New experiences coming up!

As my last teaching experience came to its end, i have lots of new things to tell in my blog. As any other long term education experience, this settled on me so many new concepts and learning situations.

College learning is far from primary school education is many ways, but at the end, and after a deep reflexion, we are doing the same act, and it belongs to the same brand, Education. Driving is going to be driving always, but of course it wont be the same driving a car or a larry, but lets think in a experienced car driver trying a larry slowly and making his best to adapt, of course we are thinking the same right now, Yes He Can! its exactly the same process for teaching.

In my future entries I will be expression opinions about GRE, the exam everybody needs to access to GRAD school in USA. This exam is taking my time and mind at the moment. It is a medium difficulty exam that can be prepared by any student individually as far as his/her math and mainly english skills are acceptable enough for the challenge.

Glad to be back dear readers!

Saludos,

Amador

Language teachers in a Computer Lab (PART 2)

As I said in my previous entry, Computer Labs is the future in language classes, the old fashioned book is going to be soon replace by computers, in fact, the best schools provide their student with a computer in the regular classes, this act, open the class to the world wide web, so that student can get more information about the thing the teacher is explaining, in the same moment.

Another aspect I would like to attach strong attention is that the computer can never substitute the teacher, there is only one teacher. The computer can perfectly swap the book but the teacher is the fixed and necessary element in every class, no matter the branch of study.

Before the start of the use of the computer with education purposes, teacher should use 1 or 2 classes to drill the student about the proper use of the computer, and how to fix problems. This 2 classes will be recovered as the class flows better during the semester.

In general, a teacher of nowadays cannot feel out of place in a computer lab, it is easy to handle and mainly, students needs the computers to develop their skills more quickly and better.

Language Teachers in a Computer Lab (PART 1)

Once again, language learning and technology. This time I will express my idea of what are the roles of a teacher in a computer lab.

What is different in going to a computer lab with students and the students doing the work by themselves? nowadays, 95% of the students have the internet at home, and the other 5% has it just right around the corner. The difference resides in the use pupils take from the internet, when no teacher in the class the students tend to avoid long processes and this means not take the advantage the software can extract.

But it is true that many are the teacher that feel like babysitters in a computer lab, just helping computer issues or just solving very simple steps some students jumped because of their possible difficulties with the hardware. That is right, that is not the best language teacher scenario. What can we do for that? it is probed that computer lab, when they work perfectly (software and hardware), are the ultimate tool for language learning, a computer can repeat a word as many times as the student want, without the necessity of having the teacher in front of us for such matter, remember (one teacher for 30 students!!!)

What teachers need is to make sure every computer lab have at least one responsible for the hard and software problems, instead of the teacher doing somebody's else job.

End of part 1 - To be continued...

Target Language L2 in classrooms - TO BE CONSIDERED!!!

Many are the ideas around this topic, but there is only one reality under my humble opinion, the more we hit L2 in our lectures, the more our students will acquire the target language. Yes, sometime is "impossible" to achieve this since there are concepts complex to explain and things that for its importance must be considered to be developed in L1 (mother tongue),

I repeat, its only an option, if we use L2, easy grammar, slowly, there is not need to use L1, it sounds like impossible to do because at least here at my country, nobody does it, and it seems to be totally a new generation of language education, but it is proved to be the ultimate best way of teaching this.

Ok here is an easy example, math class, is there any teacher around the world that does not use the blackboard and formulas and numbers? is there any science and nature teacher that does not use the environment as the learning mirror...same are languages, teachers have to present what is to be achieved...other than this are bad teachers that dont give a peanut for their students, all they want is money in their accounts by end of the month... and we are already in XXI century.

Education in my country (My personal views)

Thousands of things i could say about the education in my country.. why is not Spain one of the top countries in Europe, we have got everything to be a top nation, but we are not. Obviously, politic issues are related with our relegated position en EU, I am talking about Franco and the civil war, our population and money was spent in war, such a vast country only has 45 mil people due to this big backward movement.

But in second instance and this time from the other side of the road, i blame the MEC for develop a horrible politic in education, no doubt, spanish students are one of the 5 worst prepared students in EU, and this is without any doubt a great difficulty that will cause that other countries like Sweden, Greece, Poland....be ahead of Spain, to join another group that started as the main group and head of the EU, yes, we drive in one direction, the one that will put us in the third group wagon

It is embarrassing going to the beach and see a small kid, 5 years old, from Germany, or Poland, England..talking to us in Spanish, assuming he can speak 3 languages, and our kids are not able to say a couple of words in English, even when they have learned it in class for some years already...

What is wrong? the government is wrong, the politics in education is wrong, the system that pick teachers is corrupt, it does not matter how good you speak other languages and how you can teach them, it only matters how many people you know, and how important they are, yes, this is Spain and this is what happen here, and NO, I have not tried yet but come on, it is something we all know.

What should change? so many things, if Spain wants to cross the bridge and join the big nations need people able to communicate in English, for that, we need teachers that give classed entirely in L2, the target languages, and not teachers that barely can speak the language they are learning.

My expectations for this to change are minimum, since I have seen this happening during many years, and it seem to be even worse...but some people keep on trying, some people do great jobs in education and give some light to those that we start to lose all our hopes, for all those, thanks and we will do our best to give example to others.

Reflection on what learned with Francoise LeFort - Education and Technology

Amador Jimenez-Garrido


Reflection on things learned this semester - technology skills and ideas on integrating technology in future teaching.



Personally, I have always been aware of the importance of using new Technologies in classrooms today.
Nowadays there are only a small percentage of teacher that don’t use there feature in class or another learning situation.

There are two basic reasons why technologies should be part of the learning process today; first of all, these new methods make our class work to a quicker pace which allows us to cover more concepts within our time. And secondly, technologies make our work very interactive that is the best way to learn most subjects.

There are another ring of external reason like the importance of being familiar with technologies since childhood because our professional future is going to be determined with our capacity of utilize computer or other electronic devices.

I reckon that my knowledge of the possibilities available today was not good enough at the beginning of the course if I compared with today. Thank to this class I feel like I have good a wide range of methods that I will be incorporating to my lectures. I am very glad to have learnt the web basic programs because they are easy, intuitive, and they don’t need any installation or further setting up.

To enumerate or describe how I am going to use all of them is class is hard because I have not get to that point yet since I am still studding but I am sure that the use of some features or other is going to be related with the age of my students, but Office, Wiki, Digication..are going to be common in my classes.

The students will be benefited of the addition of technologies to class because they won’t be monotonous anymore and they will learn enjoying.
For me the challenge of bringing new feature to class is important because that means being a teacher that considers to be according with the times.

14 days after

Here I am, 14 days after EEUU, what changed? nothing really, why should I be scared of losing that freshness with my English? I have had a couple of conversation in Skype with my friends over Alabama and it seems like it is even better...

This brings to my mind the theory that learning...oh well I mean, mastering a second language is like driving, if you are a two years experience driver and you dont use it for 1 year, do you think you gotta start again? obviously no, it will flow from inside you as it was the next day of last time you used it. But of course, as any other thing in life, the more we practice the better and confident we get, and languages are not different, I will be talking to friends, facebooking them, mailing them, calling them, watching movies, reading books, blogging myself, in order to demonstrate I am still into it.

To all those people freaking out after an unique learning experience, if you worked it properly, (and only you know if you did), don´t be afraid, you will be fine for a long time if it is not 4ever ;)