In actual fact, this is extremely hard to believe
that this 'Web Skills' has come to an end. This online course has been a
milestone and created a new era of innovative practices of technology in my
future professional career. But I am contented with the thought that this
course has ended successfully leaving numerous wonderful learning events which
are incredibly useful in shaping my teaching approach.
This course has also acted like childbirth of my
technology enhanced project “Improving Learners’ Literacy Skills through Online
Learning” which is likely to be continued in FLTC English Course. In this week,
I have been occupied with growing my project mature and working effectively
with my learners. I have been pleased to see that this project has made them
engaging in learning English outside the class.
I am going to make a portfolio of all resources and
materials provided in this course. It is really an uphill job to record all
precious possessions I have achieved in this course in this limited space of my
reflective blog. However, I will dare illustrate in brief the summary of my
learning experience in each week.
Week-0 (Orientation to the course): Got
a preconception about the course materials such as rubrics, sample posting,
course requirements in orientation week that gave me adequate idea about the
ways I would be expected to behave in this course.
Week-1: I have learned about class
blog and its different uses for EFL/ESL teaching situations. I have created a
reflective blog (URL: http://nahid-trainer-elt.blogspot.com) to record what I
have learned and have done in each specific week. I created am account on
nicenet for discussion board and started using it.
Week-2: I have got familiarized with
different search engines such as noodletools.com, twurdy.com etc. and analyzed
those web search engines. I have learned how to write ABCD learning objectives
for a lesson or a class and write a behavioral objective for a class. I read
the articles describing revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy and have learned
which of the action verbs is used for writing objectives.
Week-3: I read two articles on teaching listening and
pronunciation through online tools and have reviewed different speaking,
listening, and pronunciation web sites. I have created my own Delicious site
for bookmarking web links with appropriate tags. I went through some project
reports prepared by our previous participants of this course. I also started planning
about my project and working for it.
Week-4: I have learned from two
articles how to teach reading and writing through online tools and sites and reviewed
reading and writing web sites in terms of prospect to use in my teaching
context. I read about technology-enhanced lesson plans and reviewed sample of this
type of lesson plan, and created a technology-enhanced lesson plan for my class.
Week-5: From reading materials I have
learned about project-based learning and WebQuests and how to design a project
based learning for a class. I have been aware of Alternative assessment and
rubrics and practice creating rubrics for my class. I have created a lesson
plan on WebQuest (URL: http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=182926).
I continued planning and designing my technology enhanced project.
Week-6: I read essays about different
ways of making large class student-centered, interactive and have been aware of
the techniques might be useful to create a student-centered environment in my
teaching context. I have learned the ways to create active learning lessons
while using PowerPoint and created an interactive use of PowerPoint.
Week-7: I have learned about how to
foster and encourage learner autonomy. I have also learned about the
one-computer classroom and the strategies to be taken in a one-computer
classroom. I have created a class walwisher (URL: http://padlet.com/wall/wjzqqlv8de)
and posted links and articles on it. Most importantly, we finished planning and
designing my technology enhanced project.
Week-8: I explored teacher resources: online exercise generators
and teaching tools such as creating a discussion board on nicenet, creating a
wiki on Google Sites. I reviewed the teacher resources sites such as http://www.toolsforeducators.com,
Lanternfish Easy Test Maker, http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html,
Hot Potatoes and saw some interesting exercises at http://eolf.univ-fcomte.fr/index.php?page=technically-interesting-hot-potatoes-pages.
I also visited online sites Web Poster Wizard and SMILE. I found ANVILL
particularly important and need to discover it more to make it work for my
class.
The most important task I prepared a draft of my
final project for peer reading. I shared my draft project report with my
partner Yves and give feedback on his project report.
Week-9: I have learned about different
learning styles our learners have. I discussed with our classmates how to feed and
meet learners’ different learning styles in a class and prepare exercises that
meet their learning styles. At I have finally prepared my technology enhanced
project “Improving Learners’ Literacy Skills through Online Learning” and
submitted it to our course instructor, Robert.
Week-10: I have felt both sad as the course came to an end and
excited because I have developed a number of skills to integrate technology and
online resources into my class. I evaluated myself with the LoTI Framework and
have become aware of their L0TI level considering my class and teaching
context. I have come to know many interesting links from
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/about/my-best-of-series. I read Seven Principles: Technology as Lever – specific, and also come to know about the future of CALL from Phil Hubbard’s article.
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/about/my-best-of-series. I read Seven Principles: Technology as Lever – specific, and also come to know about the future of CALL from Phil Hubbard’s article.
Regards,
Nahid
