Week 6: More interactive classes.

It's hard to believe that we're past halfway through this wonderful and enlightening online course. I have learned so much in every single week. Week 6 was not the exception. Teaching large clasess techniques have shed some light on how to manage big groups, give more interactive classes, and promote a student-centered environment.
In "Using Technology in Large Classes"http://tep.uoregon.edu/resources/largeclasses/usingtechnology.html some resources are cited. 

• Online Assessment
• Improving lectures with Technology
• Course Websites 
• Enriching discussions with Technology 

Online Assessment is one of the resources that I've never used. I find it really interesting to interact with students and also assess them at the same. I have to get deeper and learn more about Blackboard, and Respondus. I learned so far that I can create tests, surveys, and other possibilities. 
The article about Improving Lectures with Technology is also very instructive. It provides with lots of tips on how to prepare for your presentation, how to make your presentation more interactive. These tips are very enlightening. They have opened a new array of techniques and approaches to presentations. The most important thing about presentations is to student-centered and to foster students' engagement and participation. 
PowerPoint presentations can be more interactive. I am personally not very familiar with PowerPoint because I always thought that it was dull and passive to have PPT presentations, but after trying it out I learned that it has a lot of features I did not know about. I gave a workshop on a PARATESOL (Paraguay TESOL) Conference last year, and I immediately refused to use PowerPoint and I used Prezi instead. But now I have to recognize that PowerPoint has got good points that I need to explore more in depth.
In conclusion, as I reflected in prior posts, tools are out there to help us reach learning objectives.If those objectives can be reached with technology, it promotes motivation and engagement in our students. I can't wait to implement my project with my students.