Hello everybody out there,

Week 9 is over for most of us, almost over for me (45 minutes for Monday to begin) and with still 5+ hours to go for our official UO time. Thanks God we have this difference in time zones, because it is sometimes difficult for me to sit in front of a computer and complete the tasks.

This week has been dominated by the concept of Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles. Our Nicenet discussion have been filled with splendid samples of reasoning and technicalities and I really congratulate myself on being in the same course as such wonderful thinkers, from whom we are learning as much as we learn from out tutors. Nevertheless, out of all the considerations expressed by my colleagues, I just want to point out at two facts that seem to have been forgotten by the majority: 1) no teacher can cater for all the learning styles that may be encountered in a typical class of 15 or 20 students; 2) there is no need to do so either, because no person has one and only one learning style; most of us are sensitive to 3 or even more ways of learning and what is more, our preferred learning style, like anything else, may vary from day to day, depending on our emotional state. I'm a declared fan of The Beatles and of English oldies in general, but there are days that I don't want to listen to any of that stuff and I take the option of Latin music, or Argentinean rock, or classical music, just to cite a few. It's in human nature and English has a superb verb in its repertoire to represent this: fancy. I just love this word for what it represents as much as for the way it sounds.

Another hard issue was giving a final shape to our project or plan. Mine is just a plan and I'm not sure wheter I am happy with it, although Iryna's report has been quite benevolent (I hope Donna's marks will be, too). The problem might be that it is rather unique in nature, as it tries to cater for language learners who are at the same time professional diplomats. It occurs to me that it is like trying to cook a Mexican dish with an Italian flavor; you might as well end up by having neither the dish, nor the flavor.

Finally, we had to complete a feedback questionaire about our course, and I think that was just not hard task at all if you were to disclose exactly how you feel. And what I feel is that everything is perfectible and in that sense, this course has been  no exception to the rule, but the percentage of satisfaction was so many times greater than the disatisfaction, that we might as well forget about it. 
 

Well, now that week 8 is almost gone, we can turn around and see the path that has taken us to where we are now. It wasn't really a long and winding road as I expected at the very beginning, and we may deem responsible of such light burden to Donna's clever and super well-structured tutoring. It all happened almost automatically, I would dare to say.

This week's heaviest load was having to draft our final project or plan, but again, the template given to us almost did it all by itself, and I feel extremely grateful for that, as I wouldn't even have known where to start if I had been left to myself. Donna also took care of the question of partnerships and provided two splendid partners for me, Yrina and Rita. The comments made by Yrina on my plan have been very useful and will allow me to improve it for the final report.

With regard to tools, I have been experimenting with a crossword wizard that resulted quite satisfactory (why do I say "quite" and not "completely"? Because it fitted only 19 of the 20 clues in the crossword square). The puzzle I created has to do with countries and capital cities, the latter being the clues to the former. Of course, I have a target class for such an unusual puzzle and that is my young students of diplomacy. If someone had to know all the countries in the world and their capitals, I am pretty sure they should be a professional diplomat.

Last but not least, of all the comments I read in our Nicenet discussion, Amira's was outstanding because of its clarity and the careful consideration of pros and cons of technology tools. Thanks Amira.