jueves, 23 de enero de 2014

On Rhizomatic Learning and Declaring

I have a problem with declaring.  The truth is that I don´t really know what I want to learn, I just try to enjoy what I see.  Eventually I will concentrate, focus on what I need.  Right now I am enjoying the ride. I have been learning by chaos ever since I started learning online.  As you can see from the picture, I´m up to many things at present and I am equally thrilled by all of them.
EVO sessions are instances of learning like no other I have ever had the chance to take part in.  I had been waiting all year for this one, because I would have all the time in the world to do the tasks and I have grown particularly skilled in most of the tools which would be used during the course of the sessions.  My plan was to squeeze as much knowledge as I could from my sessions while enjoying of the privilege of being on holidays.  However this Summer has proved to be particularly hot down here, making it quite hard for me to concentrate on any intellectual work! Plus my mother broke her wrist.  To sum up things didn´t quite go as planned.  Meanwhile a friend of mine asked me make a contribution in a PD session for teachers in Russia and a former friend-employer also asked me to submit a proposal for a brush up meeting about the use of tech in the English classroom for her teachers before classes begin here in March.  Needless to say that each of these instances of learning are events which I will also be looking forward to and enjoy preparing.
Last year, contrary to what a beginner should do I signed up for four sessions.  I need to make it clear that if I did it it was because I was so happy to have found the EVO that I was carried away by my own enthusiasm.  I lurked in three and was active only in one.  I not only lost my fear of audio files after completing most of the tasks in the Podcasting for the ESL/EFL classsroom session, I also dared to blog.  I cannot begin to name every aspect of my teaching that improved as a result of my participation here.  Every now and then I find myself relating things I remember having seen at one or other of these sessions. I ended up presenting a workshop in a teachers` conference under the guidance of my former moderator: Vance Stevens.  At the seminar I met face to face with another  EVO mod: Gabriel Díaz Maggioli.  I had not planned any of these amazing things.
This year`s session has started and I am trying to enjoy as much as I can from them.  I also wish I had more time to participate in the rhizo14 session too.  You can´t have everything in life!  As I turned the pages of my notebook I found an activity which related heavily to one suggested by my Becoming a Business Teacher mod Roy in his live session.  Rhizomatic implies connecting.  The connections a teacher makes between what she sees and what she can use now are personal and depend on many variables.  The fascinating thing is that these connections are in a constant state of flux, we don´t know what the future holds for us, what will happen when the door is opened on day one of any given class.  It would certainly be a good thing because this is the best time to be a teacher, let alone a teacher of English!



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