Reflections on ESL 6973
Sadly, we have completed Dr. Wright's Course. For most courses, there are champagne corks flying at the last class. But the content, practice, and participation in this course was so engaging and educational, that we don't want to say "Good-bye." I congratulate Dr. Wright for roaring success in the initial run of this course.
Learning by Doing
An excellently constructed course, we not only read about technology in the context of language learning, but implemented everything we read about. That included blogging, wikis, YouTube videos, flikr, RSS feeds, podcasts to the world, and acquisition of new friends through email from ChenChen, enrolled in an English program in Xian, China. A big advantage of the course is the quality of the fellow graduate students enrolled who bring a wealth of information and experience to the forum of the class.
Personally, I was able to utilize and even teach the skills and concepts learned. The Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. where I work has also benefitted from the concepts taught in this course, in the College of Education and Human Development! One of the profs met with Dr. Wright, and is integrating wikis in his grant proposal and also in his classes. I was able to put together a speech and podcast for one of the profs to study on a plane as he came back from Asia. In addition, for articulation lessons, I used the Audacity spectograms with great success for a private client. He is an electrical engineer and was impressed with the technology.
As I plan for classes which I will be teaching at the 1604 campus in the Fall semester 2007, the technology and also educational aspects of this course will serve me to stimulate original and better ways to teach communication skills to the juniors and seniors.
