Week 2: Autonomy in students.

By Vanesa Paniagua

Article:Effectiveness of the integration of ICT tools and activities to foster awareness as the first stage to reach learning autonomy.

Rate: 4

The importance of create autonomy in students should be a priority in education, since students will be encouraged to learn new knowledge by themselves triggering a meaningful learning and even to develop skills that would be useful in their academic life and real life. The reading for this week was a clear example of how autonomy in students brings positive results in their learning.

The article was about a research study that showed the importance of metacognitive control strategies and independent process, when using ICT tools in the students’ learning process. Moreover, what impressed me it is that the article stated that CALL promotes autonomy, and because of this, students were encouraged to make self-evaluations and self-monitoring using CALL that allowed the learners to explore the resources that internet provides and to identify the web tools that would be useful for their learning. Also, including these tools in students self-learning will help in the construction of new habits as time management and prioritizing the relevant.

Furthermore, my favorite quote from the article was “The more self-corrections and repairs that were used by the learner, the grater the gain he or she achieved”. Golonka, (pag, 503 ). I am agree with this quote, because when students become autonomous, they are able to learn and produce the new knowledge by themselves, and even realizing their own mistakes  incites a meaningful learning and creates in students the awareness of their responsibility as students.

Week 1: The use of technology in education.

By: Vanesa Paniagua

Article: Computers and language learning: an overview.

Rate: 3

The importance of technology in the education field it is increasingly apparent and for that reason CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) it is been frequently use to improve students’ language skills.

Technology facilitates and innovates the way of teaching, since there are many activities that can be used in a language class. For example, if the teachers want to focus on a specific skill, they can go and find a good activity to use with the students. Also, learning process can continue in the students’ home by practicing in certain websites. Moreover, we can say that technology is an important tool during the learning process, but teachers help will always be relevant and we cannot set aside the knowledge and feedback that a teacher can provide because it is necessary the teacher-students interaction.

For this reason, my favorite quote from the article was “It’s not so much the program. More what you do with it”. Chris Jones, 1986. I agree with this quote because there may be many good programs or activities to use during the learning process of a second language, but if it is not correctly been used will not work and for me is very important the teacher’s role and the creativity to adapt these technological programs to the class. To sum up, technology takes an important place in education but without teacher’s input and management, the purpose of using CALL will not be achieved.