Tips for Lifelong Learners

As part of an online course called Tools of Engagement, I viewed a 4 minute video called  7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful lifelong Learners. These are the three habits that resonated with me.

View problems as challenges

I think I can!

I teach an online course about using technology in second and foreign language classrooms.  As we all know, our relationship with technology is frequently a love/hate relationship.  When things go smoothly we luxuriate in the many ways technology makes our lives and our learning easier.  On the other hand, when problems arise, we can get very frustrated.

Viewing problems as challenges is a good way to look at these occasional frustrations.   We have various ways of meeting tech challenges.  One is to go carefully through the steps we used and, perhaps, write them down.  Sometimes our own error then jumps out at us.  Another way to meet the challenge is to Google the problem.  Usually someone in cyberspace has encountered the same problem and posted a solution.

Create your own learning toolbox

Fill 'er up!

My learning toolbox is the Internet.  Networking with other professionals through social networking sites like Ning, Yahoo groups and Twitter keeps me up to date on the future of education.  Free, online webinars are also essential tools in my toolbox.

 Teach/mentor others

How about this way?

Since retiring from f2f teaching of English as a Second  Language, I have been able to devote most of my time to the online course mentioned in #1.  I truly enjoy continuing to learn and sharing what I learn with future teachers.  In the field of educational technology, things are always in a state of "perpetual beta" and I realize that full-time students and teachers often don't have time to explore educational tech as much as they would like.  For that reason, I feel that I can make a contribution to the next generation of teachers by doing some of the groundwork myself and then pointing them in the right direction so they can each choose whichever tech tools best meet their individual needs.

Updating my online course

At the end of each semster I look at notes I've made to myself and the results of student feedback to update the syllabus for my University at Buffalo online course on using Internet tools in the classroom. Although I have less time this break because of babysitting my adorable twin grandchildren, I'm going to make some changes. I am also checking the detailed feedback that I received from Robert Squires through the Webheads Yahoo group.

There are two areas I'd love to explore but need more time to investigate. They are creating videos and utilizing gaming. However, I think that I will be able to include having the students search for good videos on YouTube or TeacherTube which they can link to from their blogs.

As per Robert's advice, I also plan to put in course objectives. Strange that I always make my students use objectives in their lesson plans, but I didn't do it myself! I plan to use the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) created standards National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers since I not only have second/foreign language teachers in my class, but others as well.

I hope to finish my update ASAP.

In2Books

I recently rejoined a type of mentoring/pen pal program called In2Books. It connects elementary school children with adults through reading and commenting on the same books.

During the school year, students select 5 books from lists compiled by children's literature experts and exchange online letters about the important issues in the books.

I have participated in the program twice and the organizers continue to improve the quality of the software used for the exchange of letters. Initially the 5 books to be read were free and were sent to the adult's home. Now the adults must buy the books or get them from the library, but I consider this a worthwhile investment.

The program always looking to sign up for new members. I like several aspects of the program. One is that there is a background check on the adults who participate and another is that they provide a lot of guidance in the writing of the letters.

Twitter by Phone

I had been frustrated at not finding instructions for using Twitter. Somhow today I looked in Help and discovered that's where all the information is.

So today I tried to add my phone number to see if I could text message a tweet and it worked fine after adding my phone number under Setting>Devices.

I must admit though that if my daughter hadn't helped, I would have still been frustrated because in trying to add my phone number I had to verify a letter code. I mistakenly thought that I had to verify by phoning 40404, but I actually had to send a text message to 40404. Aren't families great. :-)

Twitter by Phone

Online EFL Teaching

I have long wanted to do some online EFL teaching, and now there are many sites which facilitate that. Talkbean is one such site. The company posted a job description on the TESOL site. Personally, the time commitment of everyday discouraged me. I would like to do some tutoring but just 2-3 times a week. I'm going to investigate other sites from a list I received from Meri Aaron Walker's site called mawstoolbox as well as Myngle.

Each of these sites offers connections of teachers and students through the use of webcams, whiteboards and chat technologies. So not only conversational language skills can be developed, but reading and writing as well.

The whole concept of connecting language teachers with students who can benefit from intereaction with native speakers is a concept that holds a lot of promise.