By Carlos Hernando Ortiz Leyva
After years struggling with the virtual English course, attending all sort of training courses, diplomados, seminars, congresses, conferences and even being a presenter at the EFL 2007 with the British Council, the opportunity came for me to work in what’s been my passion: Virtual Education.
Thanks to the director of the University and the director of AVACO I have been given the opportunity to work full time with the Educational Innovation office at the University of Ibague. We were trained by International Advisors who prepared us to start the curricula re-design project and support face to face teaching with Web 2.0 technologies.
I consider an honor and a privilege to belong to this exclusive AVACO team : People with outstanding human qualities, brilliant professionals dedicated to improve the way we teach and the way students learn at our university. The learning experience has been interesting, updating, self assuring and it has boosted our potentials making us competent enough to face this challenge.
We are witnesses of the relevant and positive changes technology has brought to our lives. Changes come one after another and information overwhelms us. It seems to be more important to know where to find information rather than being the owner of the information. Nobody knows it all nowadays; networks connect people all over the world creating learning communities, practice communities and all sort of communities. In fact, social software propitiates opportunities to bring people closer beyond boundaries and across the distances.
Our pilot project covers four transversal topics such as Math, Ethics and Politics, Language and Communication and finally Econometrics. Working together has been a lively experience of collaborative cognitive and meta-cognitive learning for all of us. Spotlights have been turned on. Long hours of hard work do not seem as long when you are having fun. As Ausubel stated, a meaningful activity aims its own motivation towards learning and a friendly atmosphere allows creativity and innovation.