Project Task 6

According to my plan, (See Section 4) I first created a class blog in order to implement technology into my class. Creating a new blog is a novel tool to my students and I. I expected high participation from my students and that they would be very motivated to log into the blog and do the assignments. I invited my students via an e-mail to log into the blog and do two assignments. I allowed them a week to do the assignments. Only two students were able to log into the blog and respond to the assignments while 5 students were unable to log into the blog. In class, I discussed with them the assignments and the reasons for not be able to log into the blog. The main reason was that in order to log into the blog they had to have a g-mail account.

Flexibility on the part of the teacher determines the success of the integration process. Therefore, the plan was modified and I created a class page on Nicenet. I sent another e-mail inviting the students to log in and do the assignments. After creating a page on Nicenet, things started to work in the right direction: my students started using our class page on Nicenet and post their reflections on what they learned during the week. I started also sharing some links on Nicenet and I uploaded some handouts and documents. It is now used for promoting out-of-class integration and using English for communication in general.

Another technologically-related change involved using computer-based activities in class. The students were offered a chance to play a Jeopardy game developed on the basis of the handouts of the Theories of Language Learning course. The activity was met with enthusiasm on the part of the students. Working in groups of five, they were very interested and they eagerly participated in the game.

The students were  invited to freely express their opinions on the idea of establishing an online space for the Group.  All their opinions were positive: most of them said it was totally different from what they used to. One of them wrote: “ I feel that I understand each topic better than before because the feedback that we gain from the comments of the Dr. or our colleges on our assignments.”

My initial plan was also modified. I was planning to introduce my students to Delicious. I finally decided to implement it next semester. I will divide the whole process into stages (familiarization, implementation, individual exploration and feedback)  which seem necessary.