Something I have found most exciting is the way my students have just taken the tools and used the spaces to make them their own. And such a sense of community - with support, suggestions, tips - very sharing rather than competitive, which was one of my (hidden) aims in the changes I made to the design of the course.
Something else that came out of the focus group discussions was that they would like deadlines for assignments. This was one aspect that I was curious about - whether they would take advantage of the flexibility to do some things in a different order - but one did mention that they felt directed to do the Webquest first - probably because that was one of the main items in the second workshop. I'll have to think more about how to do this next time - whether to make hard deadlines, whether to make the assignments in a specific order, whether to leave the timing open, or whether to give them guidelines - perhaps some recommended timelines that will help them get the work done in time, but not compulsory or hard deadlines. I'll see.
I think I'll also post another set of summary reflective questions on the discussion forum about their perceived benefits of the structure of the course, the assessment pieces, the tools & support, as well as the good and bad aspects of the final assignment.
I'll include some of my photos here from the conferences when I have a chance to download & process them. Photoshop will be hard-worked this weekend, I think!
posted by dlh_downunder @ 10:19 AM
1 Comments:
I tend to agree with Owen that perhaps it would have been better if a copy of the Dreamweaver software (like the downloaded version of it) were made available for us to use right at beginning of the course. I think it would have been so convenient if we had something 'in our hands' to actually use and explore rather than having to go and find it online.
Having said that, I think my reason for this is that I'm quite a lazy person and I just couldn't get my act together to do what we were suppose to do in regards to signing up to the Dreamweaver program and going through the online Atomic Learning tutorial :)
Also, I think that it would be really help if it was made clear to everyone that we can use other alternative webhosting sites to use for the last assignment (like, for example, the Angelfire or the Yahoo! Geocities) in creating our own website. Although using these free webhosting sites is quite limited compared to the Dreamweaver tool, however, I found that it was a relatively easy to do in creating and publishing my dinosaur website because everything was pretty much already there to use (e.g. templates, pictures, html coding etc.).
In regards to having set deadlines for the assignment, well I'm in double thoughts about this. On the hand, I liked the idea of pacing ourselves towards the completion of the assignments because then it really forces me to prioritise my time and that the added flexibility is really quite helpful especially in my case whereby I have a little baba to look after. On the other hand, however, it is quite easy to put things on hold and the next thing you know, you have three days to complete the assignment!!
Paradoxically, the flexibility offered in not having set deadlines also becomes a problem because I find that I wasn't really putting a lot of effort in making sure I get things done on time simply because there is not set deadline... hhmmm hope that makes sense. Also, it's amazing how many things can go wrong when I finally sit down and try to do my assignment in a week -- I get sick, Zachy gets sick, noone to help me babysit Zach so I can do my last assignment, my parents decide to go for a month holiday in the Philippines just before the semester ends!!hehehehe...
One thing that I really took away from this experience is that I learned so much more about what technology can offer in my teaching practice, and that I feel so much confident in incorporating technology in my classroom. I will definitely have my class create their own website via Geocities, participate in class blogs, and get them to do their own blogs to journal their language learning and anything that takes them fancy (or course, they have to be reasonably appropriate for the learning context!!)
ok.. better go before I start write my thesis.. hahaha :)
cheers!
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