Week 7: Busy and Rewarding

So, it’s Sunday night again. It’s sad to see that the number of the weeks on our course wiki is dwindling. On the one hand, of course, we are all getting worn out by the intensive reading, thinking and writing; one the other hand, it has already become an indispensable and enjoyable part of my life, and I even can’t imagine what I will do when the course is finished. Of course, I will go back and explore the issues I have saved for later study, but I will be missing the rhythm of our weekly assignments and deadlines, which have kept us moving ahead so far.

Week 7 has been still more exciting and provoking than the previous ones.  

Autonomous learning is the topic that has much more implications than those discussed. Actually, when one looks at it at the beginning, one sees it as a way out, as a promising solution to some really annoying disadvantages of the conventional education. Once you start practicing it, especially of you want it for real, if you really mean to foster the learner autonomy, you discover, that, yes, some old problems are solved, but there are new ones, of a different nature. Actually, few people realize, that fostering learner autonomy, we are turning the life upside down, back to front, inside out. We are letting the genie out of the bottle, and we won’t be able to get it back again. Splitting away from the old system, we are losing the protection, the support, the stability of the paved road, and get onto a swampy field, where no one bears responsibility for your success. These two lines have much more implications than the reasonable discussion within the course could accommodate, and I am ready to carry on, if someone is interested. I even feel that I will write a couple of posts, even if no one declares his/her interest, because these issues have to be voiced.

One Computer Classroom has become another highlight of the course. It was highly rewarding to read both the discussion and the practical tasks. I read all posts, but there was no chance to give feedback to all of them. I replied either to the posts where I had a question, or which somehow provoked me into writing. I do not want my friends, whose posts didn’t get my feedback  to think that their lesson plan didn’t get my attention. It did, and I use this blog opportunity to thank every participant, as well as our teachers, Sherie, Jodi and Sean for your valuable comments.

I have posted some links to the historic real life samples of my one computer classroom classes. Trying to learn some new techniques, I designed and posted two more lesson plans: Literature Books Characters Database and Tanagrams, and I will report how they went in a thee-week time, because we have to finish what we have been doing.

Week 7 brought us to the final stage of the Project. It’s sad to realize that we have come to the beginning of the end – the draft project report is due by Wednesday. It took some time to find a partner for the peer review, but our group completed the task the first. The remaining part of the week was left for my project implementation.

I will remind in a nutshell that my project is to introduce reflective learning by means of creating a special  space on my website for my full-time university students. The things I have done so far:

- described the target group

- identified the problem

- found a technological vehicle to bring about the change

- negotiated the project with the students

- showed the students how to use the site

- discussed the first posts with the students

- developed the rubric

- explained the students how to use the rubric

- wrote a couple of replied to the questions asked by the students

- marked the students posts and returned them to the students to make corrections in their posts

- discussed the students’ engagement in the project in class three times

My feeling is that the project is evolving well and will keep going after our course is finished.

You are welcome to come to observe it online either here:

http://www.writespeakenglish.com/ICANclub//index.php

(please, find the 4th orange bar from the top entitled “Reflective Learning”)

 or here:

http://www.writespeakenglish.com/ICANclub//index.php?PHPSESSID=7abd7aee9cfc8db200f61e4f9364733b&action=recent

(the recent posts, which can belong to different threads, but it’s the shortest way to find the posts in question too)

I am running this project as an open teaching project, so everyone, both you and your students, are welcome to join. My students say that they liked it and find it rewarding. I hope we will both succeed.