Week 3 Reflections

This week has been great! The materials we read and the tasks we had to do were very motivating for me.


Aural and speaking skills are essential for communication. In the past, education did not take them into consideration. Traditional education involved learning how to read and write and we still have some influence of it in our educational model at secondary schools in Uruguay. In general, students are not taught how to listen and how to speak in public in their mother tongue. In general, their class participation is limited to words or phrases when answering a question made by a teacher. I have experienced it myself both as a student and as a visiting teacher.


I have found useful websites for building listening and speaking skills with interesting material. From my point of view, BBC Learning English is a good educational website with adequate material for intermediate and advanced students, especially for exam preparations 


When it comes to practicality, Randall´s Lab is my number one choice since it comprises pre-listening, listening and post-listening activities and the material is well-organized according to level of difficulty with different topics.


By using Delicious, I have learned how to bookmark the material I have selected as a way to access links and share them easily with my colleagues and students anytime anyplace on line. Tagging is a good way to organize links by content, purpose or author. Creating stacks help you categorize and group links in a personal unique way. The fact that you can follow a user and be followed by users makes it work as a social network, connecting people and information in noodles. Indeed, it makes the difference! You can easily integrate reading, listening and writing by means of Delicious.

Reading a final project made me realize the importance of identifying a problem or defining an issue when writing it down. I think the project for Teens by Camelia Pagila from Romania  is down-to-earth and relevant since it takes into consideration students´needs, learning styles and the context in which it takes place. It also fosters integration of skills. The fact that it is a Teen project called my attention and made me select it. What seems to be self-evident is not necessarily so when planning: students learn differently according to their learning syles and those differences should be taken into consideration when teaching and using technology.


How was your week?