Saturday, February 18, 2012

Learning with computers

  I find it very useful to join this online forum "Learning with computers" on which I could talk with many language teachers and get various answers to different online teaching problems and being updated to many latest teaching information.

  On this website, I can get many practical advice of how to make my class more students-engaged and I can get to know many useful appliances which could enhance my online teaching and I also realize that there are some free resources that could benefit English teacher all over the world which is really a surprising gift to me. I found many worth watching podcasts concerning about TESOL and I shared this link and this forum at once with my friend who is an English teacher in China.

  This free podcast remind me of some free Harvard iTunes U on the apple store. Through these iTunes U I could learn many subjects like business, physics, history, etc. I think these iTunes U are also an application of Connectivism that could benefit learners globally and everyone could have a chance to learn the subjects that they like.

  Through the video New video consortium which made me rethink education and make me realize that network could be a very useful convenient and "love to help" resources, and on the network students could discuss with students or teachers and they could even challenging the teacher. It made me realize that the online source is not "teacher teaching and students receiving knowledge" method, but the online teaching is an interactive teaching method. This video tells a story that the students spontaneously translate the course syllabus into 5 different languages which could help learners from other countries or other languages get the knowledge more easier. This made me realized the power, I mean the overall power of the online students who come from the world and they help each other by translating the syllabus into other languages and they spread this knowledge freely and globally. I think this is really amazing and I think this is where the online teaching charismatic is. To spread the knowledge globally is the thing that classroom teaching really can't do:)

1 comment:

Maryanne said...

Learning with Computers is a very good site for EFL teachers. The members are very friendly and helpful. Another site you should check out is EFL Classroom 2.0. I think you would find this Ning very useful.