Online education

In the article “An open mind” we can read about a new education which is mainly online. It is a project executed by several universities which allows students to take courses from the comfort of their home through their computer. But it provides students with much more benefits than just comfort. Those benefits are:

Education for everyone

Entering a university is not something easy to do. You need money, good grades, recommendations and much more, but thanks to the online education the requisites become bearable barriers. Students who do not have the money to go to the university but who truly desire to have education (and quality education) can find it in these online courses. This action translates into open the doors of the university and the knowledge to the public in general.

No grades
Even though the article refers to the critic for the projects because they do not provide students with grades and certificates, but in other point of view it can be seen as a benefit because it eliminates extrinsic motivation leaving only intrinsic motivation: the desire to learn more.

Overcrowded classrooms
Typical issues students have to deal with at the university are overcrowded classrooms and restrictive schedules. But having flexible time tables and no more students than the one using his/her computer solves those issues. The problem could be the absence of peers which helps with interactive learning, but it can be solved with projects such as University of People that allows students to receive feedback and grades from their classmates.

• The Open University
http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/l185.htm
• MIT Open Course Ware
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/foreign-languages-and-literatures/21f-223-listening-speaking-and-pronunciation-fall-2004/
• Utah State Open Course Ware
http://ocw.usu.edu/English/introduction-to-writing-academic-prose/index.html

My Rubric

Link to my rubric for the technology project

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=2058676&

Carla Araneda
Nicole Flores
Macarena Albornoz

Learning a new language online

When we want to learn a new language online we must be very careful with the websites we visit, because some of them are purely grammar-translation oriented. The mayor difficulty with a grammar- translation approach to learning is the lack of context for the language. There is no possibility to make connections or group the new words and expressions into topics.

For example, I visited a website for learning Russian (http://www.ilike2learn.com/ilike2learn/russian/) and what I got where isolated words with the sound and the translation. At first I tried to memorize every word but after a few minutes I was too bored to keep trying and also I couldn’t retain more information.

I think it could be good for practicing or looking for the correct pronunciation of words, but definitively a language is much more than that. Every learner of a language needs to relate new knowledge to the previous one, to put things in context, to be immerse into the new language, to make associations but not only to the translation into the native language, but also to the images and descriptions. Thus, when choosing a good website we should try to look for those characteristics.

So from now on, I’ll be super careful with the websites I use to learn a language. I’ll look for something more complete, with topics, levels and that includes practice in the four skills (reading, listening, writing and speaking). That is how I like to learn in the classroom, how I believed language should be taugt at school and how I’ll teach my students in the future.

MLA format