Time to say GoodBye!

What have I learned within sixty three days?

How can I possibly express a sense of satisfaction over changes I have made in myself, my teaching and my students?

I felt like it was yesterday I took the course. Days go by and yet one thing that doesn't go away is my desire to take full advantage of all the things I have learned and my motivation to learn more. 

Week 1 certainly helped me to orientate myself to the setting of the course, ground rules to follow, familiarize myself with the nature and purpose of the course and most important of all, gave me a sense of belonging and control over what I had to do throughout the course. The first step was well taken and I was not in a maze because I knew how I could be helped in so many ways.

Week 2 introduced ABCD model which has helped me change my teaching in a positive way because I have learned to set clear objectives for my students. Apart from that, it has widened my scope and helped me get out of my own little world where I solely relied on Google for anything I wanted. Web searching was such a pleasant experience for me because I had a chance to use different websites with different purposes. I could start planning my project. I could share what I learned this week with my students concerning Web Searching.  

In the third week I witnessed the importance of CALL for listening, speaking, or pronunciation skills and had a chance to make use of the websites to help students enhance their skills. Creating delicious page was fun, easy but which is very useful for us teachers to store all the important links in one place. I envied others while I read their sample projects and could also see the changes they had made with the help of technology.

Right after I explored the websites concerning reading and writing in week four, I used them in my classroom and had a positive feedback from my students and I could also learn to create technology enhanced lesson plans. Planning the project by helping us figure out what issues we had was a great help in implementing our project.

Week five was one of my favorite weeks as I had learned about PBL, Webquests, rubric and assessment and their positive influence on the learners to be able to reach their goals. Doing extra credit task was interesting, motivating and this did help me with my final project like Courtney had mentioned in her discussion.

I am glad that I took the chance. I am very excited and really looking forward to seeing the response of my students when I introduce it at the end of my two week course. 

Week six provided me with the golden opportunity to learn how to conduct large classes and the effective use of Interactive PowerPoint in the classrooms. This was also the first week where I was able to witness change in my students with the introduction of technology. PowerPoint did help me a lot to trigger the interests of my students. 

Week seven threw some light on how to conduct classes with the availability of only one computer and how to use mobile phones in our teaching. The most exciting part of this week was understanding what Learner Autonomy is and how can we, teachers help our students to learn independently with confidence and motivation. I came to know how to use Padlet and I even introduced that to my students as one of the activities in my final project plan. 

The resourceful week eight let me know how to actually use some resources in teaching. All these tools were familiar with us at the start of the course like Nicenet, Googlesites but this week actually opened the window of opportunity for us to use them in our own classes. That's more than amazing because we were taught using these tools and then we were granted access to use them in our own classes. Thanks to the course I  had learned about ANVILL through Nicenet discussions. Sharing my final project draft for peer review was one of the fascinating experiences throughout the course because I benefitted a lot from reading my partner's project draft. 

Week nine was the time when had to submit our final project and what we had learned in this week was linked to what we had learned in the previous eight weeks. How to use MI and technology? While doing week nine assignments, I had a chance to recall all the things I had done in the past few weeks and this gives me the idea to use MI and technology in the classroom in a more meaningful and purposeful way. 

I have been trying to use all the technology tools I have learned from this course in my teaching and I can see the difference in my own teaching. Hence, based on the positive feedback of my students, I can say taking this course has changed the way I teach and therefore the way my students learn has changed in a meaningful and positive way. 

Thank you Courtney for being such a great and helpful instructor. 

Thank you Oregon University for providing us with such a chance to become a part of something great.

Thank you the scholarship committee for accepting us and believing in us.

Last but not least, thank you all my lovely classmates to be able to learn with all of you and to learn from all of you. 

I am not very good with goodbyes but anyway there is always a time for people to meet and to part. It is a fact of life. So……….. 

Best,

Kyi Tha Wai