What have your most important learning advances been over the past year?
This past year has been the year of remote learning. In this sense, I have made progress in learning media skills. That is a big gain, and this doesn't apply to just me. I mean, I know colleagues who were literally unable to turn on the computer before, and now that we're back at school, I keep catching them sitting in front of the computer all the time.
What did the switch to remote teaching bring you?
All at once I had to digitise all of my teaching material, and I did manage to do that to a large extent. I have also trained my students more in listening and picture comprehension, and have been able to create more exciting tasks with the help of web tools.
How has remote teaching changed your daily life?
That reminds me of the quote: ‘Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true’. I always wished I had time to enrich my learning material with media, and the need to switch to remote teaching because of the COVID crisis gave me that chance. I had to work a lot more than usual, and I think that goes for all teachers – we spent endless hours in front of our screens.
How do you rate your media skills?
That's a big question. I think I'm good at handling media, but there is something else that seems much more important to me. More or less everyone can use a few or many tools, but how efficiently can they really employ them, so that media do not become an end in themselves? I still have work to do in this direction.
Where do you see further training needs?
Luckily, we live in an era when we can enliven lessons with numerous media. And that's exactly where the catch is. You shouldn’t lose sight of the goal. And the goal is the student, the student is your focus, and he/she has to do as much as possible in German in the classes. This is where further training is needed, I think.
How do you rate your students’ media skills?
Quite often students are better at handling media than we are; they are much more receptive, and can even help us sometimes.
What support do the youngsters need from you?
I can't give a plain answer here. Lessons are a holistic learning process. As youngsters in Greece have to spend endless hours at school, I think foreign language lessons must above all be something pleasant.
As far as the use of media is concerned, teachers have the opportunity to show students a different use of media, beyond video games.
How do you imagine your lessons in 10 years from now? What will have changed?
The best way to learn a language is by experiencing it. With the help of technology, students can communicate with other students from all over the world, and thus experience the real benefit of learning foreign languages. That is what I wish, and I see no reason why this could not happen in the next 10 years.
Would you like to continue teaching remotely in the future too?
In what form?In any case, the asynchronous part must remain. Fewer copies that many students end up losing. Students have the opportunity to handle the learning material at their own pace, and to do more exciting tasks with the help of digital tools. This also means less work for the teacher in the long run.
I don’t want to jump to conclusions about synchronous learning at school. Yet I believe that neither students nor teachers are ready for it at this stage.
