominant type of learning based on the type of intelligence that prevails in them.

And from now on the sentence, that I found while reading about multiple intelligences on the site Concept to Classroom http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/mi/index_sub2.html has marked my teaching. It says: “The next time you have a chance to reflect on your class, imagine your students as individuals who have fully realized and developed their intelligences.” That is really something we should keep in mind. Comparing our class to a class with J.K. Rowling, Richard Feynmann, Lauryn Hill, Julian Schnabel, Mia Hamm, Colin Powell, Deepak Chopra, Jane Goodall, and Gary Larson is an extremely powerful and easy way to put it. I imagined my class. Now each time I look at them or give them an assignment I keep this idea in my mind.

Undoubtedly our students are different and they all learn differently and as a teacher I have always wondered why some of the students that had modest results turned up to be very successful in real life, career, and personal life than the students that showed good academic results.

Now going from Gardener’s definition of intelligence: “Intelligence is the ability to solve problems or to create products that are valued within one or more cultural settings”  the question above becomes clear to me. One may possess a set of knowledge which s/he hardly uses or one can know the scheme of how s/he can find this knowledge and going from the need - apply every little bit s/he learns. Therefore it is not the mere memorization of content that matters it is the ability to create not to reproduce.

Unfortunately the Education System in Moldova is heavily based on reproduction. This is why in many cases the students don’t see the link between what they reproduce and real life and lose the motivation for learning. They don’t see how they could possibly apply what they learn because they are taught globally. They are viewed as all the same with the same mind (they are not given tips of interdisciplinary connection that would enlighten the bulb in the mind and make the connection with their area of interest or kind of intelligence). And they are expected to figure out by themselves how to apply what they learn.

Last week a colleague of mine threw a phrase that comes right in this context. She said: “Math teachers teach the students the formula of how to determine the area of a surface, but my child does not know how to estimate how much wall paper we need for his room. Is that normal? Why does he learn maths at all if he can’t do that much?” She is right – what is the use of teaching formulae if the students don’t see how to transfer them into a real life situation and use it when they need it most?

Gardener’s Multiple Intelligence theory brings a new approach towards the human mind. Where the mind is presented as a multicolored map of the world where some countries are bigger than others and their degree of influence in the world is different. There is no such a thing as better or worse, there is just the term of diverse. And I think that this diversity is great. No two minds are alike. And the trends of “globalization” have proved to be detrimental to the cultures and national identity worldwide. Can’t the same happen with the trend of “globalizing” the minds of our students? Will the individual melt and disappear in the global standard mind? Will we have "overweight" mind trends because of this mind "globalisation"?