Webskills Course - Week Nine Reflections

Introduction

This week was relatively less hectic for me primarily because I made it so. The final projects were due and I must say that the thoughtful breaking down of the projects into steps across the weeks really helped. Also the template that UO had published with lot of scaffolding questions helped to organise thoughts in the right way. The peer review exercise was also very helpful in looking at others as well as own projects in a very objective manner. 

Apart from the the project this week focused on learning styles.

What I did and learned?

I don't think anybody will challenge me if I say 'each one of us are unique'. I think due to this uniqueness we like to learn in ways we want rather than learning or doing things the same way as somebody else does. We might have aped others for a while when we were young; however, when we realised that what worked for somebody else is not working for you then that might have made us to think of our own individuality and the way in which that dictates how we like to learn and do things.

The readings suggested for this week were all useful as always.

I started my reading by visiting Technology and Multiple Intelligences website. This page has a collection of resources for teachers to read and think.

There I first read Howard Gardner's speech 'Multiple Intelligences After Twenty Years' where towards the end he raises his own apprehension over the application of the MI theory to aid language learning. He felt happy that language teachers reported back to him that the theory worked for them and their students. However, he was yet to buy that argument and I too was put under his influence and wondered what could be done that caters to the different intelligences that are there in our classrooms with a view to help them learn a language too.

As soon as I logged on to the nicenet classroom and read Ashish's post on how to use technology to cater to various intelligences and at the same not losing focus on the language learning side of it this apprehension was put to rest.

In case you are now tempted to have a look at something similar to what Ashish had posted, click here.

Going through the diverse posts that my classmates had generated I felt very happy. I was tempted to test my learning style online and bought Courtney's suggestion. I took Edutopia's Online Quiz which you too can try here.

My own results can be found here.

Classroom Application

Learning styles is something that I'd been introduced already. However, this week's readings refreshed my memory and most importantly showed me ways to use technology to support various learning styles.

My future plan

This is an interesting strand for this week's blog. Over the course of nine weeks I'd been introduced to innumerable resources which I'm yet to explore fully. So that's high up on agenda. Another thing is to try my level best to be in touch with the wonderful educators I'd the fortune to study along. Whatever I'd learned in this course happened out of collective effort and I know my classmates will continue to discover new things and will never be reluctant to share that online. This course had opened up many vistas like the concept of writing good objective, using templates and rubrics, supporting learners, building learning communities etc. to name just a few that I'd love to revisit again.