Dear all
We just had another interesting week of exposure to the great prospects internet offers to teachers and learners.
Getting to know about webquests was really interesting and honestly I am amazed at the generosity and large heartedness of teachers from across the globe who have shared their hard work on the internet to be used by anyone. Students can access these assignments from anywhere in the world, and can post their work on the same site. zunal.com has opened up another world infront of me and honestly the more I explored the site the more thrilled I was to visualise its utility for my own students.
I have to confess that I was postponing the task of creating a rubric as I always dread this part of setting assignments, and then I discovered how easy it was. I feel that this website is a service to all teachers who had to sit long hours developing a marking criteria for assignments. Written in simple language the options give lots of clarity to the teacher also, and of course the data is simple to understand for the students too.
Another dimension that we touched for this week was PBL [Project Based Learning]. The ideas present on susangaer.com were quite practical for almost all teaching contexts. I was motivated to read about Susan Gaer's personal experience with PBL and the kind of project experiments she had conducted in her classroom.
I am trying my best to complete the extra credit task, and hope I am able to submit it in a couple of hours time.
Cheers!
Saulat
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
A WOW Week 4
Dear all
This week's reflection will begin with a confession. I had a wedding in the family hance couldn't give as much time to this week's assignments. I wanted so much to participate in the optional assignment but then I was missing deadlines for the mandatory posts so couldn't afford to do the optional reasearch required. I saw the assignments late and despite my vow to be the first one to get done with initial postings, I am at the tail of the week. It's Monday morning in Pakistan already...so work awaits me.
I consider reading and writing a real treat to teach, so the assignment topic was of high interest. We had spoken about listening and speaking earlier on and this week I read very interesting posts on reading and writing on nicenet and explored the recommended websites.
This week 'reading' was of special interest to me as I never thought that internet could help us teachers with that. May be I was a teacher of a traditional mindset where reading is considered done only when one is glued to a book. For the old fashioned teacher in me virtual books did not qualify as books so Mei Ya Liang's artile on "Three Extensive Reading Activities on e-books" was quite eye opening. I especially liked the evaluation grid idea, for student's meaningful feedback on thier readings.
I also loved most of the multi-skilled websites for their richness of materials and teaching ideas.
A very special thank you to Khuloud Asad, who clarified ABCD objectives to me:)
I also have an important query from Deborah... that would we have an access to the groups' nicenet posts even after the course ends? As I do not save everything that I like on nicenet, especially various recommended websites by course fellows.
Cheers!
Saulat
This week's reflection will begin with a confession. I had a wedding in the family hance couldn't give as much time to this week's assignments. I wanted so much to participate in the optional assignment but then I was missing deadlines for the mandatory posts so couldn't afford to do the optional reasearch required. I saw the assignments late and despite my vow to be the first one to get done with initial postings, I am at the tail of the week. It's Monday morning in Pakistan already...so work awaits me.
I consider reading and writing a real treat to teach, so the assignment topic was of high interest. We had spoken about listening and speaking earlier on and this week I read very interesting posts on reading and writing on nicenet and explored the recommended websites.
This week 'reading' was of special interest to me as I never thought that internet could help us teachers with that. May be I was a teacher of a traditional mindset where reading is considered done only when one is glued to a book. For the old fashioned teacher in me virtual books did not qualify as books so Mei Ya Liang's artile on "Three Extensive Reading Activities on e-books" was quite eye opening. I especially liked the evaluation grid idea, for student's meaningful feedback on thier readings.
I also loved most of the multi-skilled websites for their richness of materials and teaching ideas.
A very special thank you to Khuloud Asad, who clarified ABCD objectives to me:)
I also have an important query from Deborah... that would we have an access to the groups' nicenet posts even after the course ends? As I do not save everything that I like on nicenet, especially various recommended websites by course fellows.
Cheers!
Saulat
Monday, July 12, 2010
Growing Better, Technologically!
A Very Interesting Week!
I have to confess that the amount of variety that this course holds is truly amazing. Each week there is a new string of assignments and tasks that entail a lot of surfing on the internet. The way in which one website triggers the exploration of another one makes me stumble upon really interesting links.
For me this week’s big bang was ‘delicious.com’. I found this website really helpful as an organized store room for whatever I wish to retain. The manner in which one can create tags and then keep stacking websites on to that tag is really helpful. I ad never heard of let alone used a website like delicious.com. It was interesting to note that some of the course participants have already heard of it and were using it too. I admit that it is a bit technical for my average sensibility…but I am learning to use it efficiently.
Another really interesting discovery for this week was larryferlazzo.edublogs.org which contained an article on the best ‘speaking’ websites. I came across really interesting websites in that article. It also contained writer’s comments on each website he included on this page. I especially like voxopop.com and voicethread as speaking websites. It was here that I got to know that it was possible to record audio comments on other peoples’ work. There are clear instructions available on how this will be done.
The two listening websites www.agendaweb.org and : http://www.elllo.org/ I explored contained audio scripts on a variety of topics. I later on saw that One positive feature of both these websites is that they can be especially helpful for those who wish to improve their own language proficiency. I recommended both of these to my sister in law who studied medicine but doesn’t practice professionally. She’s a housewife, eloquent in her mother tongue yet wishes to improve her English proficiency.
The articles on listening, speaking and pronunciation were very informative. I liked Miller’s article as it was less technical and more relevant to most teaching situations. Maria Grazia Busa’s article on pronunciation was quite technical and loaded with terminology, so I didn’t give a really in depth reading to that one. However Gong’s article on speaking was much informative. I had heard of CALL before but this article explained its implications much better.
This week again I failed to respond sooner to the assignments calls…will try my best for next week.
Cheers!
Saulat
I have to confess that the amount of variety that this course holds is truly amazing. Each week there is a new string of assignments and tasks that entail a lot of surfing on the internet. The way in which one website triggers the exploration of another one makes me stumble upon really interesting links.
For me this week’s big bang was ‘delicious.com’. I found this website really helpful as an organized store room for whatever I wish to retain. The manner in which one can create tags and then keep stacking websites on to that tag is really helpful. I ad never heard of let alone used a website like delicious.com. It was interesting to note that some of the course participants have already heard of it and were using it too. I admit that it is a bit technical for my average sensibility…but I am learning to use it efficiently.
Another really interesting discovery for this week was larryferlazzo.edublogs.org which contained an article on the best ‘speaking’ websites. I came across really interesting websites in that article. It also contained writer’s comments on each website he included on this page. I especially like voxopop.com and voicethread as speaking websites. It was here that I got to know that it was possible to record audio comments on other peoples’ work. There are clear instructions available on how this will be done.
The two listening websites www.agendaweb.org and : http://www.elllo.org/ I explored contained audio scripts on a variety of topics. I later on saw that One positive feature of both these websites is that they can be especially helpful for those who wish to improve their own language proficiency. I recommended both of these to my sister in law who studied medicine but doesn’t practice professionally. She’s a housewife, eloquent in her mother tongue yet wishes to improve her English proficiency.
The articles on listening, speaking and pronunciation were very informative. I liked Miller’s article as it was less technical and more relevant to most teaching situations. Maria Grazia Busa’s article on pronunciation was quite technical and loaded with terminology, so I didn’t give a really in depth reading to that one. However Gong’s article on speaking was much informative. I had heard of CALL before but this article explained its implications much better.
This week again I failed to respond sooner to the assignments calls…will try my best for next week.
Cheers!
Saulat
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Week 2: Searching the web and learning to define clear objectives
Dear All
Like I mentioned on nicenet earlier that for most of us using a particular search engine was more of a habit where we hardly analysed if it was fulfilling our information needs...but now atleast I am more picky, choosing from so many options that were shared with us during the last week.
However I feel that there is a flip side to this too...as I tried using some academic search engines from noodletools to search for material on ABCD objectives model, and despite trying out various options hardly found any relevant material. Hence I went back to 'Google' and found relevant examples and material there. So I feel that it's not like giving up on an old habit of using "Google" just like that...at least I would require a bit more time to have trust in other seach engines, provided that I keep trying them out. One major realisation that I have had as a result of this 'web searching' discussion was that it made me aware that there are other options available besides just "Googling".
In addition I am glad that I tried to learn more about the ABCD model, as honest to God, I was never good at making 'clear' objectives. I know I wouldn't ace on it just after a week but at least I am becoming more aware of the 4 aspects of 'clear' objectives. I feel that the requirement that we had to share our objectives with the 'audience' was really tricky as that made us more conscious of what we were dishing out..as the students today are quite analytical...in other words 'difficult to fool':) which I feel is a major push for teachers to remain on their toes. I remember that we were hardly this analytical about our teachers...and even if we noticed certain weaknesses we would remain silent out of respect [at times even fear of reprimand]
So all in all I feel I have become just a fragment better reading about various aspects during the last week.
I must also say that I am really impressed with really valuable contributions of other course participants on nicenet...I'll try my best to be more interactive in the coming week as the course is now sinking into my routine schedule.
Good luck to everyone for week 3!
Cheers!
Saulat
Like I mentioned on nicenet earlier that for most of us using a particular search engine was more of a habit where we hardly analysed if it was fulfilling our information needs...but now atleast I am more picky, choosing from so many options that were shared with us during the last week.
However I feel that there is a flip side to this too...as I tried using some academic search engines from noodletools to search for material on ABCD objectives model, and despite trying out various options hardly found any relevant material. Hence I went back to 'Google' and found relevant examples and material there. So I feel that it's not like giving up on an old habit of using "Google" just like that...at least I would require a bit more time to have trust in other seach engines, provided that I keep trying them out. One major realisation that I have had as a result of this 'web searching' discussion was that it made me aware that there are other options available besides just "Googling".
In addition I am glad that I tried to learn more about the ABCD model, as honest to God, I was never good at making 'clear' objectives. I know I wouldn't ace on it just after a week but at least I am becoming more aware of the 4 aspects of 'clear' objectives. I feel that the requirement that we had to share our objectives with the 'audience' was really tricky as that made us more conscious of what we were dishing out..as the students today are quite analytical...in other words 'difficult to fool':) which I feel is a major push for teachers to remain on their toes. I remember that we were hardly this analytical about our teachers...and even if we noticed certain weaknesses we would remain silent out of respect [at times even fear of reprimand]
So all in all I feel I have become just a fragment better reading about various aspects during the last week.
I must also say that I am really impressed with really valuable contributions of other course participants on nicenet...I'll try my best to be more interactive in the coming week as the course is now sinking into my routine schedule.
Good luck to everyone for week 3!
Cheers!
Saulat
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Week 1: Reflection
Boy Oh boy, is this fun or what:) !!!
I am so excited having followed the steps successfully, I do agree that the steps to start a blog were broken down into a simple set of instructions...that is another implicit way of teaching teachers how to keep instructions sweet and simple.
Thank you so very much to have me catch up, though I was late. I had no idea until yesterday what great learning opportunity this would be.
I welcome you all to the ' ELT Rainbow ' and hope that I would be able to contribute something valuable to this course.
Best of luck to us all and a BIG thank you to Deborah!
Cheers!
Saulat
I am so excited having followed the steps successfully, I do agree that the steps to start a blog were broken down into a simple set of instructions...that is another implicit way of teaching teachers how to keep instructions sweet and simple.
Thank you so very much to have me catch up, though I was late. I had no idea until yesterday what great learning opportunity this would be.
I welcome you all to the ' ELT Rainbow ' and hope that I would be able to contribute something valuable to this course.
Best of luck to us all and a BIG thank you to Deborah!
Cheers!
Saulat
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