Dijlah's+Self-Reflection

Design and execute a learning activity, my first thought, was how I am going to do this? I had never designed a learning activity before; this assignment was a challenge for me. I began thinking of what I can design that is educational, fun and interactive. Since this is a group project, I had to form or join a group. I knew my strengths and I knew what special skills I needed to complete this project. I was lucky to join furious five; each member has special talents and is an expert in their field. I knew working with this group meant working with multiple talents, which can only produce more creative ways to present and develop the best learning activity. A Wiki page has been dedicated to post the following: meeting schedule, work distribution, share new thoughts, and comments on work in progress. Each member posted their activity suggestions on the Wiki page. The group members liked my idea of learning a language online so we decided to go with it. I did some research on what technology tools are available out there to utilize, for our learning activity. That’s when I discovered [|www.busuu.com]. My group members and I meet face to face in Orland, Florida to discuss this assignment. We agreed to incorporate Understanding by Design – Backward Design three stages: Stage 1: Identify desired results  Establish Goals, Understandings, and Essential questions Stage2: Determine Acceptable Evidence  Performance Tasks and other evidence Stage3: Plan Learning Experience and Instruction.  Learning activity Our goal was simple – Learning a foreign language online. Our learning outcome was, by the end of our learning activity, students will demonstrate an understanding of conversational Spanish, and be able to answer the following essential questions: Then we began to imagine what the user’s experience will be like. What kinds of things will the learner be doing? How will they interact with the content? We wanted to give our audience something to do, Manipulating objects and ideas that can produce a new learning experience. And since we are in an online program ourselves and we all appreciated learning from collaboration, so we wanted to offer our audience the same learning experience. We wanted our audience to be able to customize their learning experience to meet their goals and complement their personal learning styles. We thought this will help the user develop a skill or increase knowledge under the structured guidance of the activity. It allowed us to customize our learning activity, develop an experience to meet our established goals that complement student’s personal learning styles. We were very lucky have this technology available that not only offered vocabulary lessons but also enabled two-way communication between real people. Echolurn.com provided a simple model of instruction that includes an overview of the learning activity content, a definition of our objectives in this learning activity communicated in our executive summary, a clear presentation of the key concepts and skills, multiple opportunities for students to apply and practice their concepts and skills through the “discussion forum” that was specifically designed for students to communicate their thoughts with the group, share their feedback and post their work and lastly, assessment tools that measure student learning.  I have benefited a great deal from this assignment. I was very lucky to be part of furious five team, each member worked very hard, in completing their assigned parts, and the results were obvious, our activity was a success rated by our cadre members. It was a great learning experience, and a very good one, I say that for the following reasons: since we were able to integrate learning into life, the acquired knowledge can be used. Our learning activity proved yet again that learning is a social activity, not only students learned from gathering information through our inquiry base approach, but from communicating with one another trying to figure out the activity itself, this brought our cadre members closer as the began to discuss this activity before and after completion. Some cadre members shared this activity with their friends and family, which was the best form of flattery one can ever receive the word of mouth. <span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">What is the value of learning a foreign language?
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">How is my life similar and/or different than that of someone in Spain?
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">How can current technology enhance the language learning experience?
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Selecting an Activity Type or Approach: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">We favored a__, inquiry-based educational approach__ that supported included: Explicit learning goals or outcomes.
 * <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Imagine students experience: **<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">We first identified our audience, which were College students,
 * __<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Why Busuu.com __**
 * __<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Why we developed Echolurn.com __**
 * __<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">My Learning outcomes: __**