Week 10 Reflection

Here, I feel sad and speechless but I would say every end is just a new beginning.

                 It is the end of the course but the beginning of change and new things in our beliefs, knowledge and practice. We are happy that we started to have some meta-cognition about the use of technology and the different ways it could be integrated in language teaching and learning.

                 This week's discussion was about advice we could give to future participants, I would briefly say motivation is the first key to success and change, persistence and trial as having something finished or done is better than perfect. Seeking perfection will always keep us in the phase of thinking, dreaming and planning and we will never move to action; however, to evaluate something or our abilities to implement it or its effects, we must start action. Many of us claim about the conditions and circumstances in our institutions but we should bear in mind that no learning setting is perfect.

          I would also say to those who are interested to join the course, the course is a great chance to learn new techniques and new ideas to implement technology and also a great chance to put this theory into practice. Our instructor Sean McClelland was amazing in every step of the course. His clear guidance and advice helped us a lot to go straight to our objectives and respond to course assignments. 

                 During the course, we learned various techniques and tools such designing blog, website, webquest, rubric, activity, powerpoint, Padlet, virutal class..... but if we think and reflect on our practice, we can say that we are still in the phase of awareness and we need time to move to the phase of planning and actions. For the sake of the course, we tried most of them but in reality we still need work on our understanding of these tools and their practice. Further, some work must be done by our institutions to integrate technology into the curriculum and maybe we will be some of the reasons of this change. For me personally, I will take the initiative to plan something for my department staff to get them familiar with all what we did here. 

               Another issue that we explored this week are the technology evaluation rubrics. I liked much the technology integration matrix  (http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/adoption.php) which is characterized by levels of technology integration and characteristics of the learning environment. The rubric is well designed and indicators are well stated for the teacher, students and the setting. Having a look at the matrix and trying to evaluate my practice of technology, I found that I am in the adoption level but honestly I think I am still in the entry level in all aspects. 

             Finally, my project is corrected and I will have time to revise it. I was surprised to get a good score in the project but this motivating to revise this project and think of other plans of change. 

              
           Honestly, counting the gains of the course deserve from us ten weeks maybe or more to describe everything we did and everything we learned. I hope to have other chances to meet Sean and coursemates. Thanks you all for the enthusiasm you gave me. 




Ouarda (Algeria)