Own style
Creativity and Choice
Facilitating communicative competence
Online Socialization
Dealing with constraints and possibilities
Specific technical competence for the software
Basic ICT competence
Before
After
Skills Pyramid
My previous stage in Skills Pyramid was 1 step: Basic ICT competence. I was quite assured that I'm a "tech-friendly" person. I could use basic word processor, make good ppt slides for presentation and so on. However, after I learned about this model, I noticed my ability was the most basic and lowest level required for the language education using technology.
However, after studying about the required skills for teachers I acquired the skills for step 2 and step 3.
By the course activities such as "making comic strip" and "using voki to plan a lesson for students", I could get more knowledge about specific software used for language teaching. For example, I made a comic strip for imaginary students and made a lesson plan. Though I didn't know the exact way to make it, I could learn by myself while trying various functions in that website. Also, I could recognize the pros and cons of those software and try to deal with those by "writing reviews of assessment websites/apps". To write review and evaluate the software it is essential to analyze the content and every aspect. This activity really helped me enhance the analyzing skill. Personally, I felt that activities related to stage 2 were focused to real practice, while activities for stage 3 were more like analyzing and evaluating.
Finally, by getting knowledge about using new education software (Step2) and recognizing the pros and cons of those software (stage3), I could reach to stage 3 and deal with problems while teaching my students.
Before
After
Wang's 4 stage
I was at the first stage: Wow-this is amazing before and the beginning of this course because of the word "Technology". That word gave me an image of hologram or robot teacher, virtual environment classes (like VR games), and no more heavy text books for students. Those imaginations were half right and half wrong. There were no fancy holograms or VR technology yet, but I could use lots of programs to make my own material for my students.
The activity that made me exclaim "Wow!" was "making digital book" and "writing 3 blog posts in my blog". The first activity felt very new to me, because I've never heard about that kind of website before because I always used technology for my own pleasure. While making the book, it was very important to consider the target students' age and harmony of visual content with the story I'm creating. It was quite tough to think diverse factors but it was very fun and interesting at the same time. Also, writing 3 blog posts were interesting and meaningful for me. I like writing reviews or short introduction about the theme that I'm interested in. It's very enjoyable and beneficial because I can naturally acquire new functions in this WIX site to make more high quality posts and enhance my writing skills. I would do this activity with my students in the future as a beginning part of technology class. It would be effective to attract the students and train diverse skills at the same time.
However, as the course continued I experience the second stage: uh-oh. I realized some differences of offline and online classes. For example, when I plan a lesson, feedback is necessary. However, some software has serious weak points such as lack of direct and detailed system. Also, as I can't contact with the student in real life it's much harder to form a strong relationship with students. These differences made me feel anxiety which is stage 3: anxiety. I think I'm still recognizing more various education software and need to analyze the difference between real life and virtual classes.
Therefore, I am located between stage 2 and 3 after the course.