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