Week 10 - final reflections

So, here we are, after 10 weeks of this fruitful and interesting online course that certainly opened some new doors for all of us. I must admit that I was a bit worried when this course was about to start because I was completely new to CALL. However, thanks to our instructor, it was pretty easy to navigate through the course, and to pick up so many useful things that can vastly enrich the quality of our teaching in the future. Since, as I said, this whole concept of incorporating online tools into our teaching was more or less something new to me, it is very difficult to single out any specific tools that are more important than the others. Using Nicenet, for example, is a great way to improve the quality of our classes, but equally beneficial are Delicious or Rubrics, webquests, or any other tech tool that we learned about over the past 10 weeks.

Now it is up to us to apply all of these great tools in our classes, to spread the word about them among our students and colleagues, and to continue exploring the web on our own, and incorporate as many tech tools into our classes as we can. This course has shown us which way to go in our future work as teachers, and I am confident that we will use this opportunity, and that this will be just a beginning of exploration of the resources offered by the web.

I am very thankful to our course instructor for all the help and guidance throughout the course, and I am also thankful to all other participants of the course for all that I have learned from them over the past 10 week.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the US embassy in my country for providing me the scholarship for this course and for this great opportunity to learn so many new things and broadening my horizons about the endless possibilities that the internet has to offer to teachers.

Thank you all, and I wish you the very best in your future life and work,
kind regards, Dzemal

Reflections on week 9

Week 9 is behind us. It was again enriching and fun week in which I was able to learn something new. This week wasn't too busy for me, I made some corrections on the draft of my final report and read several articles related to learning styles and multiple intelligences.
As for the final project report, thanks to useful suggestions from Roxana, I was able to identify weak points in it and correct them, so I hope it is ok now. While my final report might have some shortcomings, I am very glad that the project itself was very successful and that the feedback that I got from students was highly positive.

As for LS and MI, I must confess that I didn't pay too much attention to those things until now, but, having read some articles and comments of other participants of this course, I can say that I view it in a different light now. Most certainly every teacher has to take into consideration the fact that different students have inclination to different learning styles and different sorts of intelligences. Therefore, teachers should approach every student as an individual rather than have the same approach regardless of what the students are like. Technology can offer a great means to handle different LS and MI.
All in all, another interesting and productive week of the webskills course.

Best regards to all,
Dzemal

Reflections on week 8

Our course is really winding down, it is hard to believe that almost two months went by... As always, this week was full of nice activities. I created an online exercise, and also learned how to create a website for classes on google sites. It will help me a lot in the future since I am planning to create online exercises and class websites for my students in the future.
This week I learned about another great (and free) online tool - ANVILL, something that I intend to use in the future. We also had the opportunity to 'meet' Jeff and participate in the webinar, which was an opportunity to get in 'real-time contact' with other participants and instructors.
Finally, I completed the draft version of my project. I am more than happy with the reaction of my students to the use of the virtual classroom.
All in all, another very productive and interesting week is behind us, and this course has been such a wonderful experience.

Reflections on week 7

Week 7 was very interesting, just as this whole course. This week I read a lot of interesting things about one-computer clasroom and learner autonomy. As we all agreed, one-computer classroom is an ideal way to organize interesting classes with a minimum technology. As I mentioned in my posts, I began using an online classroom several months ago, and it was a huge positive change for me and my students.
When it comes to learner's autonomy, it seems that we all agree that it must be encouraged by teachers, and that we need to raise students' awareness about the importance of it.
Anyways, it was very interesting to exchange opinions on these topics with other participants in this course.
This week I also continued the implemantation of the project with my students, and they are very collaborative, and they like the idea of an online classroom very much. I am going to start writing a draft of my project this coming weekend.
All in all, this has been another productive and interesting week of the webskills course.

Week 6 - reflections

Another week is behind us! The most important thing that we learned this week is that PowerPoint presentations can be interactive, and  that they can be used to launch a  number of different, interesting activities. We also created our own interactive presentations - mine was about phrases (and how we differentiate them from clauses). I am going to include interactive presentations in my classes in future since I believe it is a great tool that can facilitate teaching and learning a lot.
As always, it was nice and beneficial to read interesting posts of my colleagues about their ideas how to manage big classes, and how to harness technology to do that.
This week we finally started implementing ideas for the final project! I created a virtual classroom on Nicenet for my translation class students, and sent them detailed explanation along with instructions how to join Nicenet. This is something completely new to them (as it was to me only 5 weeks ago), so I talked to them about all upsides of such an online tool, and how we are going to utilize it. Their first assignment was to join the class and write their first impressions. They all wrote positive comments and they think that this tool will bring a positive change to our classes. I already gave them a new assignment - to post their translation of a poem and to comment on one another's posts. We'll see how it works.

week 5 - reflections

I can't believe that half of the course is behind us! This week I learned about some web tools and resources that I would most certainly like to use a lot in my classes in future. It seems really incredible to me that I wasn't aware of so many resources that were there all the time.
So, this week I created my first rubric - and I didn't just do it because it was one of the assignments, but with intention to use it in class immediately. I believe that it is an indispensable  tool for modern teaching process. I heard about rubrics before, but I wan't using them until now.
PBL and Webquest are two more great things that can introduce lots of fun and boost the motivation of our students to learn while engaged in some interesting, meaningful activities. I still don't have clear ideas how to incorporate these in my classes, but I will come up with something soon. Those are great ways to enhance teaching / learning process, I and want to harness them.

This week I proposed a technology-related change for my translation class - I am going to create a virtual classroom on Nicenet, where my students will be able to submit their homework, make comments and remarks, and, generally, have access to one another's translations. We'll see how it will work!

All in all, this course is just outstanding, and every new week I learn fabulous things about online resources that we have at our disposal, but are unaware of them.

Week 4 - reflections

It's been another fruitful, interesting week of the webskills course. I learned about some interesting websites offering great ideas and exercises for developing writing and reading skills, as well as vocabulary building. Again, other participants were a great source of links, proving that exchange of ideas and online materials among the participants is a crucial part of the course.
Another activity that we did this week was to make a technology-enhanced lesson plan. We had the opportunity to read both instructions how to write it, and some sample lesson plans of this sort, so it wasn't difficult to come up with our sample of it.
Finally, we made another step towards the completion of our final project. This week we were supposed to identify an issue that could be addressed  with the use of technology.  Having in mind that there are many issues that I could solve with tech tools, I had plenty of ideas. Eventually, I chose students' homework - I need to find an online solution which will enable them to submit and store it in one place, so that other colleagues can access it easily.
All in all, it was fun and it was productive at the same time. Let's see what week 5 has to offer!
Dzemal

Week 3 - delicious

It's incredible how fast time passes... the third week of the webskills course is almost over. For me, this week has been the most productive since we started the course. It took me only couple of days to become 'addicted' to delicious.com. It's really amazing to have the possibility to store all useful links in one place.
Reading the project reports of previous participants of the course was another great experience and a chance for us to learn about some ideas from other teachers about introducing interesting changes into our teaching.
And discussion topic about webtools which can be used in developing oral / aural skills was just amazing. I can't believe that all these tools were around, and I wasn't aware of the endless possibilities offered by the web. It's great to be able to use these websites, I'm definitely going to change the way I conduct my classes a lot. I immediately shared the links to these websites with my colleagues at work, and they were also thrilled to learn about these free web tools for teachers. It will be wonderful to use them in class from now on. And in this week's discussion I learned how much we can benefit from one another, in addition to all the help provided by the course instructor.
I am looking forward to another week!

Week 2 - Reflections

So, we are nearing the end of another week of this highly interesting course. I 'got hooked', and I find myself absorbed in it, because it is really both enticing and beneficial. This week I tried using many search engines (many of them I didn't know about at all), and it was good to become aware of so many other possibilities to access interesting websites, other than Google, I mean. One great source of links to useful search engines and websites was provided by participants of this course. I will use some of those in my future work.

Although I am not completely new to ABCD  model and learning objectives, this week I learned a lot of new things about it  while  reading the articles related to it. Without doubt, setting clear objectives is an essential  prerequisite for good teaching.  

I also made the first step towards my final project – I picked the class that I believe is the most convenient for it and described it on Nicenet. It will be definitely fun to do the project with that class, I am sure they will also benefit from it.

One more thing that I want to note is a great job that our instructor is doing. I believe it is very important to give comments on everyone’s work, and that it serves as a huge motivation for us on the one hand, and a guideline on the other. It is particularly important having in mind the fact that this is an online environment.

Anyways, I am both having fun and learning a lot at the same time.

Looking forward to the rest of the course.

Week 1 - Reflections

Hello everyone!
I am very glad that I created my very first blog, it was really a very simple task.
We're just starting our 'journey' and I can already say that, without exaggerating,  I have learned a lot. I must admit that I knew almost nothing about blogging (shame on me :) ), so reading Blogging for ELT and Campbell's article about blogging was very interesting and enriching experience. Now I have some ideas how useful blogging can be in teaching, but, as I said, this is just the beginning, and I'm confident that I will learn a lot more by the end of this course, and use it to improve my classes in the future. Having in mind the importance of technology  in today's world and the resources it offers, it's of vital importance to incorporate its use in our classes.
It's so great to take part in this course and to 'meet' you all guys! I'm sure this will be both interesting and productive experience for all of us!