Week 10 - Finishing the course...

The journey through the course was unforgettable and very productive. Every week we were challenged with new tasks that have been captivating and interesting to complete. I have learnt about different teaching tools many of which I am going to use in my work and for my own purposes. These include:

http://www.toolsforeducators.com/

http://bogglesworldesl.com/

http://www.easytestmaker.com/default.aspx

 http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

http://wallwisher.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgPO-agnnMk (instructions to creating a jeopardy game)

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/

http://www.delicious.com

as well as different Internet resources aimed at developing students' language skills. All of them are bookmarked at my delicious page which is growing and expanding with every day.

Looking at the learning outcomes of the lesson with the help of ABCD objective has been really useful. Creating rubrics and seeing how they really work in practice has been a very useful experience as well. Rubrics are a great tool of guidelines to assessment that help you see what is required from you and show you directions while doing a task or a project. Blogging and reflecting has become a part of our life during the course. Reflective practice has been proved very useful and effective and the more I practise it, the more I see and understand that it is true. As you reflect on the week that has passed, you see what you have accomplished, what you have learnt and what things you still need to work on. You analyse your work as well as make plans and predictions for the next week.

I am very grateful to the designers and authors of the course for their hard work, support and understanding, for opening a new interactive world to us and bringing all of us closer together.

Thank you! :)

Week 9

I can't believe that the course is coming to its end. 9 weeks have passed so quickly that I haven't even noticed that. I have learnt a lot and found out what areas and skills I need to work on in future, what changes I need to introduce into my teaching practice and what tools and resources I can use to facilitate learning and make it more effective and learner-centred. 

To tell you the truth, it has been quite a challenge for me to work on the project. I know I haven't done it perfectly, but I am looking forward to Robert's comments in order to see how I can improve it and what changes I need to make in it. I will be developing the class blog I have created gradually and thoroughly and I hope my students and I will be able to use it in January already.

Week 8

This week has been challenging, but interesting, as the previous ones. Week 8 has introduced us to a great number of tools that can help teachers create different exercises, both online and on the computer. It was so exciting to try different tools out while creating either a bingo game, a quiz, a cloze exercise or a matching game. We had a chance to compare them, find advantages and disadvantages of everyone of them and find the right tool for the job.
The discovery of the week was http://hotpot.uvic.ca/ - a really wonderful tool that can help you create exercises on your computer and gives you a chance to post them online. It took me a while to understand how exactly I could create an online link to my exercise, but I managed to do it. It becomes easier and easier to introduce technology into the classroom with such amazing tools which are being offered to us with every week. We just need to try them out, see whether we can apply them in our practice and then enjoy our work.

Weeks 6-7

I am enjoying the course more and more with every day. There are a lot of things I learn every day and lots of discoveries I keep making. I was very excited and thrilled to create a jeopardy game by myself following the instructions I got from the video. It was a really fascinating experience. I am sure I will be using it a lot during my classes and my student will love it.

I found Wallwisher a great tool that can help in sharing information, useful links, articles, books and what not. You can get access to the materials right from the Wallwisher just by clicking on the shared file. It also offers you great opportunities, like planning events, making bookmarks of favourite sites, collecting feedback,etc. I want to find out every option Wallwisher provides in order to use it to the fullest.

I am very excited and at the same time a bit nervous about creating a draft of my project. I hope it will be successful.

Looking forward to week 8. 

Week 5

The week has been very productive and informative. I have learnt about alternative assessment methods such as checklists and rubrics. I have dwelt upon their advantages and disadvantages and the way they can be introduced into the learning process. I think that http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ will help me greatly in creating rubrics on a specific topic and I will start introducing them into my pratice gradually. 

I have been researching this week looking for the right tool to create a class blog and I must say that I see the final picture more clearly already. I will try to make the first step in creating a class blog next week in order to start working and developing it. I hope I will succeed in what I have planned.

Looking forward to the beginning of the next week :)

Week 4

To tell you the truth, this week has been quite a bit of a challenge. It was very thought-provoking. It made us all think about issues or needs we have in our classroom and the way our final project can help us with them. I have mentioned some of the issues in the classroom where I teach, but I think that with every week or even every day I will be adding something else into that list as the classroom is changing and developing all the time, other needs or issues arise and the students' interests can change as well. But what I am sure of is that the final project I have chosen, i.e. creating a class blog, will be a huge step in the work with my students and it will bring only positive changes into the classroom.

The thing that was really challenging, but very motivating, was creating a technology enhanced lesson plan. With every step of writing this lesson plan I was thinking how it would look like in practise. In other words, I was imagining myself doing this lesson in the classroom together with my students. I was thinking about their needs, interests and whether it would be difficult for them or not. I was thinking about modes of interaction and whether I would be able to do all that I had planned during one lesson. This was the first time I have done this type of a lesson plan and you can't imagine what emotions or thoughts I had while doing this task. I am still not sure whether I have done it correctly, but I am sure that with the help of comments I will get, I will be able to improve my skills of making such lesson plans and integrate technology into the lesson that my class will benefit from. So I am looking forward to Robert's comments on the lesson plan. I know that I will learn a lot from them. 

I have also discovered a lot of interesting sites full of numerous useful activities and the list of bookmarks on the delicious page is growing with every week :)

Looking forward to week 5 :)

Week 3

Week 3 has come to an end... How fast the time flies! It seems that only yesterday we started studying and getting acquainted with the course, and today I am already thinking about the final project and creating its image in my head :)

This week has been very educational and informative.  There were lots of recommended reading resources to study. The ideas about the way of building and developing students’ listening and speaking skills with the help of CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) were useful and very interesting. 

I have learnt quite a lot of things. Delicious.com has been a great discovery for me! I have never heard of this site before the course. It is of such a great help to me now. Every time I like a site, I immediately copy its link and bookmark it on delicious.com.

I have also discovered some very good sites that store different activities, ideas, worksheets and lesson plans that can be used in the classroom. I was impressed by http://www.artofstorytelling.org/ This site is very fascinating. It is creative and allows its users to tell a story in numerous ways. 

I agree with other participants that this week has been very delicious J

Looking forward to the beginning of Week 4!

Week 2

Search engines and ABCD model of writing objectives

I should say that this week's tasks were quite challenging. There were many things I have done for the first time. I never knew there are so many searching sites and that they are even broken into different categories. I have been using Google all the time and I didn't even know that if I type the information I need to find in a bit different way in the searching bar, I can get completely different results of my search. 

Getting to know about the ABCD model of writing objectives was very interesting for me. The model gives us a chance to write objectives more clearly, concentrating more on our students' needs and outcomes we want to achieve. I am sure I will be using it while preparing for the lessons. 

It was very exciting to write about the first step of our final project. I was so thrilled when I was writing my first blog last week that the idea of creating my class's blog was the first thing that came to my mind when I thought about the final project. I am looking forward to tomorrow when I tell my students about the task we are going to do. I hope they will be as excited as I am and enjoy creating and particiapting in our class blog.

Looking forward to the beginning of week 3. I am sure it will be as fruitful as this one.

My Reflections on Week 1

Dear all,

Welcome to my blog!

My name is Tania Belyayeva.

I would like to start my blog with two sayings which describe the profession of a teacher best of all, to my mind.

"A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind and touches a heart". 

(Author is Unknown)

"The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book". 

(Author is Unknown)

I think that the profession of a teacher is very important. We do not only teach. We help students make discoveries with every second of every day. We help them realise what they are capable of and help them believe that they can achieve anything they want, they just need to try. We touch their hearts as well as they touch ours. We encourage and inspire them. They give us their love, respect and positive emotions in return.

To tell you the truth, I have never written a blog in my life, so this is my first experience. I am a bit nervous, I don't even know why. May be because it's a new step in my development and I am writing a blog for the first time in my life, and everything new and unknown makes you feel like that.

I can't believe the first week of the course is coming to an end. It was full of new discoveries for me, personally. I learnt how to use Nicenet. I used to participate in forums structured a bit diffently, so it took me  just a little bit of time to get used to the way Nicenet works. After 2 days I felt like I'd been using Nicenet all my life :) 

I learnt how to create a blog. I have never thought about blogging as a teaching tool before I read the articles presented on the course. As it is mentioned in the article http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/blogging-elt 

there are 3 types of blogs - The Tutor Blog, The Class Blog and The Learner Blog. I think all of them are very important, but The Class Blog and The Learner Blog are the most useful. They involve students into work more. The Class Blog helps to create a more friendly atmosphere in the class and helps students to communicate online, outside the class. It involves technology, so it will be very motivating and interesting for students. The Learner Blog can take up a little bit more of teacher's time and effors, but it will concentrate and be devoted to one student only. Using such type of a blog a student can create a blog which would involve his interests and preferences. It can turn into his/her own studying world where all the interesting information can be stored, thoughts can be recorded and sharing can be made. 

I think that I would like to try creating a class blog with my students. I am sure it will motivate them and will be a new interesting and exciting step in their learning :)

I am looking forward to the beginning of Week 2 of our course. I am sure it will bring new discoveries, new challenges and will teach me a lot :)

Tania