Saturday, January 25, 2014

#eduPLEmooc, working on the course

I have enrolled on the open course #eduPLEmooc and I have tried to catch up with the activities in this busy period of the year. So far, I find very interesting two ideas that have been discussed in the course:
  • Learning never ends and we are responsible for organizing our own learning in a time of  dramatic changes in education. Learning has changed and thanks to ICT we can and should be in contact with other teachers to share our expertise and knowledge and learn from their experience. Learning collaboratively is essential to build up our PLE, our Personal Learning Environment, which will enrich us professionally and personally.
  • Building our PLE is essential but we need to be aware of the image we project online and how this image is going to be used by others. 

These are the main two ideas so far in the course. Another important aspect of the course is the fact that there is an incredible number of teachers from various backgrounds, countries and areas of expertise who have been actively working together since the course started. To me this has been incredibly valuable since I am taking advantage of  my peers' expertise to improve my digital competence and to learn, first hand, about numerous tools which are available online both for improving our PLE as well as for working in the classroom.

In the next weeks I'd like to start contacting some of the teachers in the course who are currently working on language programs so that we can exchange ideas and, hopefully, come out with some projects to use in our classrooms and continue our personal development.

From the very beginning of the course I have been considering how the concept of PLE can be used with our students and by our students. Although our students use ICT every day, every single moment, it is surprising that they are unaware of the possibilities the web offers them to improve their knowledge, and help them with their learning especially if they work collaboratively. On the other hand, most students also may not realize the importance of creating a consistent self-image online and also its implications this image may have to them. Naturally, my first thought was try to build awareness about our personal image with students in the Internet and also help them create their PLE.  And to do all this in Spanish, as part of the Spanish courses in high school. How can we integrate this? This is what I would like to start discussing.

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