Wednesday, October 10, 2007

personal reflections

So I am supposed to be reflecting on what have I found useful or challenging; on hopes for the remainder of the semester; and I am supposed to figure out suggestions for the instructor. This latter part is the hard one. I am always a little hesitant to say that i am loving everything bc I have this feeling the instructor is hoping we give suggestions about how he/she can make things better, and I am not very critical unless I really don't like something.
But, ok, let's see...
Except for blogging, everything I have learned in this course is new to me, so I am loving it. My boyfriend Dean is a computer person, so whenever I ask him for help he just does the whole thing for me, and I happen to take it for granted. Now things have changed; because I know I will be graded on my assignments, whenever he takes the computer from my hands and tries to do anything, I complain that I need to learn to do it myself. Not always a peaceful dialogue, but definitely a new experience to me. People say I am a go-getter, but that is only true when I find no help - I was never one who'd try to learn something if someone else would do it for me, not even when I was a little girl.
The programs we have been working with, I have fallen in love with. To start with I had never heard of inspiration, and had always hoped there was a program that would make outlines easier - in other words I have always dreamed someone out there had come up with Inspiration. It was quite a pleasure to be introduced to it.
The last 3 projects we have worked on - website-making, photo-editing and movie-making are just fun experiences and things I was hoping to learn anyway. Not only they are great tools to use in my field, they are also things I can use on my personal life.
I have not made full use of the resources made available, but I have looked at them, and they are good source of help. Besides that, the readings have been useful to me. Some of them relate to other courses I am taking this semester, and that is great, because since I don't have a lot of knowledge on the american education system, having some sort of overdose of texts dealing with somewhat related subjects, helps me have some idea of how things are structured, what things are new, what issues are consider problematic, and thigns like that. And also I realize that some of things, like UDL are new to my classmates too, so I don't feel so much like a foreigner.
The one thing I am having a hard time with is the standard area of my choice. I am doing my masters in TESOL, and before Dean and I started talking about getting married, the american public schooI system was definitely not one of my priorities. But I had to pick one standard area, and did not find ESL, so I picked the K-4 English/language arts. Now I sort of regret it - teaching a foreign language is my real passion, whether it is English or whatever else. I have taught English to non-native speakers ever since I started learning English myself - I taught my brother when I came home from class, and that is what inspired me to teach at a school. But I would love to have the chance to work with Portuguese; trying to enable Dean to communicate with my family by November really opened my eyes to this area. I think teaching my own language can be a delightful experience.
I am not sure if at this point I can change my standard area, but I have been reading about the foreign language content for 9-12 grade. When I think foreign language thought, I think ESL as well as Portuguese.
I am looking forward to podcasting class, bc a Brazilian Portuguese pod cast is definitely one of my personal projects.
I have seen a Brazilian Podcast online. It was actually pretty exciting, but the instructor really struggled with his English. He had great ideas though. I have develop a few basic lessons, and I think they could probably be podcast material with some work.

1 comment:

Elizabeth Langran said...

I can't wait to see what you do with podcasting too! Your enthusiasm is inspiring and I'm so glad you are enjoying this class, as well as learning it for yourself and recognizing how important it is for you to keep control of the mouse. Your website looks like it's coming along, please continue to add each week. You might want to check the shade of green, it is a little harsh on the eyes and might create some problems for visually impaired viewers (i.e. color blind)

Keep up the good work!