Promoting our students autonomy

Well, here we are again at the end of another productive week. The course is almost reaching to its end and I am already starting to miss this wonderful experience. It has been a very busy summer but enjoyable and quite rewarding.

Hi, 

This week I learned about Padlet or the Wallwisher, which is a new sharing tool where teachers and students contribute to the building of the wall together. Interaction and autonomy are both promoted and motivation is also increased with the activities that they both prepare. Regardless of the various activities that can used with the Padlet (interactive in nature, web-sharing, vocabulary or grammar), students and teacher can both collaborate effectively.

As teachers, we want our students to feel responsible for their own learning, set their goals and assess their needs. When students are involved in the learning process, when we start to relinquish some of our authority then we promote students to a different level. Introducing students with Penzu, they can start an online diary where they can reflect and write about their own progress. With the means of technology, we can emerge our students in an authentic context, where students start to make use of the appropriate target language.

Even with one computer in class, a teacher can use it to keep his students focus on one station only. The necessary activities are prepared and published through the computer. However, it cannot be a tool that a teacher may use. On the contrary, with an appropriate planning and organization any of the students can make use of that station in class. 

With a perfect combination of the Padlet and one computer in the class, the teacher cannot only develop a variety of activities but most importantly students’ autonomy will be promoted. If my class wants to develop a project, either in groups or as a class, I could use the Padlet to publish on the wall all their ideas and materials, which will then be finalized with a project.

As with the project we will have to draft, Anila and I are going to be peer-review partners. It will be a little bit difficult for me to keep up with all the work and class discussions in the two weeks to come; however, I will try to do my best. Hopefully, Anila and I will come up with useful suggestions to include in our final report so that we could have more useful ideas to apply in our real classes when the new academic year starts.

Looking forward to our peer-reviewing experience!

Regards,

Daniela