Dear all
The last 10 weeks have changed me from what I was...at least I am not a complacent taecher anymore. So much have happened making me think of the ways in which better learning and teaching may take place, even in the presence of limited resource. So there are no excuses, if I have one computer, just one computer which is a personal property...this course answered: great! that is all you need to get going:)
Beginning with registering on the nicenet, making a blog on blogger.com, setting up an account on delicious.com, getting awareness about listening/ speaking, learning about making ABCD objectives, discussion on reading/ writing/ vocabulary building, developing a technology enhanced lesson plan, leraning about PBL with technology, , Learning how to make an interactive powerpoint presentation, creating rubrics, creating a n online course site, learning about web-quests, developing a technology lesson plan are just some of the things we did...but we learnt so much more. Learning the how-to's and succeeding on them was just a great experience. It had been quite a while that I had enrolled for a course and this one was taught me to identify opportunities and make the most of them.
In addition we also made so many friends on this course:) I hope that we all would remain in touch for many many years now. Tracking each others' progress and sharing our success stories would be just amazing. I feel we may do that through nicenet and our blogs.
A big thanks to Deborah for her support through out the course. Plz correct me if I am wrong that she would answer our emails 'maximum' within an hour's time. It was always an extremely prompt response. So thank you very much for being there for us all.
Best of luck and cheers!
Saulat
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Week 9: Coming to the end of the course
Dear all
I found the second last week to be a bit relaxing simply because we had already submitted the reports at the beginning of the week. Since the report was out of our way, it was easier to concentrate on other tasks. I really like the way the course has been chalked out.
Like most of the teachers on this course the concept of MI and Learning Styles was not new to me, but I was thrilled to see the amount of helpful material available on it. After reading LEARNING STYLES AND STRATEGIES by Richard M. Felder and Barbara A. Soloman I got to know about sensing and intuitive learners for the first time. The manner in which the authors clarify the difference between each set of styles and how 'X' type of learners can help themselves learn better was a really nice way of helping the readers decide about their own learning style. The strategies and the advice it had for each learning styles can be taken to our classrooms, where our students may find out about their learning styles and how should they study, or respond to their own learning needs.
I also was thrilled to explore 'teacher tap' and the rich wealth of additional resources that it led to. I especially enjoyed watching Howard Gardner's talks through the video links. The link about the criticism on MI also mede me look at MI critically as well, but I remain a suppoter of this supplement knowledge about our students. I clearly remember once I conducted an MI survey for the foundation year Chartered Accountancy students and a student gave up his courses to opt for media sciences. Today he directs documentaries and is happy with life. So at one level we do a great service to students by making them more aware about their potential.
I am so happy to be a teacher, and now to be more aware of how less I knew:)
Cheers!
Saulat
I found the second last week to be a bit relaxing simply because we had already submitted the reports at the beginning of the week. Since the report was out of our way, it was easier to concentrate on other tasks. I really like the way the course has been chalked out.
Like most of the teachers on this course the concept of MI and Learning Styles was not new to me, but I was thrilled to see the amount of helpful material available on it. After reading LEARNING STYLES AND STRATEGIES by Richard M. Felder and Barbara A. Soloman I got to know about sensing and intuitive learners for the first time. The manner in which the authors clarify the difference between each set of styles and how 'X' type of learners can help themselves learn better was a really nice way of helping the readers decide about their own learning style. The strategies and the advice it had for each learning styles can be taken to our classrooms, where our students may find out about their learning styles and how should they study, or respond to their own learning needs.
I also was thrilled to explore 'teacher tap' and the rich wealth of additional resources that it led to. I especially enjoyed watching Howard Gardner's talks through the video links. The link about the criticism on MI also mede me look at MI critically as well, but I remain a suppoter of this supplement knowledge about our students. I clearly remember once I conducted an MI survey for the foundation year Chartered Accountancy students and a student gave up his courses to opt for media sciences. Today he directs documentaries and is happy with life. So at one level we do a great service to students by making them more aware about their potential.
I am so happy to be a teacher, and now to be more aware of how less I knew:)
Cheers!
Saulat
Monday, August 16, 2010
Week 8: Tech, tech, tech...:)
Dear all
Week 8 came and went by, teaching us so much more about making activities, puzzles, games, tests. I did not know that there were so may free-of-cost teaching and learning websites. Somehow I was becoming fixed in my belief that there are no lunches in this world and nothing valuable will be open for all to use. But then we came across sites like easytestmaker.com, webposterwizard, xwordgenerator, hotpotato.com [this week only]which are a practical example of human generosity. Nicenet.com itself is so very useful, yet it is surprising that such less of teachers in my circle know about it.
This week I created my online class on nicenet, it's called Ms. Saulat's Class. Today I told some of my students about it but will formally share the class key with everyone on Friday. Initially I thought of developing a set of rules for the class to follow, just to maintain a decorum, but just now I got an idea to make them come up with a set of rules that they would like to follow. This, I feel, would fall under the category of LCA. It's interesting how all of us have started weighing our small teaching decisons and ideas according to the discussions on nicenet.
I must also take this opportunity to appreciate Liliya's hard work on her rough report draft. It had very rich data and a lot of details, though she had called it 'really sketchy', but other than the formatting there was nothing 'sketchy' about it:) I was really glad to see her work and my own work seemed really 'sketchy' infront of hers:( I hope to do better with the final submission though. This is what peer review does, it exposes the learners to each other's work and that is how implicit learning takes place. So thank you Liliya, for giving me an opportunity to learn and improve.
I am so grateful to be a part of this course:)
Cheers!
Saulat
Week 8 came and went by, teaching us so much more about making activities, puzzles, games, tests. I did not know that there were so may free-of-cost teaching and learning websites. Somehow I was becoming fixed in my belief that there are no lunches in this world and nothing valuable will be open for all to use. But then we came across sites like easytestmaker.com, webposterwizard, xwordgenerator, hotpotato.com [this week only]which are a practical example of human generosity. Nicenet.com itself is so very useful, yet it is surprising that such less of teachers in my circle know about it.
This week I created my online class on nicenet, it's called Ms. Saulat's Class. Today I told some of my students about it but will formally share the class key with everyone on Friday. Initially I thought of developing a set of rules for the class to follow, just to maintain a decorum, but just now I got an idea to make them come up with a set of rules that they would like to follow. This, I feel, would fall under the category of LCA. It's interesting how all of us have started weighing our small teaching decisons and ideas according to the discussions on nicenet.
I must also take this opportunity to appreciate Liliya's hard work on her rough report draft. It had very rich data and a lot of details, though she had called it 'really sketchy', but other than the formatting there was nothing 'sketchy' about it:) I was really glad to see her work and my own work seemed really 'sketchy' infront of hers:( I hope to do better with the final submission though. This is what peer review does, it exposes the learners to each other's work and that is how implicit learning takes place. So thank you Liliya, for giving me an opportunity to learn and improve.
I am so grateful to be a part of this course:)
Cheers!
Saulat
Monday, August 9, 2010
Week 7:
Dear all
Let me admit that this week was quite rough, and I just did necessary reading for the assignments on the weekend. My root canal got infected and I had been really unwell. In addition there was heavy rain in Karachi so I couldn't go to the dentist earlier. Any way, I managed to create a one computer class lesson and read interesting posts on nicenet. I couldn't read blogs this week. Howvere I would like to thank Deborah for sorting out the peer review matter and it woudl be really nice to work with Victor and Liliyah two very active contributors. I really look forward to taking their opinion on my project.
I feel that the website of the week for me was the 101 activities for the one-computer class. I haven't had the time to explore this in depth but the links to more sites that it gives will be helpful to me and my students.
In order to comment on 'LCA' I came across 'Taking the Bull by its Horns', and article by Prof. Zakia Sarwar. http://www.learnerautonomy.org/zakiapart1.pdf basically its her interview but on page 10 of this PDF file she shares some activities with reference to LCA. I know Prof. Sarwar personally and she has been my mentor for 6 years now. I wanted to share this link earlier on nicenet but somehow couldn't. Some of you might find it interesting and useful.
For now I gotta rush, will talk to you all later.
Cheers!
Saulat
Let me admit that this week was quite rough, and I just did necessary reading for the assignments on the weekend. My root canal got infected and I had been really unwell. In addition there was heavy rain in Karachi so I couldn't go to the dentist earlier. Any way, I managed to create a one computer class lesson and read interesting posts on nicenet. I couldn't read blogs this week. Howvere I would like to thank Deborah for sorting out the peer review matter and it woudl be really nice to work with Victor and Liliyah two very active contributors. I really look forward to taking their opinion on my project.
I feel that the website of the week for me was the 101 activities for the one-computer class. I haven't had the time to explore this in depth but the links to more sites that it gives will be helpful to me and my students.
In order to comment on 'LCA' I came across 'Taking the Bull by its Horns', and article by Prof. Zakia Sarwar. http://www.learnerautonomy.org/zakiapart1.pdf basically its her interview but on page 10 of this PDF file she shares some activities with reference to LCA. I know Prof. Sarwar personally and she has been my mentor for 6 years now. I wanted to share this link earlier on nicenet but somehow couldn't. Some of you might find it interesting and useful.
For now I gotta rush, will talk to you all later.
Cheers!
Saulat
Monday, August 2, 2010
Dear all
I found this week to be most valuable as I learnt new strategies about using powerpoint as an interactive tool. In order to do the assignment I began making a jeopardy game, but then worked on another idea of using a recipe video, and then asking students to sequence the jumbled steps. It was great fun making the presentation as I learnt how to make action buttons. Learning to upload a youtube video clip was not easy, but I learned how to do it through microsoft's online guide. I was really excited about completing that task...basically I had 3 ideas and the 3rd one worked out.
I had even thought of uploading a song and then planning tasks on it, but that did not work out as I couldn't upload an mp3 file successfully:( though I tried for hours.
I am in a rush, will write about engaging students in a different post in a couple of hours.
By then,
Cheers!
I found this week to be most valuable as I learnt new strategies about using powerpoint as an interactive tool. In order to do the assignment I began making a jeopardy game, but then worked on another idea of using a recipe video, and then asking students to sequence the jumbled steps. It was great fun making the presentation as I learnt how to make action buttons. Learning to upload a youtube video clip was not easy, but I learned how to do it through microsoft's online guide. I was really excited about completing that task...basically I had 3 ideas and the 3rd one worked out.
I had even thought of uploading a song and then planning tasks on it, but that did not work out as I couldn't upload an mp3 file successfully:( though I tried for hours.
I am in a rush, will write about engaging students in a different post in a couple of hours.
By then,
Cheers!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Week 5: More Surprises
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
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 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
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