Overall Reflection
Before this course, I had a basic ICT competence involving being competent in common computer applications like word processing, PowerPoint, and the Internet. Likewise, I just mastered the lowest level in Hampel and Stickler’s Skills pyramid. Before preparing for the class, I usually searched for useful educational websites or applications and studied how to apply this software for teaching purposes. I always did my best to possess the knowledge and skill to use specific software, but I was not an expert on ‘new’ software encountered; therefore, sometimes I was not good at dealing with constraints and possibilities of the unfamiliar medium. For example, if students asked many questions regarding the new program they were not familiar with, I wasn’t confident to answer every question about technical difficulties that students had to solve. Through this, I figured out that I was still at the level of the second stage of Skills Pyramid: "specific technical competence for the software".
However, I was able to broaden my view of the new educational multimedia by doing various tasks during this class. Therefore, I could form a new habit of considering both constraints and possibilities of the medium when I encounter some new software. The repetition of the tasks of learning new media and introducing them to others helped me to take additional measures to redress all the possible drawbacks of the new medium I planned to use in the lesson.
Also, working many tasks in the form of blogs, I realized that blogging was one of the avenues for collaboration with various people, and it provided a great place to develop communicative competence in a language. As a result, I developed the ability to create an online environment where interaction can be fostered. And if I have opportunities to make a language lesson, I’m sure I can create an activity that promotes interaction among my language students by showing them how to create blogs for their tasks(using the format of ‘WIX’) like I did during TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LANGUAGE TEACHING class. I am confident that I become to have the ability and insight to design good tasks that can promote students' interaction in class. Through this, I figured out that I have achieved important stages: ‘online socialization’ stage and ‘facilitating communicative competence’ stage.
I think I am in the process of moving on to the better stage of ‘creativity and choice’ stage. Because I was in an early stage of combining education and technology in the lesson, and generating creative ideas on the lesson is sometimes difficult for me. But, when choosing to integrate IT in my teaching, sometimes I found myself expressing creative skills like I’m already become at the stage of 6: "creativity and choice". This includes the ability to identify appropriate and relevant tools for learning activities as well as to match these with the different types of students’ proficiency levels and even the environment surrounding the students. For example, in the previous assignment, I selected the contents of the storybook(“about family”), considering the time environment of May(“Family Month”). If I steadily keep paying attention to the software application for teaching purposes, I think I can approach the most expert level in Skills Pyramid in the future. I’m sure I’ll have the ability to create my teaching style integrating IT and learning purposes.
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During this semester, I was trained to use technology to go through Wang’s entire 4 stages. Every time I first learn about each of the tasks(Voki, digital storybook, and comic tasks, and so on), I excited about the interesting features of new tools that have educational purposes. This means I was on 'wow-this is exciting' stage. At the same time, I expected that this interesting technology will easily hold the interest of students in easy ways.
And ‘Uh-oh’ stage also appeared when I used technology to make my lesson more useful. For example, I felt some difficulties when I tried to make a lesson plan which includes "online" activities because I usually make educational activities which appropriate for the "offline" classroom. Some problems only exist in distance learning, so I had to consider the rules of netiquette and understand the different features of activities between online and offline classroom teaching. Furthermore, I had to consider some technical problems related to the nature of the medium. I think these kinds of difficulties can gradually hurt the confidence of teachers who need to plan and proceed with actual classes. I also felt the anxiety during making the lesson plan, and it made me slow down my pace in planning language lessons using technology. I think this is evidence that I experienced the stage of the ‘anxiety’ stage.
But, this kind of fear disappeared as I gradually learned about new education platforms using technology and studied some useful theories relate to education and technology. I am not yet fully in the last stage: "internalizing", but I think I have become more mature as I move towards the last stage in the near future!
