Hello, everybody:
I am in front of the pc screen - where else could I be? - thinking about a title for this post and the lyrics of "The Wall" by Pink Floyd came to my mind when they sing: Hey, teachers. Leave the kids alone. Please, read the title of this post with the tune of the song ;)
Although Pink Floyd and their fans may insist, teachers cannot leave kids alone. Poor little things, they are learning how to cope with the Internet alone because neither teachers nor parents know much about it :(
I am in front of the pc screen - where else could I be? - thinking about a title for this post and the lyrics of "The Wall" by Pink Floyd came to my mind when they sing: Hey, teachers. Leave the kids alone. Please, read the title of this post with the tune of the song ;)
Although Pink Floyd and their fans may insist, teachers cannot leave kids alone. Poor little things, they are learning how to cope with the Internet alone because neither teachers nor parents know much about it :(
But I am not going to write about Pink Floyd or music. As I have announced in my previous post, today Ana María Menezes has given a presentation at the School of Languages. If you attended the event, I hope you have enjoyed it and got some ideas to incorporate technology in your classes and stop teaching as decades ago. She started pointing out the differences between how students used to learn before the digital revolution and how they learn now .
One of the differeces she mentioned was "sharing". Students now share information with their friends ( or contacts? ) using social networks, chats, text messages. I would like to invite the attendees to start sharing their experiences using computers in their classes.
How can we start sharing ?
In comments (* see below this post), write about what you feel when you take your students to the computer room. Do you feel nervous or confident? Why? What type of activities do you ask them to do using the computer?Sharing our feelings will be very good for all of us because we will learn together : )
*If you do not know how to leave a comment in Blogger, watch this video
Comments
I explore first the tools I`m going to share with my students but many times they surprise me with some possibilities I hadn`t considered. Learning with them is a fascinating adventure. I`m not the owner of the complete knowledge anymore...This is relaxing and makes me feel so young.LOL
Congrats and keep shining
This is the first time in my life I’ve used this means of communication, and I have to admit I have a mixture of feelings: I feel a bit uneasy – for some unknown reason – on the one hand. On the other hand, I feel proud of myself as I have set this as a personal challenge and have been able to meet it!
I was one of the lucky ones who attended Ana Maria Menezes’ talk on how to develop the 4 skills using webtools. It was a great meeting during which we got to know about a lot of things we can do with our students in and outside the classroom using tools available on the web – and for free too!
I’ve learnt that students nowadays are different from us old students in many ways: they can do various tasks all at once; they want to share everything with everyone; they are very creative and we should encourage this on them! And so on! But above all, something really important has happened to me after this encounter: I’ve come to understand all this, and have decided to ACCEPT that this is the way things are like nowadays!!!
I’ve been pondering on all the activities I’ll try to engage my students in. Soon, I’ll be sharing with you the activities, and the results!
My husband, a System Engineer, has showed me something great. This is the link! Hope you enjoy it!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLEBAPA7yqo
Fiorella Magri
Teacher of English
@Susan : thank you for coming from Del Valle.
@Fiorella: thank you for your message and let us know about your future experiences using Web 2 tools.
Cintia