Week 7

This is the climax of the course. I am now seeing the result of the six weeks of hard work reflected on my students. Before this course, most of my students didn’t even dream of having an email account. Now, they are speaking out loud to the world in their broken English. Even better than that, they are seeing the reaction of the world to what they are saying.

Thanks to the project, my students managed to create email addresses, a class blog and a large community across the Mediterranean. They are now in touch with students from countries whose language and culture are totally different from their own.  English therefore is the language they have to use to communicate. They have already exchanged greetings and expressed their enthusiasm about this experience.

Now they are working on developing content to share with the community. They are very busy reading, writing and taking photos and videos about their hometown to share with their new friends on the other side of the sea. I can’t hide my excitement because, for me, this isn’t the first time I have created blogs for my students, but it’s definitely the first time I have managed to go beyond the boundaries of the classroom. Evidence for this, is the abundance of warm greetings and encouraging comments from both teachers and students from the two partner countries on the project: Portugal and Serbia.

My excitement over this great achievement has overshadowed week 7’s assignments which were equally beneficial. The articles on autonomy and m-learning added greatly to my professional development as an English language teacher. Although I have been witnessing the overwhelming evolution of communication technology, I cannot trace back the history of such rapid overlapping innovations in the mobile technology. However, Robert Goodwin-Jones’s article about mobile apps for language learning was very insightful in this matter, especially on what is available now in terms of applications that could be used by the students inside the classroom as efficiently as if you were using a multimedia lab in your school, as well as outside the school for individualized informal learning. Of course, smartphones are far from being democratic gadgets, but due to the fast spread of such devices, they will soon replace the personal computer as the prevailing source of information and means of communication. Meanwhile, the one computer approach is still considered the best alternative to the sophisticated costly media-lab which is most of the time unavailable in the largest majority of public schools in the world. The references on the word processing tips, strategies and applications of this approach are abundant and viable. So, it is high time we started integrating technology in our classrooms even if our schools aren’t equipped with the latest computer laboratories. 

These are the links to the blogs involved in the project so far. If you are interested in joining the experience, we will be so pleased to welcome you in this global learning adventure.

Soure, Portugal

Tetuan, Morocco

P.S Also check the fantastic feedback my partner Alex from Portugal is getting on her week 7 reflection