Week 7: How to Help Them 'Gain' Their Independence

Food for Thought: "Moving the Bus Forward"

This week I realised that, as much as you can try to achieve the goal of turnining your students into autononous learners through non-technological methods, it is painstaking. Why not recur to technology if we learn in a modern world and we have to prepare our students for this very life, a technology-based life?

What I loved a lot and found very inspiring and clear was the following site: http://www.lburkhart.com/elem/strat.htm." It provided lots of techniques to experiment with during class in order to vary the ways we use that single computer and make students become of the process of using this resource themselves. They become more interested once they are personally involved with it and the fact that they know their way with that computer makes them feel better and increases their self-esteem. One of my favourite is polling the class and make charts of the results.

I have discovered a new way to use the only computer, very similarly to making an imaginary itinerary made of pictures that the students have brought (as have visited or wish to visit)--Tahsina's idea--, or making up a story together. My version is much shorter than a story and it's very fun, because it involves each student who may go to the computer and write only one word, but one that can contribute the a valid sentence. The sentence-machine activity via technology. Another activity stands for working on text together, turn by turn again, as in the Sentence-Machine, but this time, the students are given a text and they can only delete one word, but in a way that it shouldn't affect the text. It's interesting to see how the text disappears and meanwhile learn which parts in a sentence/text are the most important and of which the students might dispose. 

Going back to  learner autonomy, this is what all teachers should strive in their classes, to help the students become self-made men. I think that almost all project-based activities or 'engaging students' classes are steps on the path towards gaining their independence.