First of all I feel blessed to have a wonderful group in this course! Thanks a lot to all of you and especially the ones who helped me this week to catch up the material in this course…
I worked a lot in this week… my tasks and readings for week 7 and 8 are not easy ones!!
I've created two blogs that I intend to use in my classes:
http://literatureblogone.blogspot.com/2010/08/literature-blog-one.html
http://literatureblogtwo.blogspot.com/2010/08/literature-blog-two.html
I am sure my 10th graders will love these blogs. Wish me good luck!!
Additionally, I've created a wiki for my 11th graders. And here is my wiki class:
https://sites.google.com/site/classroomwikione/
In fact creating the wiki was more fun than creating the blogs… since the learning options and the functions that we can do using wikis are more than using blogs. It is so beautiful to personalize the wiki classroom!
Exploring the different teacher resources on the course website was a challenging task for me. I have to admit that at first I had a disappointing experience… since I could not save any exercises. But Azhar provided a technique how to save my exercises and also Victor provided a website that enables me save my crossword puzzles in an easier way (cut and paste!). The HOT exercises were the hotpotatoes exercises. I think they are great but the only problem is that they are web based exercises…
All these tools and exercises can help our students be autonomous learners…I am thinking that we are introduced to many web tools that can help our students in their learning processes. My question is: "Do these tools make our students more autonomous or do they make us more autonomous??" Is there a relationship between teachers' autonomy in teaching/learning and learners' autonomy in learning? I believe that these online tools help us be material designers… Are we more autonomous with these tools? The web tools empower teachers but at the same time it demands lots of work. I think some research should be done to answer these questions. What do you think?
All the best,
Khuloud.
Dear Khuloud,
ReplyDeleteI like your new design and cliparts. They are very attractive. I've visited your wiki. Its design is also wonderful. Your quotes as usual are very valuable. All the time you surprise me.
For your question about the relationship between teachers' autonomy in teaching/learning and learners' autonomy in learning, I think learner autonomy starts with teacher autonomy. As the proverb says "A man can do no more than he can". If I'm an autonomous teacher, I will provide students with many opportunities to practice these new roles.
Also, thank you for your research idea. Yes, we can conduct a research to identify the relation between the teacher autonomy and these online tools.
Keep up the good work!
Yours,
Azhar
Dear Azhar,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your nice words. So happy you like the design! I like change and that's why I always change my "room" here!
I have to agree with you…Yes there is an Arabic saying ""فاقد الشيء لا يعطيه". It means that "You can not transfer knowledge/skills that you don't have to others". If you have a better translation to the saying please help me here!
In the future we can do research together! Or at least share information with each other.
All the best,
Khuloud.
Dear Khuloud,
ReplyDeleteIt will be a great pleasure to work with you. You are very active and have creative ideas.
For your question, both “One who has nothing can give nothing” or “A man can do no more than he can” have the same meaning of our Arabic proverb.
Yours,
Azhar
Thanks Azhar for the translation.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we work together in the future. We conduct a research togother.
Khuloud.