Running Head: CALL PORTFOLIO REFLECTION

Computer Applications in Linguistics: Portfolio Reflection

Kathleen Hamel
Colorado State University

HAMEL 1

CALL PORTFOLIO REFLECTION

HAMEL 2

The main facet of my teaching philosophy is that I want my students to become

autonomous learners. For me, this means that students have the ability, from the skills and
strategies that theyve learned, to take charge of their learning. When discussing certain topics
or through creating projects during this course, I was striving to enable my students to learn the
skills and strategies needed to be able to succeed in becoming autonomous learners.
This can be directly seen from the website that Joel, my teammate for the assignment,
and I created about academic reading and writing. Although the information regarding each step
in the academic writing process is useful, its the practice that truly allows students to become
autonomous. Since they are required to review other classmates work, this compels students to
be more accountable knowing that theyre having their work checked by their peers. This
checking-in also allows students to have a better understanding of each step in the writing
process, since theyre analyzing each piece in detail, thus allowing them to become more
autonomous.
In addition to practicing material leading to autonomy, the inclusion of reliable online
sources surrounding these topics provides students with more resources that they can use on their
own time. Its important for students to be knowledgeable in these types of tools so that they are
able to answer their own questions, when they arise. Not only does the website provide these
kinds of sources but the Wikispaces page does as well. This is the biggest strength of the
Wikispaces page discussing CALL in relation to reading and vocabulary, is its ability to be
extremely informative for the reader.
Despite that it provides an abundant amount of space for information, what Wikispaces
provides in content, lacks in interactivity. The Wikispaces page is one long page of scrolling
information with the inclusion of occasional videos and pictures, which are the only multimodal

CALL PORTFOLIO REFLECTION

HAMEL 3

functions of Wikispaces itself. When building the page, Hui, my partner for the project, and I
noted that not only does it provide a very simple layout, it is also not very interactive throughout
the process of creating the page itself. We often struggled when creating it because only one
person was allowed in the editor at a time; often times when one person was editing and then
saved, sometimes these saves wouldnt appear on the other person's page, meaning that the work
would have to be done again. Using a more interactive tool might have allowed for a more
productive experience.
One experience from this course, that was exceptionally productive, was through the
creation and implementation of an evaluative checklist for CALL websites and software. I found
this to be extremely useful because it allowed me to think about what is and is not important for
my students regarding these tools. Furthermore, it provided an opportunity to explore what kinds
of CALL technology I could use in future academic reading and writing courses that I might
teach. Having time to explore what resources are available provides me with confidence to direct
my students to places they could turn to outside of class, which again enables them to become
more autonomous.
From this course, as displayed by this portfolio, I have been able to continue learning
about how I can be the instructor that I desire to be; one who is not only knowledgeable about
their subject, and the subsequent topics, but also able to assess resources for my students. This
ability to assess online materials and then develop materials based upon them is not something I
have had experience with. However, these skills are something that I can continue to improve
upon and implement in my future classes, so that my students are provided with the best tools to
enable them to become autonomous learners.