Digital Portfolio, part 1

I'm writing here a few given topics for my digital portfolio. The topics I'm going to cover on this post are as follows:

• My most memorable learning experiences 
• My formal studies & learning history (classroom and virtual) 
• My personal teaching history 

My most memorable learning experiences

My most memorable learning experiences was a short course called Suggestopedic English. It was far from traditional classroom teaching. First of all, we didn't have tables and chairs, but instead of that everybody sit or  lie on sack chairs on the floor. The course lasted one or two weekends and during those days we had different kind of plays, games, relaxation, and even a dance. We also made an own song as a group work, and then we performed that song to the rest of the class.

Before the course started we were asked to develop a new character with a name, occupation, and other features and at the course we introduced ourselves by this new character, not by our real names and identities. The idea was to have an opportunity to use larger vocabulary than normally when the real life doesn't limit your imagination.

We also studied some theory. For example, we studied to stress English words correctly. This is often difficult to Finnish people since in Finnish the stress is always on the first syllable, and in English it can be in the middle of a word. This exercise was done by physical movements: by waving hand or sometimes by jumping, so this was not a typical way to study pronounciation.

I liked this course a lot. The idea was to learn the language in a natural way, through social interaction. The course was a lot of fun, and it gave more courage to use the language freely. There was no boring parts at this course, and thus I think it was very motivating for learning.

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My formal studies & learning history (classroom and virtual)

My formal studies and learning history includes the following:

• Master of Arts
• Bachelor of Business Administration
• Vocational Qualification in Business and Administration
• European Union Specialization Programme (seven months)
• Drama, Video Production and Music Education Programme (six months)
• Secondary School Diploma, Matriculation Examination

All these studies are mostly classroom studies. I have taken a couple of language courses as online courses, though. These online courses included different kind of tasks, where you had to fill in missing words or write some short descriptions. I liked these courses, since there was some independency to decide what you want to study. However, sometimes it was difficult to motivate yourself for self-studying. I had some interaction with the teacher during the course when she commented the tasks I had returned. Moreover, at one course there was minor interaction with other students when we had to comment each other's online texts. I think these human contacts made the courses more interesting.

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My personal teaching history

This is easy to answer: I don't have any personal teaching history yet. I have guided new workers at work place, so I have some experience in guiding, though. I like this kind of guiding work, since I find it very motivating when I can transfer my knowledge and help other people that way.