Recap - Week 10 reflection

It's been a nice experience to join this program. From the first week until the time the course finishes, everything has been an eye-opener for me.

Among those presented during the course, what I found very interesting and useful are:

• Setting course objective with ABCD procedure: with this, now I know that a course objective needs to have (A)udience, (B)ehavior, (C)ondition, and (D)egree in order to get the students to the right direction.
• Project-based learning and Learner autonomy: Since one learner is not the same as the other, surely he or she needs to learn at his own pace and style. We, as teachers, need to address this matter and create a plan to guarantee that learners can get maximum learning experience through the lesson we design.
• Technology to engage students (especially for large classes): There are times when teachers have to stand in front of the class and face a large number of students, wondering: 'how can I make sure that everyone is learning effectively?' Thanks to the course materials and sharing with fellow teachers with their insightful ideas, now I know it is possible to engage a large number of students in class effectively.  
• Creating online course / site: This is also what I find very useful for me as everything that we do and involve ourselves in the course is a very good example of the implementation of an online course / site. Therefore, I can tell that I learn a lot about this very interesting idea not only from the materials and reading given in week 8, but from the course as a whole!

 Thanks for giving me the chance to participate in this course ^_^

Learning styles and technology - Week 9 reflection

As teachers, we are always faced by a constant yet insightful challenge when we deliver our lesson: that is how to efficiently and efficiently cater a spectrum of leaners' learning styles. As it is commonly known, no one is the same as the other. A learner may have different learning style or preference compared to his or her peers, and a class is at least full of learners with different needs to be fulfilled. Therefore, teachers are those among the responsible ones to guide them toward a more effective teaching - learning process.

Sometimes, there is a common fear: is it possible to juggle all balls at the same time? Can I teach everyone with different needs, but with the same level of success?
Technology has easened up, if not eliminated, our fear as teachers to face this kind of situation. In my country, Indonesia, there was a tendency for teacher to dominate a class and cater one or two learning styles only. Nevertheless, in the present days with the new qualification curriculum (KKNI), there is now a movement toward embracing other learning styles or preferences, since people already recognize that students not only learn through certain channels, but they can also utilize other means of learning as well, in order to maximize their learning experience and technology.

Class site and online exercise - Week 8 reflection

I am currently constructing a class site for my Writing I, which can found at https://sites.google.com/site/writing1uaj/

Although this is still in heavy construction, this class site is actually an alternative form of its Moodle counterpart (http://elearning.atmajaya.ac.id/course/view.php?id=669), which is also in the process of reconstructing due to the change of curriculum in the department where I am teaching. In this class site, the students will be given a weekly task, in which they have to compose a writing.

Since developing writing skill is pretty much similar to developing swimming ability, in which students need to practice from time to time, through this class site, I hope that the students will be able to compose expository paragraphs as well as essays, and then have their peers comment on the works. This way, students will be able to learn to compose a writing, give comments, negotiate meaning, improve their writing based on the feedback given by their peers, and ultimately develop their writing ability.