Week 7 Reflections “Hyperlinking from One Place to Another”

I had my computer quit on me early this week. Not knowing what the problem is or how to fix my computer, I was in panic and discouraged that everything I installed in my computer would be gone. I learned one important thing. Technology is great and useful, but we cannot depend on it with 100 % blind trust. Digital recording is easy and neat without a pile of documented papers around, but it was old fashioned pen and paper that saved me.

This week in the course, we started off discussing difficulties on having a large class. The class size is one of the most challenging situations the teacher faces all alone. Even though students in college should have some personal motivations to learn English, the size of a class tends to make them passive learners. Unlike the difficulty that Dillip, Jonathan and Andreja have in teaching a huge class in a college, my difficulty is to motivate students who do not have a desire to learn or who are so hard to get excited about learning anything in a large class. I do not want to discourage those that want to learn in class by the class size.

Reading “Personalizing Language Learning in Large Classes” by Chao-ching Ling

( http://iteslj.org/Articles/Lin-Personalizing.html)

and “Teaching large Classes”

(http://www.uoregon.edu/~tep/workshops/teachertraining/largeclasses/usingtechnology/usingtechnology.html ) shows that it is possible to have interactive, student-centered lesson with the use of technology in spite of the size of a class. I realize that I cannot blame the size of a class anymore for not having success as a teacher.

In the beginning of week 7, I was thinking of a technical method to assess and evaluate students’ performance and developed skills. I enjoy making teaching plans with new methods but spending so much time in correcting reports and papers sometimes does not allow me to . All kinds of odd jobs take up my time at work. I hope I will gain wisdom to know when and how to use technology to focus my energy and time on what is needed with a humanistic approach.

Deborah’ thoughts in the comment in the reference room re-focused my goal. She said, “ConcepTests and Minute writes/QickWrite, most of these interaction-encouraging techniques are not graded by the teacher. If you encourage students to learn from each other, so much the better. Whether they learn from each other or from the teacher doesn’t really matter.”

Assessing and grading by teachers can motivate learners, but motivation does not have to be visual reword. I just need to remind myself that learning does not come from the teacher alone. Creating an environment for students to learn from each other or by themselves is a crucial job for me.

A lesson with the help of PowerPoint certainly could create an environment to make students want to participate in class. Thanks to the technical tips and sample examples from “Presenting with PowerPoint”(http://tep.uoregon.edu/technology/powerpoint/docs/presenting.pdf) and “Top 10 Slide Tips - basic information about making a better presentation”(http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html),
I was able to enjoy creating a game, “What/Who am I?” The game has to be interactive between the teacher and students and between students. I want the game to activate students’ background knowledge to be ready for the upcoming learning.

When I visited Dilip’s blog and read his reflections, I found out he also thinks that we teachers try to find a best method to work in class but there is not one ultimate technique that works all the time and for every situation. We keep searching for new methods to teach. I think that is what the teacher does.