Week 5 Toughts

Hi!

This week was very important to me. I learned a lot about the relationship among critical thinking, project based learning, rubrics and webqests.

I became aware of the importance of fostering students autonomy. How to do this? Invest on developing projects that are meaninful and  for them. Students learn more language when they have to share ideas and produce something that will have impact on their lives or their community. They learn more because they need to communicate for something important and contextualized.

Students should be empowered in class. Students learn with each other. Rubrics that help them to understand all the process should be used more. Webquests that give them opportunities to solve problems using the language and work in collaboration are a great tool for promoting language learning.

Well, this week activities made me remember Mitchel Resnick's text "Computers and Mud" many times...maybe that is what we should have been doing in class...projects, webquests, rubrics are for developing critical thinking and so autonomy. Don't you think?

Ju
Brazil