Week 8: Teacher Resources Online

Interaction, collaboration, creation, community, dialogue, discussion, meeting point, contribution, participation... these words could serve as a humble attempt to describe what Web 2.0 is all about. As teachers and students, we are not merely reading, watching, listening information that some other people upload; since we can actually do the same and more by making comments and re-organizing other people´s ideas.

All the teacher resources that we looked this week are extremely useful tools to help our students improve their English language performance. Our responsability now is to make sure we know who the students are (level of English, interests, needs, motivation, degree of independence), the facilities we have, and what problem we are going to be tackling.

We might be eager to start using everything right away in our classes,  however it is mandatory that a real language problem or goal is that which drives our channels our decision to use one type of technology over another. I think that our ultimate goal is that the students learn English... though if we are not careful enough, we might end up making the use of a new technology or tool the ultimate goal.

That's exactly why we have to be very specific when identifying and defining the problem in our projects: "The issue or problem is explicitly and clearly stated, focused to a single or connected teaching issue. The problem is solvable with technology, and within the time frame of the course."

Autonomy is a process that sometimes includes technology and online tools and sometimes it  doesn't.  Therefore let's ensure that when we decide to use the interactive Web 2.0, that our decision it is a carefully thought through one.