My Personal Learning Network
Being honest to myself and my colleagues, it was until December 2010 that I came to now the term “PLN” (Personal Learning Network) and how it has become an important element into my professional EFL teaching life. I was not aware that all of us, up to a certain extent, manage to have and use a PLN. And all this technological PLN adventure started many a year ago!
My PLN this year -2010- has been a very productive one, exponentially different from previous years. I have managed to work on class blogs and wikis to help students with homework and online reading projects and with additional 24/7 tasks for them to practice pronunciation or vocabulary building, or critical thinking tasks based on the Case Study Approach, commonly used in business management courses: anytime; anywhere. Although I feel these projects have been rewarding, I must admit that they need to continue growing to better assist and foster my students’ learning.
For my next academic year at Universidad Latina, I want to develop some personal, class, and student online projects. I want to create some personal e-portfolios to host much more material that I have in electronic formats and to make it available for my students. I want my classes to be partially blended from the beginning of the school term and have everything ready and planned since day one. This will give a better chance to plan with accuracy and give students a sense of achievement every time we accomplish a learning goal. I want to try some other tools available on the Web with my students that fit well into the class continuum, syllabus, and textbooks.
In terms of extra training, I want to sign up in some other online courses to continue to shape my teaching style. This, I hope, will guarantee better planned lessons, more meaningful and memorable learning experiences for students, and great professional experiences that I want to share with my colleagues at the university and in my country. Participating in Webinars and similar online talks is another goal I have in mind for 2011. I am sure that this will contribute with teaching experience and style. To sum up, there is so much I want to do, but I guess I need about 36 hours a day! But I’ll give it a try!
Jonathan Acuña
Universidad Latina
Costa Rica
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