Final Challenge

In this semester I learned a lot about digital literacy. At the beginning I knew almost nothing about the literacies, even though I had already developed some of them without knowing. This class helped me to be aware of what I knew and gave me the opportunity to study a bit further on them. I had really good expectations for this second semester, even with the online classes continuing, because I absolutely love the course I chose, and I can say that I had a great experience so far.

In this specific class, I learned I lot about digital literacy, a very important topic for a future teacher. As everyone knows, people are growing up surrounded by technologies, and there’s no running away from it. This is one of the main reasons I want to understand digital literacy and know how to use it in class, because I want to provide an updated and interesting education for my future students, and for that to be possible, I need experience and guidance on the digital world. This was a very useful class in this matter, we first read about the literacies on the book Digital Literacies – Research and Resources in Language Teaching by Gavin Dudeney, Nicki Hockly and Mark Pegrum, which helped me to understand that some literacies were already on my daily routine and others I could develop with study. It also showed the possibilities for the teacher to use digital literacies in class, which helps me form ideas for my future lessons, so I can improve my performance at the schools.

On our first group activity, we were supposed to explain a few concepts we’ve read on Digital Literacy Across the Curriculum by Future Lab. My group developed a PPT and we talked a bit about what we’ve learned. This work helped me understand how Digital Literacies are becoming each day more important on people’s lives, and its study is encouraged even by governments, because they give advantages to the ones that learn it. Our second group work taught me how to analyze apps, how to use them for education and what could be better on the softwares. I really enjoyed this activity, especially because I got to know new apps that I had no idea existed and that are really interesting to use in class, since they provide a different experience for the student, making the class more entertaining for them.

About online classes, they have been normal for me, not really exciting but also not completely boring, just normal. But, since I didn’t have the opportunity to see the university as a student yet, I’m really excited to go there and meet the teachers and my classmates. The interactions we have with each other are limited to Google Meet and WhatsApp groups, but I enjoyed the group activities we had in this class, it was a great experience getting to know a few of my classmates a bit better, those were the activities I liked the most, because we could work together. The readings were my least favorite activity because the others were more interesting to do, but I enjoyed the content anyway. I can’t think of any topics that were left out of the class, the course was very complete.

I will definitely use what I’ve learned on this class in my future, I wrote down what I want to remember and also created folders to keep the materials we received for further needs. The technologies are in everyone’s daily life, especially the new generation that grows up using smartphones and laptops since they’re babies. That’s why I’m sure I’m going to use what I’ve learned on this course as a professional, because my students will be drowned in technologies, and by including it on my lessons, I’ll be making my classes more interesting for them.

In this class I would give myself a 9. I was present in almost every class, paid attention to the teacher, learned a lot about the content, completed all of the works and always presented them in English. But I don’t think I deserve more because I don’t interact with the teacher and the classmates. That’s because the online classes make me really shy, one more reason why I want the normal classes back. But at the end, I learned a lot from the teacher and the materials, and that’s what matters the most to me.