Conclusion

= __Conclusion__ =

What did I accomplish? What did I understand? How did I get there?
====At the beginning of the summer, I felt confident that I wouldn't have difficulty in the technology course because I consider myself fairly tech savvy, as I have grown up with the technology and can't remember doing research without having the Internet available as a way to find resources. But, once I began reading some of the pre-program assignments I began to feel that maybe I knew less than I thought I did, and thus began my long journey toward True North. I had never thought of using social media sites as a way to promote learning and creating communities of thinkers. I had never considered that "digital literacy" was something different than "literacy." So, learning about digital literacies and how teaching students to be digitally literate can really help their second language learning was something really valuable for me to come to understand. Reading Blake really helped me begin to see how this could work as he describes different SLA theories and how technology can be an affordance to help students acquire the language, especially through strategies such as negotiating for meaning, either in e-mails, blog posts/comments, real-time chats, etc. All these interactions will create a need to negotiate for meaning, either between the language learners themselves or with native speakers on a more global level. I really struggled with the "frog;"﻿ discourse features and languaculture. But, after working through various assignments and reading the material and what other colleagues had written about their understandings of those terms really helped me in my own understanding. That was one of the signposts for me that a community of thinkers can accomplish a lot together. I feel that I accomplished a lot through working within this community of thinkers. I think I created a few lesson ideas that will help students become digitally literate; helping them understand how to blog and how to comment/respond to blog entries and how those interactions can build a body of knowledge between a community of thinkers. Reading about and discussing the theories of the New London group really got me reflecting on my own teaching practices and wondering what kind of lessons I am creating for my students. I do a lot of situated practice, but very rarely do I have students talk in metalanguage about what they are learning. Occasionally (in the upper levels) we will discuss the language we are using and why, especially in regards to verb tenses such as preterite and imperfect, but up to this point, I had not considered how important it could be to students learning and making them multiliterate and thereby more digitally literate through use of technology in those types of lessons. Also, I find I do not touch upon the designs of meaning (Gee) and the impact they have on discourse and how they show particular cultural perspectives. Through what we as a community of thinkers have accomplished this summer, I plan on taking these theories and trying to put them in practice and use technology more in my classroom where it would afford a better learning experience for my students by creating a community of thinkers within our classroom and making a larger community of thinkers with native speakers (as long as I can get permission from the school and parents). There were many twists on the path to where I am now, and there will always be further to go, but I feel that through all that I have come to understand through my accomplishments here at MATSL this summer I will be able to help my students become a multiliterate community of thinkers.====