Carla asked six reflection questions. Here are they are, plus my responses. I'm not teaching now, so my responses are based on what I did in the recent past.
1. How do your students learn?
I had different types of students. They were of different ages (from teenagers to senior citizens, but mostly from around 18 to the mid-20s), and they came from a variety of countries (for the most part, but not entirely, from Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas). They also had different educational backgrounds: most had finished high school, but some had technical training or advanced professional degrees. They wanted to improve their English for primarily one of two reasons: most simply wanted to get a better job or be able to handle their affairs without the help of a translator, but anted to take academic-credit courses or pass a professional-level exam here in the U.S. The majority of my students were motivated to learn, but they had different understandings of what learning meant, and almost all were literate (sometimes highly so) in their native languages. Their familiarity with computers ranged from almost nonexistent to skilled, but most were not technophobic. In addition, I primarily taught grammar and writing classes, and this certainly affected learning modes: these classes required a lot of reading, thinking, writing, and aural processing of information. I also taught special classes in pronunciation (which focused primarily on listening and speaking, of course).
My students displayed a variety of learning preferences. Some seemed primarily to be visual-verbal learners and related best to diagrams, charts, and written examples. Others appeared to be mostly aural learners and preferred the spoken word—either comments from me or recorded interviews or conversations. Still others displayed characteristics of logical learners who seemed to want an organized, systematic presentation of ideas. A few seemed to be what I would call creative / chaotic learners whose mental processing didn't "follow straight lines." Further, my students tended to be social / interpersonal learners who related well to being part of a class and enjoyed working in pairs or groups, but some favored solitary / intrapersonal activities and would probably have been happier working one-on-one rather than with others.
I also tried to vary my teaching practices. I tried to keep a balance of serious and fun activities, for example, and I moved around in class (from the front of the class to other parts of the room, from addressing the group to speaking with individual students). I also used a variety of activities during each class period—for example, presenting key information then asking for examples from students, having the students work from models, using dictatations. In addition, I used different presentation tools (whiteboard / blackboard, overhead projector, cassette / CD player, LCD projector, charts) and media (PowerPoint, recordings, computer-based exercises). I tried always to include both individual and group work in my class sessions and had oral, aural, and written work in all of my classes. My homework also varied: I used written and picture-based exercises (both from our coursebooks and ones I had created myself), different types of extended written work (paragraphs, essays, journals, notebooks, articles for class books and newspapers). Finally, most of my students' homework was completed on an individual basis, but some was presented by groups of students.
2. How much tech-richness does your curriculum provide?
3. How are you using the WWW to teach your students?
I was fortunate, in the last two places where I worked (a university-based program and a community college), to have access to technology. At the university (Arizona State University), most of the classrooms had an instructor's computer (often with Internet access) and there was also a "computing commons" with a huge number of Net-connected computers that students could use. At the community College (Estrella Mountain CC), there was also a kind of "computing commons" that all students could use. In addition, all of the older classrooms at the college had a Net-connected instructor's computer and wireless-equipped laptops that could be reserved and delivered for use in class, and the newer classrooms had both an instructor's computer and student laptops (all Net-accessible). Moreover, both the university and the community college had instructional technology departments who helped teachers develop materials and learn to use equipment.
At both ASU and EMCC, I used my own computer to develop both hard-copy materials (exercises, models, syllabi, notes) and online materials (personal web page with sections for each of my classes, class web pages, link lists). At the community college, I used Blackboard (an online course management platform) for many of my classes, and developed and taught one grammar class in "hybrid" (blended online and face-to-face) mode. I required that most of my student "compositions" (paragraphs, essays) and that all of their research papers be word-processed, and I made sure that students knew the difference between the conventions of keyboarding and typewriting. I also bought my first digital camera in the mid-1990s and used it (and two other cameras that I bought later) to post student photos and record student activities. Finally, I helped students enrich their individual study through providing links to online materials that supplemented our work in class, and in class, I also used Randall Davis' ESL Cyber Listening Lab, portions of Dave Sperling's ESL Cafe on the Web, online exercises and quizzes by Charles Kelley ("Many Things"), and other online materials (including some I had created myself) for both supplemental audio and text materials. Finally, I began working with blogs during the last two years that I taught; one blogging project (done with Carlinha and her students at "Thomas" in Brasília) worked quite well.
4. How do we turn our 21st Century classrooms into learning engines?
I think we can turn our 21st Century classrooms into "learning engines" by
a. making sure our students are properly oriented to computer-mediated learning (searching, bookmarking, navigating, using headphones / headphone sets, recording on removable media, uploading and downloading materials, registering for online venues (like moodles, Ning pages, blogs, wikis), remembering and / or saving passwords, knowing the difference between keyboarding and typewriting, knowing how to select by clicking and/or using pull-down and scroll-over menus;
b. including online materials which are similar to what students who use computers (not all do!) are familiar with—things that are something like Orkut, FaceBook, MySpace;
c. knowing how to find, navigate, and work with online materials that we expect our students to use;
d. including and keeping a balance between both WWW-based and face-to-face activities (unless our classes are 100% online);
e. making sure that we have both individual and group activities (yes, more than one student can use a single computer) and that we as teachers are facilitating and collaborating, not constantly directing what and when and how things are to be done;
f. ensuring that when students are working on computers in class, we don't simply mark papers or otherwise separate ourselves from what the class is doing, but, instead, that we make a practice of involving ourselves in the learning process—for example, by moving around the room to see what works and what doesn't, answering questions, giving encouragement, and providing assistance (either providing it ourselves or by asking another student to help);
g. making sure that online materials that we assign for homework or choose to work with in class are still available (not shut down for repairs, not dead links);
h. knowing what to do if a computer "freezes" or crashes or if other problems occur;
i. making sure that we leave time to shut down computers properly when an online activity has finished;
j. making sure that we always have an alternate plan in case there are network or electrical problems;
k. including activities that are fun as well as serious (we can learn from both)!
5. Are you engaging your students?
I always tried to engage my students, but the truth is, I sometimes did and I sometimes didn't. Part of the time, lack of engagement was because of the students (no sleep the night before, worry about a sick child, bad news from family living outside the U.S., car / money / rent / job problems, and so on), but part of the time the lack of engagement was from me (lack of sleep, problems at home, difficulty with allergies, dwelling on something negative a colleague had said, not being able to use materials I'd spent hours creating, etc.)
True student engagement is never easy to accomplish. It requires sensitivity to the needs of each student and awareness of the constantly-changing atmosphere of the class as a whole, adequate planning and "choreography," the ability to look beyond one particular class and see what must be accomplished "down the road," energy, compassion, a certain amount of acting ability, self confidence, the willingness to realize that one's own personal background and preferences may be quite different from those of one's students (whose backgrounds and preferences are also important), and many other qualities and skills.
The important thing, it seems to me, is realizing that engagement is a critically necessary component of "learning engines": the more our students are engaged, the more they will learn . . . and the more satisfying, meaningful, and personally useful their learning experiences will be
6. What are your main barriers to incorporating technology into your classroom
I had many barriers to incorporating technology into my classes. Here are some of them:
a. varied familiarity with computers (from computer-phobic to computer-savvy) among students;
b. malfunctioning equipment (sometimes because systems or networks were down, sometimes because I forgot to adjust a particular setting, sometimes because whoever used a classroom before me forgot to log out and I couldn't make changes in this or that because the previous person's settings were not the same as mine, sometimes from things as simple as a plug or connector that was loose, sometimes other reasons);
c. support staff who weren't always available (the AV Techs were wonderful at my last job, but sometimes they could drop everything and come in to help with a problem, and at other times they couldn't fix the problem until hours or days after the problem occurred);
d. school policies on use of technology (in general, my last two workplaces encouraged use of technology and provided plenty of help and support, but some things were tightly controlled—for example, using BlackBoard as the only online learning platform and specifying that "blended" classes would follow a single scheduling option for each week of class—one 1.5-hour F2F session, plus at least 1.5 hours of classwork to be done online);
e. not having access to some of the equipment that I needed or wanted (for example, a notebook PC, a digital whiteboard, digital voice recorders, a graphics tablet, a class polling system);
f. not having enough time to develop materials and learn to use new and interesting applications;
g. my own tendency to stress out when problems developed and I didn't, immediately, know how to solve them;
h. students who forgot their log-on usernames and passwords almost every time we used computers in class;
i. students (and some faculty???) who thought that online learning was not serious learning;
j. having to work mostly with PCs even though I prefer to use a Mac;
k. not having enough time to do particular tech-based activities (and still have enough time for students to properly log off and shut down before they have to leave the classroom);
l. sometimes being unwilling to let go of my "teacher as expert" persona and admit that I didn't know how to do something (frequently one or more students understood how to do things on a computer or how to work with specific applications better than I did);
m. sometimes being unable to relax and inject a heady dose of fun and ginga into what went on in class (which, of course, led to stress and further problems with equipment and procedures);
. . . . and I could say more.
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I'm happy to add, however, that I found (sometimes "inside my own head," sometimes through advice from others) solutions or alternative courses of action for all or nearly all of what I listed above . . . so I firmly believe that most, if not all, barriers can be surmounted. I also believe that every problem is actually a learning opportunity.
My personal thoughts this week are two-pronged and involve two areas:
