Farewell really hard ( week 9 )

Every day I shall put my papers in order and every day I shall say farewell. And the real farewell, when it comes, will only be a small outward confirmation of what has been accomplished within me from day to day.I will always remember the unforgotten fruitful discussion we had on the nicenet,really incredible moments  .......best of luck to you all.

A word of thanks goes to the stunning lady our instructor  D. Donna Shaw for her unlimited help and support ,really no words in the whole world could give this stunning lady her rights  ,she is really incredible woman who deserves all our respect also our visitor in the discussion D .Jodi Weber ...thanks for supporting and giving help

 I really enjoyed   what our friend  Karim Ben Yahya discussed  this week and  for me I want to remember every word he wrote so I copied it for remembering .....thanks Karim  in advance  ...........................

With the same spirit of past weeks on this course, week 9 continues along with associating technology to pedagogy offering us practical solutions to major teaching issues in the field of EFL. This time, we rediscovered Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences and the theory of the Learning Styles and how recent approaches in education have attempted to optimize teaching to fit the diverse types of learners. Therefore, all teachers are called upon to cater to these differences by diversifying their lesson activities so as to reach all the learners and ensure equal learning opportunities for all. Thanks to the progress of technology and the advent of the internet, teachers have access to a wide range of programs and web-tools that can be implemented in class in order to accommodate all these types of learners within an authentic autonomous environment. However, we, teachers, might be tempted to believe that technology alone can accomplish this goal. The reality is that we have the obligation to make informed decisions on when and whether such or such tool would serve to achieve our goals or not. Most of the time, we get carried away by our excitement to integrate technology just for the sake of it thus failing to understand why we have not reached the prescribed goals. In spite of all that, I've never been really convinced by the fact that we, teachers, have to assume such a huge responsibility as of adapting our teaching methods so as to procure for all these types of leaners. That would be extremely difficult if not impossible. My doubts have led me to do some further readings on the issue and to my surprise I have come acrsoo some incredible findings. Only yesterday I read an article in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/16/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-are-not-learning-styles/) in which Howard Gardner himself explains that Multiple Intelligence have nothing to do with learning styles. My curiosity has driven me to investigate a bit more and I came across another article by Larry Cuban (http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/student-learning-styles-theory-is-bunk-daniel-willingham/)claiming that there is no emperical research evidence that kids learn in different ways. The more I searched, the more evidence I find against establishing the learning style approach. So, now I am "back to start" but at least with one strong conviction that if I may not cater to my students' MIs and LSs, at least I will succeed in providing them with a more autonomous authentic environment and in increasing their level of motivation and engagement in the learning process. 

Finally the final  day for delivering our projects  .....Best of luck to all members in this course.

Let me express my heartfelt gratitude to you D. Donna  and to all the staff behind this exceptional interesting online course.

Best of luck to all teachers  around the world.

Yours Ena'm