Week 10: Final reflection

Here I am at the end of web course. What to tell abou this 10 week experience in virtual classroom with about 20 teachers from all around the globe? It was rather intensive, I would say with lots of tasks that were sometimes more manageable, someitmes more challenging. Now, looking back at the time of the beginning, I may say that this was a great experince of learning from the people I have never met. This has become possible with the appearance and development of things the net has to offer.
It is sometimes hard to process a great load of information presented in our studies but with time, the "files" will be stored accordingly and I will access them without any difficulties.

In this course we had a good team of teachers who supported and helped with their practical advice. I can not avoid mentioning that even reading their posts on Nicenet or blogs enriched my vision of teaching profession and how important it is nowadays.
 Speacial word goes for our instructor Deborah. To be honest, I was very surprised to get good grades, and at then end of each week, I with anticipation waited for my results. Her professional remarks and comments moved our discussion in the right direction and all felt enthusiastic about sharing what they already know. The course is about to end, but I like the way people feel about this. "The door is open" I read in one of the comments. The door for communication and further exchange. All the links, wiki and virtual classroom stay accessible for us even after the course is over. This is good news.
All in all, the course went smoothly and very productivley!!! I will miss our discussions and sharing!
Good luck and many happy and motivated learners to all of my coursemates!

Week 9; Exploring Learning Styles

The course is coming to an end!It feels good that there is chance to know what one achieves after 10 weeks of online study and how one apporached this study.
This week is dealing with Learning styles and tehcnology application to address learners' differences.
Very interesting information can be found at  http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/styles.htm
We may conclude that peoaple learn and deal with new concept or inormation in a way that is suitable for them.

Recently I have also known about Multiple Intelligences.I have met this term befora and was interested in such a classification that is close to learning styles, after all we learn throughout our life. However, what technology tools can help to people who belong to this or that category is something new. After reading some useful tips at http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic68.htm I  learn what technolgoy tools might be helpful for different learners

There exists 9 categories

1. Verbal/linguistic
2. Logical/mathematical
3. Visula/spatial
4.Bodily/kinesthetic
5.Musical/Rythmic
6.Intrapersonal
7. Interpersonal
8. Naturalist
9. Existentialist

The names suggest themsleves what way people learn better. I think we can be a mixture of 2 or more. But no matter how we learn, what we get in the end is what matters!!!

Week 8: Teacher resources online

It is already week 8. The time flies. It seemed as though it was a few days ago the course started, and I felt anxious about all the upcoming tasks and assignments.
This week we have to explore some more sources for teachers available online. Among them, there are such tested ones like http://www.nicenet.com

a great online tool that lets to creat a class site for dicussions. We with coursemates had the chance to experience how this tool works and what it can offer, so it will not be difficult for me now to creat and manage one like this. The only think as Deborah mentioned, we need to search for good content filling our sites.
 Besides, course sites and discussion thread, we got the chance to explore and "taste" other tools for creating exercises, puzzles, quizzes and test.
Hot Potatoes is a good program that I have heard of before, but have not tried yet. What is good about all the tools and programs is that the expercises can be saved for printing out, so if there is not web connection, a teacher has always a plan B.

 I liked experimenting with http://www.toolsforeducators.com/wordsearch/ where there is a good variety of topics to choose from, Word searches can be supported with pictures which is good vor visual leaners and extra clues might be also  added.
Surely such tools will contribute to learner autonomy meeting different learniing styles demands and offering a wide choice of tasks and activitites.Though it takes time to learn how to use them, but it is worth trying!!!

Week 7: Learner autonomy

" The path to independence is not something students can embark on unguided"
                                                                                 Jon Taylor (teacher and teacher trainer)

I have already met the concept of learner autonomy before. I was engaged in writing ELA guide (English Learner Autonomy ) for British Council Learning Centers. When I ws introduced to such an idea, it seemed to me a bit challenging to reach and make the learners come to understanding that they can learn by themselves not totally realying on teacher as "knowledge purvoyer"

It was essential to know the basic elements of learner autonomy. I totally agree with the ideas presented in (Thanasoulas). He says that autonomy is not a ready made product, but the process. We used the word "journey" where motivation, attitude, and responsibility is the luggage a learner takes to this life-long journey.

But saying metaphorically no journey is possible without assistance of a guide. Here the role of a teacher  changes.
Thanalous proposes some ways how to encourage learner autnomy among which I  found self-reports (semi structured), diaries, and questionnaires.
Our job here , first of all raise awareness about language learning. Learners might not know what syles they have, what way is most preferable for them to learn, and what resources they  find more interesting. No doubt that  moving from "traditional classroom" is difficult task, most teachers are not accustommed too, but it is worth trying.

In our institution we practice a course report. This means that at the end of academic year we give to your students some questionnaires about the course and the teacher to fill in.
I think what should be done before the course starts is needs analysis; it will help to work out the way and tempo with which to move towards the learning goals. All learners are different, and we should take this factor into account when creating a lesson plan.

Week 6: Interactive Power Point

Summing up my coursemates thoughts, I can say that one of the things to make students engaded is Interactive Power Point Presentation. After reading the instruction to the task and some of the articles on creating such presentation, I was very willing to create something similar to what was described.

I used Power Point Presentation only few times and they were not made by me. Like was said about simple presentations wihout interactive elements, the ones I used were delivered simply to present the content and that is it.

This week I knew that there are many ways to make it creaitve, engaging and interactive for my students.

The following elements will make any Power Point Presentation interactive and more motivating.

1. Quick ConcepTest - the technique aimed at checking concepts (definitions, notions, vocabulary) 
2. Blank slide- the technique used to attract attention
3. Hyperlinks- to add special content and navigate to another document
4. Quick Write- the technique used to check students comrehension

Generally this information was rather useful as such tools can be used not only to accopmany PPT, but on a regular bacis during the lesson.

Week 6: Teaching large classes reflection

One of this week's discussions is devoted to Tech Solutions in teaching large classes.Although I never taught large classes, I know how stressful it might be. After several readings among which the article found at

http://www.uoregon.edu/~tep/technology/communication/inclassdisc.html/.

I got some crucial ideas on how to maintain, prepare and lead succefful discussion.
Also,on NICENET some of the coursemates offered their own solutions related to teaching large classes issues. Stephen suggested some interesting ideas like tracking and asssessing students online, keeping calendars, and engaging students in projects to make them work collaboratively. In general,while teaching large classes it is possible to divide the students into more working groups and assign one project to such groups. Within this group there may be one project leader who would manage the other students and preapre reports about project development and process.

One more interesting thing, better say tools are about collaborative learning.As large classes imply extended amount of students, this means that they could all work collaboratively as the teacher does not have sufficient time and resources for each of them. I realized that during this online course, we being in the role of students already experience and use such tools as Wikis,blogging,discussion boards. All of them, if used appropriately "allow students to exchange ideas in a manner that closely approximates the face-to-face experience".

Week 5: Issues that technolgy might solve

The world is constantly developing and we are filled with different sources of information that needed to be process. New approaches that make our life easier emerge and substitute for previous out-of-date techniques.

This week discussion was devoted to the issues that tehcnology could solve.
My colleagues offered a very detailed collection of ideas how tehcnology inspired changes might influence the quality and smoothness of their own classes adding their view on this or that implementation.

I thought that all what we have learned so far this course could be applied in practice with success. Though I have certain concerns and doubts related to use of technology, websites, online tools, etc., given the opportunity and right direction I would certainly try my best to use them all in my English lesson.

Among my concerns though is the availability of internet in my institution, unwillingness of authority to change things, and total reliance on the web.
But I hope with time, we would practice all the new things we are learning here in this course.

Week 5: Project based learning and web quests

This weeek we got different tasks and rading. What is surprising for me personally is the fact that I wanted to know about these very things more than I do now. PBL is one of the approaches that I am trying to implement in my practice. I knew some background information about this method, but after reading Susan Gaer's article at
http://www.ncsall.net/?id=385 the things became clearer. This is exactly what I should do with my own students. As (Gaer 1996) mentions in her article, PBL helps motivate students to achieve a purpose. It is learning with a purpose- to create a final product and acquire certain language skills on the way. Sounds like a good idea for sometimes overloaded teacher in search of something inspiring and meaningful apart from constant grammar and vocabulary exercises.
This week, I have found out the gaps in my instruction concerning projects we did with our students. In fact I was too unrealistic putting my students into such time-limits like 3 weeks maximum. Knowing the nature of each project and work load, it is essential to provide clear explanation and requirements for students to know what exactly the project should be about. This is my general conclusion made this week.
Concerning web quests, I may say that at first visiting the page
http://www.webquest.org/index-resources.php) I was lost in the information about what web quest are and what their purpose is. I looked through some of them and thought they are just texts and picture, but after investigating more, I found that they are good learning tool online.

Web-quests resemble projects with some crucial elements, such as
1.Introduction
2. Task
3. Information resources
4. Process
5. Guidance
6. Conclusion

It is necessary to keep in mind that web quests are mostly group activities and sometimes in my opinon it is difficult to evaluate each student performance within the process of web quest creation.

Well, as I said before, we are constantly learning and this week was full of useful information.

Week 4: Working on Lesson Plan

One more task for htis week was to create a tehcnology enhanced lesson plan. Actually, it took me more time than I had expected.
Privided with the template of the lesson plan with tehcnology, I started thinking of how all what we have discussed in our weekly posts can be incorporated in this single piece of work. To tell the truth, I was intimidated by my coursemates and by how they approached this assignment: stating clear and measurable objectives, using multiple online tasks and quizzes. At first, I was thinking of writing lesson plan for Academic writing II course, but thought it would not be so much interesting. So, I focused on Integrated Skills. Though, I followed the example of my coursemate Camelia, my own objectives turned out to be not observable. It is good that Deborah provided her comment on this part of the plan. Now my task is to review the objectives and make them more obvious to students! That is the next step in my task.

Week 4: What I have learned

The fourth week as expected is really intensive in terms of discussions and task. I feel that these weeks serve as preparatory to complete our project task and thus gathering enough theoretical and practical basis for doing this.
This week are discussing  about usefulness of some multi-skills sites in improving our students language skills.
After reading the two articles http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krajka-WritingUsingNet.html and http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Liang-ExtensiveReading.html 
I found many interesting ideas of how to implement CALL in teaching writing and vocabulary development.
The authour of the first article Karjka (2000) gives the overview of previously done research and some very practical suggestions that makes this reading some kind of guide for the teachers who have just started to think of CALL integration into their teaching curriculum. To be honest, after visiting the websites, the links my coursemates suggest, I am myself eager to use only tehcnology enhanced lesson plans with my students. The great amount of sourse and step- by - step lesson plans with variety of tasks and activities would make my teaching more motivating, live and not least important up-to-date.
Another thing worth to mention is the posting and professional discussion that is held in our interactive classroom. It is so vivid how all coursemates are trying to share everything they find useful and applicable, providing their reflections, explanation and answering questions. This is a very good professional  virtual environment that stimulates thinking and analyzing skills being a cruicial component of every "lesson".

For me it is really helpful to read and think about other participants' posts, seeing what works with their students and what objectives they  write for the web pages.

Though  now I am on holiday and do not have to teach classes, I got an assignement from my faculty to write lesson plans for the next year. This week we received the task to write technology enhanced lesson plan. I think such experience will only affect positively my professional development adding more possibilitied and elarge scope of knowledge. This is where I am now at the moment. I hope my students next year will feel the difference.

Each time growing and learning something new!

Week 3: Reflection on web searching

Week number 3, despite my favourite 3 number, was a bit difficult.
Though for my teaching I have to saerch for the information every day. During these 3 weeks I understood how little did I know about the advantages of CALL and good use of internet resources.
All provided sites contain such a great amount of information, that anyone could be lost in the sea of these resources.

I found my colleagues' post really stimualting  and try to keep up with the discussion on nicenet.
I feel that there is so much to learn within this period of time. Many ideas should find their reflection here

Week 3: The delisious task and a discussion

Well, here I am again in the middle of the third week. Many participants of the course noticed that each week is getting tougher. This week tasks and discussions took me more time and effort than the previous two. However, we were supported with the readings that were helpful guidance in what we are supposed to do.

I found confirmation to the ideas mention in the article
www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/research/resources/student_res/postscriptfiles/vol3/vol3_1_gong1.pdf

where the author covers full range of CALL application, advantages as well as disadvantages. I have met this term perviously and recently learnt what it stands for having general picture about this notion. But after the articles all the parts were joined in my mind and now it is totally cleary what beneficial role CALL can play in EFL.
Moreover, more and more teachers nowadays find that it is almost impossible to conduct their lesson without tehcnological devices that according to this article " fosters a sense of personal worth, facilitates collaboration among the studentss working together..."
In my short teaching practice, I notice how irreplaceable the video and audio found in the internet is. How motivation raised among those students who generally are reluctant to participate. Indeed, in the era of tehcnology development, it is anavoidable.

As I teach speaking and listening skills to freshmen, the CALL including software and web communities is irreplaceble and valuable sourse. I would not want to repeat the ideas of other groupmates, but to make use of CALL as much as possible should be the goal of every teacher and trainer. It is present and it will be in the future.

When it came to task about creating a page in delicious.com, it took me some minutes. Great idea to have all the links stored and easily accessed in one public place. As Azhar mentioned, having two world- one for private use and another one for public access.

Still, I think there are a lot to learn and among my objectives for this course is proper citation of the sourse and being able to add links to certain materials that I find useful.

That is almost all for ths hectic day

P.S. Hope to learn and apply my knowledge directly, making my lesson pass interesting and fruitful!

Week 2 : Reflecting on the tasks

Well, the fisrt week is over, and here I am at the start of a new challenge and more work.
Reflecting on the expereince, I may say that for me it was really motivating to participate in discussions, leave comments on other particiapants' bloggs and more than that, go through the readings and think over the tasks.

I am glad to get very good grades for the firrst week, but I know that this is just the beginning of the course and the latter activities will be more demanding and difficult. Now, I remember one of my groupmates say that Deborah would grade holistically; so, I think this is an optimal approach in our given situation.

This 2nd week is full of new ideas and knowledge very needed in my career. I am thankful to our instructor who provides us with reading on every topic, this helps to understand the nature of taks and makes us understand what we are supposed to do.
The article about tips for web searching was of great help and a reminder of certain terms used in the Internet.

For me personally the task about writing the objectives was mind boggling. I face such type of assignments very frequently as I am supposed to be ready with objectives for every class. However, this time it took more time and effort to complete.
The ABCD model of writing objectives demonstrates nice division of components within the objective, such as
A udience
B ehaviour
C ondition
D egree

I read and reread the examples of succcessfully written objectives. They seemed to me consice and clear. But still I was reluctunt to submit my own. To be honest, I was waiting for other participants to start off and see some of the examples. What is interesting is that all of us have different approach and style. That is why each post is in its seense unique not resembling another one. So, I did not want to write something in the same way as my other groupmates. And this is more difficult, as we are almost 30. Anyway, I willl try to develop and polish my knowledge and practical application of theoretical base.

That is all for today.

The end of the week, waiting for the grade

Well, the first week of the course is almost finished , and  I am in anticipation of the grade I might get for my posts. Every day I try to visit my coursemates' blogs and read what thoughts and reflections they have about this experience. What I found in most is providing defnitions and types of blogs that can be used in EFL. I am asking myelf, is it the way my own blog should also look like. Synthesising the information in articles ( which I found mostly similar to one another), I may just say that blogging is an intreseting and quickly accessible tool (once you have Interenet and a computer at hand).
For my own students I would like to create a " Writing course" blog. I imagine it like a tutor blog with discussion board and peer editing of the essays they will write. The blog may also contain links to additional free resources about better writing and extra tasks for self-study.
Each 2 week there might be topic for discussion that  is graded accordigly ( I could give credit to the ground rules for our discussions in this course and modify them).
This week experience gave me so many thoughts and ideas ; I hope to collect them all and  gradually implement  into my teaching practice.
P.S. I feel like a schooolgirl who is waiting to get her final grade and is afraid of the result.

Making a corner for other bloggers

Well, today as it has become my habit which will last for 9 weeks , I went to our class discussion page and scrolled down the messages. I looked for more blog links from the groupmates. Thanks to Arjana who helped to create  a corner with the links for quick access and saving our time.

Week 1. Reflections: More things to learn

June 23, 23:01
Here I am again, half asleep half awake trying to think of a relevant useful and unforgettable experience during this day in the interactive classroom. Actually, almost all my life I liked to share all my thouughts with others. Now, in this particular situation it is a bit difficult. After creating this blog, I am thinking of how to make it more attractive and readable for more audience. The readings provided by Deborah gave me an overall understanding of useflness of blogs in ELT and comments made by other participants, specifically by Bostan from Kazakhstan, made me understand that there are so much more to learn from one another.
So, hoping for the best of the best.

P.S. Thanks for reading all above.

Week 1 Reflections: Well, good job

ReToday is June 23, 2010 according to my time Zone. I found out that Uzbekistan is 12 hours ahead Oregon. So, from the one hand it is very convenient for me to handle the tasks. I hope the course will be really useful and productive. When I was creating a blog which took sevelar minutes to do the general steps, I found out that I already did this once on blogger.com, but since I do not remember my password to the previous blog, I created the new one.
So... ready to work and redesign as well as fill the blog with thousands posts....


P.S. When I really need and have to do something , I do it.