Week 5: My reflections!

Some say "a picture is worth a thousands words" Would this Teddy bear express my feelings?




Well! I like so much to read all the posts and the comments in our nicenet classroom. Reading and examining my colleagues' work makes me think deeply. Many thanks!

I think the first PBL discussion was interesting! I like the WebQuests method a lot! For me it is basically an online project! I believe that WebQuest can work pretty well at my classes! But of course I need a well equipped computer lab to implement the wonderful methods that I am examining and experiencing here in this Web course.

I like so much the experience of creating an online rubric! I always use rubrics in my lessons especially for projects and class tasks. But creating one online rubric is an enjoyable experience that saves me dealing with word tables… I also saved and bookmarked most of the rubrics/sites of my colleagues.

It is really nice that in each week we are given a real life task! Deborah asks us questions that demand HOTS (higher-order thinking skills). Well, it is nice to read about the suggestions and solutions of the online issues that we talked about last week! It just makes us think deeply of what may or may not work at our teaching setting…this way we weigh the advantages and disadvantages of implementing the discussed methods.

Best regards,
Khuloud.

Week 4: My reflections:

I can't believe how fast time passes! Time flies… and I don't want it to fly… it is vocation time for me and I want more vocation time and this blog just reminds me of how many weeks are left for this course and for my vocation… is it time to count backward? I don't want to… I am just enjoying my vocation and my Web Course.




Well, this week I am more focused. Now I begin thinking of ways how effectively I can use all the resources that Deborah provides. I would like to think about the Internet as a big ocean that is full of high quality fish and treasures… known and discovered ones. I am in a stage to explore the ocean and think about how to use its' treasures. I was exposed to many excellent websites that can help my students improve their reading and writing skills. Additionally, reading other coursemates' postings and feedback helps me learn more about the different functions of the different sites. Thank you all for your contributions!

The readings of this week are enlightening too… especially the article "Using the Internet in ESL writing Instructions" where we read about ways how to use CALL in writing and references to helpful websites. Frankly speaking, I have to visit the websites that Deborah offers us again in order to examine them all.

It is good to see how other coursemates think and create their lesson plans… they give me food for thinking. This task is so important; it makes me think of how I would implement some of the knowledge and skill in this course. I've benefited a lot from the thread about describing some issues that technology might help with. It makes us ask essential questions for using technology in EFL classes! I believe the next weeks would help us find solutions to our questions…

Best!
Have a great week,
Khuloud.

Week 3: My reflections:

Wow! I am enjoying this course…learning much in short time.

This week I was introduced to the sweet tool Delicious.com. It is just a nice tool that saves my time and my favorite sites too! People just invent tools that are necessary to our 21st century! As the saying goes "Necessity is the mother of invention" people need to have access to their useful links everywhere they go any time… I have to say that Deborah's directions are so useful to create the Delicious account. I like so much the reactions of the participants of this course… we share and express our happiness of the new technological tools in our wiki. I am using the delicious site all the time now.



Well, we have learnt to use other useful tools in this course. The first one includes using technology in teaching. Thanks to the contributions of my coursemates I have various ideas of using technology in my classes… the websites that Deborah offers are really great and we can use all of them in different teaching/learning settings. It is just amazing how we choose the sites according to our students' needs and plan our teaching accordingly. I believe that with practice we can be smarter in choosing the suitable sites.

Another task of this week is about examining Aural/oral skill-building websites. Now we have different sites that can serve us at class! The advanced use of CALL can really change teachers' role at class. The learner becomes more and more involved and becomes in the centre of the learning process. The offered websites can help improve student's aural and oral skills. I believe that speaking demands much more effort to acquire from the ELF learners than listening: since the students have to produce new things and not only perceive things… I believe that high quality web tools can help learners improve their aural and oral skills. Today, I have to think of different ways of how I can use these wonderful web resources at my classes.

Thank you all for your contributions in this week.

Best,
Khuloud.

Week 2: My reflections:

I am not sure but maybe I am the last one to write my reflections. I don't know why but I think that I am never ready 100% to write my reflections… maybe we should later write our reflections on our past reflections! I don't know...

Well, Thanks to Deborah's well written article week two has opened the doors to me to a new Internet world searching! I have been a Google fan for a long time… and I think I am still a one. But now with the NoodleToole site I can practice searching for the search engines that fit my needs. I read all the comments on the thread about searching engines and I think your work is very important that I saved your recommended sites on a word file. I've posted this file for you in our class wiki in case anybody is interested in it. The Internet is the biggest online library in our world and I believe that researchers/teachers can save much time if they know how to search for material. I believe that searching for material is a skill that can be taught and can be mastered by practice. It would be a good idea to conduct a "mini" research on these search engines every time we are looking for material. I think I have to also write notes and comments on my searching experiences. The articles and the task about searching were really helpful for me.

The task about the objectives is important too! It is always important to think about our objectives before we act! The first step in planning a teaching unit is thinking about our goal/s and then writes our objectives accordingly. The ABCD method helps us do the planning in an organized way… But as I said in one or more of my posts of this week… it is always good to have a second reader to our teaching plan! This is why I like pair or group work. I think we should have more group work at our schools! This is not an easy task especially in places ( like my school) where students are not used to group work! But as the ABCD method suggests! We should have clear objectives… even regarding individual or group work.

This week gives me lots of ideas about online teaching settings that can be implemented with my students. I think in the future I will benefit more from you all when you build your own teaching units while using online tools. Yes! These are online tools for teaching! But at the same time we should think about these tools from the perspectives of the learners… Does the learner really learn well with the tool/s that we provide her/him? As you know the students in general have different learning styles and in a regular class we try to meet their needs… will the online tools meet students' needs or not? Will we reach more students this way or not? I hope the answer is yes. I have to try this with my students and check or examine their reactions, achievement and reflections.

Best,
Khuloud.