Farewell

I'm overwhelmed by contradictory  feelings. On the one hand, it's the joy of having completed a big and very important task and on the other, it's sadness because I'll have to part from so many of you to whom I've already got used. I'm going to miss the readings, the tasks, but most of all the discussions we used to have. I think these discussions played an important role in my formation within the course. Comments made by the participants, questions, link sharing and discussing everyone's experience  were of great use to me and I'm sure to many of other participants. Jodi and Sherie's careful guiding  and detailed explanations were very helpful. 
This course has made me feel different, look at things I do from a different angle. 
To my mind, the goal of this course was to make a change. A change in the attitude, in the way of teaching and even  in human interaction. And I can say, the aim has been attained. I've been given the impetus and now I will be trying and implementing new tools to help my students achieve better results, to feel self-confident and proud of what I do. 
I'm very grateful to Jodi and Sherie for having provided us this wonderful opportunity of getting insights into web tools that can be used in class. 


Jodi and Sherie, if you were in Moldova, you would be sure to get a bunch of flowers as a sign of gratitude. So these virtual flowers are for YOU.

It's about making ideas happen

Time is flying fast and here we are at the end of week 9.
We have already submitted our final projects. It seems we have completed the most important task. But other new ideas crowd in my mind and make me build new plans. Looking back I realize it was not a very good idea to chose a completely new group for the project. Now, at times, I face their complete indifference, especially when it comes to brushing up their work. The students are thrilled when they have a new proposal, but as they work at it they get tired of it. I think it is a problem that has to be faced by the teacher. I have to find some way to motivate them finish their work.
This week has been very rich in events. We were initiated into the topic of learning styles. It was not new to me, still I learnt many useful things and came across many good sites, which suggest activities for each learning style.
Coming back to the project, I decided to create a blog for another group of students, whom I've been teaching for 3 years. I will invite them to share their ideas and everything they would like to on the blog. To motivate them, I created and posted a short animoto video with their pictures. I think they'll enjoy seeing their photos in a video post. You can have a look at it http://discussionclub3.blogspot.com 

Apart from the above mentioned, I can say that it was rather hard for me to pull myself together and work this week, as I managed to catch a cold and had a high temperature since Wednesday. I hope I'll be better tomorrow to come to my classes and be able to participate in all the discussions. 

Busy bees

This has been a wonderful week! We all have been busy like bees trying different online tools. To be honest, we were offered such a variety of tools that sometimes I got lost. But then I started  from the very beginning and went step by step. I am amused at the ease with which so many interesting and useful activities can be done. I think I shall go on investigating them as I only managed to look at some of them. For instance, I downloaded and installed the Hot Potatoes, but I had no time to try it, as it requires time and attention  on my part.


But the most significant event of this week was the project draft. It took me two days to jot it down and I posted since I did not want to disappoint my team partners. They were so quick in their work.
To my mind,I learnt  a lot  reading their drafts. We all followed the same scheme, however, each of us managed to present information in a different, special way. I looked with a fresh eye at my project after reading Vijay's and Salam's drafts. This is a very good experience and I think I will use it in my classes.


ANVILL is a mysterious tool, which I haven't manage to explore yet. I've got a general impression about it, however, I didn't figure out how it works yet. I registered on ANVILL and will explore it when I a have a spare 'minute'.
 I definitely liked the webinar that we had! I don't know what I liked best: the presentation itself or the atmosphere that was dominating in the class (merry chatroom, people joining and leaving the 'room', even the faults with the tech :) wasn't it funny to hear the echo and all people writing echo, echooo?). 
Well, frankly speaking, I think in the nearest future all students and teachers will be able to use this kind of technology, as it provides a variety of opportunities to teach, and learn, and practice, and have fun. After all, fun is an important factor in the process of learning!


Well, I have to admit that it has become a habit of mine to come to the computer and check the posts on Nicenet, my email, Jupiter Grades and wiki. And more and more often the idea that our course is drawing to its end comes to my mind. And I realize that I will miss this course a lot. Despite the hard times, busy schedule and lots of failures, I feel sad at the very thought that I'll have no hometask. 

P.S.
 A special THANK YOU  for Vijay and Salam, my team partners. Your comments were very valuable.

Where there is a will there is way.

This week I've read two articles on autonomous learning. These articles aroused active discussions on Nicenet. To my mind, most of teachers, taking part in the discussion, believe that autonomous learning is important, but many complain that due to curricula, textbooks, and rules functioning in the educational system it is hard to implement. I strongly believe that the teacher can decide on what to do and how to teach his/her class. The teacher can choose the book or several books and elaborate a curriculum, suitable for the needs of the students. Of course there are obstacles, but it is worth trying. If the results are visible, then people around you will accept your change. Well, I admit that things might be different in various countries. As for my university, we teachers are free to choose the resources, we're just asked to elaborate a curriculum for the class and we can use even several books. I also know that school teachers do not have such freedom, still they are allowed to take two or three books, which are recommended by the Ministry of Education. Well, my conclusion is: where there is a will, there is a way. 

P.S. I think this caricature can somehow contribute to what I've written above.

This week has also been marked by another important event. We had to choose partners for our projects. It turned out quite a difficult task for me, personally. After a long week, I finally joined Vijay and Salam. I really appreciate the fact that they invited me to team up with them.   

Tools for Excellence

I can call this week a practical week. This is because we had less to read and more to practice.
As sometimes, it takes me more time to understand how things work, last week I was not very successful with the WebQuest. I myself didn't like the first Web Quest that I did. That's why I started this week with zunal.com. And  finally I managed to do something I liked. So I can say that this is the first achievement of mine during this week.
The second achievement was the PPT. I can say that I used PPT before for presentations during teacher's seminars, at the conferences and sometimes in class. But it wasn't interactive. I would like to mention one thing. We often discussed at the department whether it is worth using a PPT. Some respectable teachers say it is boring, and it makes no sense in reading info from the slide. Even then I didn't agree with them. At the last conference in October, I made a presentation (not an interactive one) but I used it as a tool, which helped me explain things. And  they liked it. That's an example that proves  that sometimes you may do a great deal of work, but be unable to present it properly. The fact that we have a PPT does not mean that it's going to be  a success. We have to think how to present it, to arrange, to "manipulate" it and why not the audience, in order to achieve the desired result. I intend to read more about PPT, as I think it's a worthy subject for investigation.
That's about my previous experience with PPT.
This week it turned out that PPT joined me and my son. Usually he does not get involved in my work. He minds his own business. But this week I showed him some examples of interactive PPT and he wanted to help me. We worked for several hours, he helped me find pictures, adjust them to the slide and I found out my son knows the computer pretty well. Now, he decided to make a PPT on violence (that's a school project). I'm grateful to our instructors for this opportunity. (Those who have children know how important it is to find a common interest with your child).


I have also found out many activities for large classes. I really liked some of them and made up my mind to use them during my theory classes.
The general impression of this week is that we are getting ready for a very important event (you know like they train astronauts for space travelling) and we have to acquire as many skills as possible. 
During this course I've  managed to make a kind of teacher's tool kit, which could be helpful in any situation.

P.S. Read the text under the pictures :)

Captivating and Challenging!

Another week has passed. We were offered a set of captivating and ... challenging tasks.
Captivating because the things we  discuss are useful and generate interesting discussions. It's not that boring stuff that no one needs. These are things we can apply in  practice and benefit from them. Challenging because I made up my mind to make a Web Quest. At first it seemed rather easy to me. But when I started reading about web quests I realized that to make a good one the teacher needs to do a great deal of work, to search the sites and to provide careful guidance to the students. So the Web Quest was this week's challenge, at least for me. I got really mad when I spent time to register on zurnal.com, and when I began to make my web quest   it said that   I could not do anything else because  I was not a premium user. Finally, today I succeeded! Though, I think it's a fake Web Quest. I don't think it is ready to be used by the students. There are many things to be improved in it and probably I will come back to this problem some day. The most important thing is that I understood how it works.
Another useful thing for me was Alternative Assessment and mainly rubrics. I'm grateful to Jodi and Sherie for this wonderful tool. Once I attended a seminar in assessing writing. Among other things we were introduced to rubrics for essay assessment. All of our teachers liked it a lot and we kept the copy of that rubric to use it in our classes. Unfortunately, we weren't told that we can make one of our own. So now, when I know it I'm going to create different rubrics and share the link with my colleagues. 


Before enrolling in this course, I thought I knew some things about teaching. But being part of this class, I realize how much room there is for improvement. I understand that a teacher never ceases to learn. And I like it!

P.S. Captivating and Challenging!

End of week 4

Week four has come to its end. During this week I worked really hard. This is because I engaged in too many things, thinking I can manage everything. As a result, I was bound to my computer during the whole week. But finally, I finished almost all the work (having two more tasks to accomplish before the midnight) and now I can write a few lines on the blog.

I tried many sites which provide multiple skills activities, most of all I like the speaking frog, as it suits the needs of my students in translation class. When they come back from their practice I will introduce them to this site, for sure. Among other things, I found really interesting sites for  work with kids, like crossword puzzles, which train past forms of the verbs and many other useful things. 

During this week I tested some of the activities with my students and I came to the following conclusions. 

1. If you think that using technology in the class makes the teacher's life easier, you're mistaken. This kind of class requires a detailed planning and most importantly, the teacher has to do all the activities at home beforehand and remember all the steps the students have to follow. It definitely takes time and effort, at least, before you get used to the site you work with. 

2. Technology should be just an element of your lesson. It's not worth spending  the whole lesson working in the Internet.

 I shall make myself clear. I had a writing class using the sites, which are designed for this purpose. I must admit that it took me great pains to schedule the lesson in the computer lab, as we don't have computers in all the classrooms. The students worked diligently and did the exercises, but .... I was disappointed. The lesson was silent. Well, there were my directions, explanations and that's all. The students were busy with their tasks, they wrote, asked each other questions, but there was no discussion. Hence, I drew the conclusion, technology should take just a part of the lesson, it's good when it is combined with other activities. 

So far, these are my observations. I hope they will be useful for you, too.

P.S. I'm really sorry, I can't be very active in the discussions in the Nicenet. That's not that I'm not interested, I'm really pressed for time. I feel a kind of white envy for those who have the time to reply to every post and give suggestions. And I'm really thankful to them as their suggestions and links are of great help.

Best regards,

 Ludmila. 

Video

I think you're going to like this.

"Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning" Eugine S. Wilson

This has been a crazy week, plenty of exams and papers to check! That's why most of my assignments were done at night time. It has already become a habit of mine to look at new posts and comments. I was curious to find out what other people were doing, to see their reaction to everything that happened in our class. But let me start from the very beginning.


On Monday I got my assignment for this week. I started reading and was rather puzzled. Now, when I think back I can't say why. Either because there was so much info or because I got lost in it, I don't know. As always, I started with the most difficult task, at least it seemed to me to be difficult. That was writing the ABCD objectives. I must admit that I never liked writing objectives. We used to discuss objectives at our department, but somehow I was not interested in them. That's why now, when I saw the task I realized that it's high time to clarify things and  see what is what. To my astonishment, it was not difficult at all, I just had to read attentively and to follow the instructions. The posts made by class participants were of great help. They made me realize I was on the right way. So, I guess now I'll have to review the objectives in my curricula. Having done what seemed most problematic to me, I left the "class", as there were plenty of papers to check and give marks. 
That's why, I was really grateful to Jodi for reminding us what we'd done and what was to be done. 


The second task was to try all the search engines and to comment on the one we like. It took me some time to figure out that not all of them are suitable for my particular needs. But I was very insistent and tried most of them. I really like http://www.twordy.com/search.php. It seems rather simple but it directed me to many useful pages. I was able to find interesting facts for the Linguistic Club that we have at our department. So I made a selection of new words and untranslatable words and presented them at the club. My colleagues liked the site, too. Exalead is the other search engine that I find useful for linguistic purposes.

Our third task was to describe a group of students with whom we would "experiment". I described my third year students, as I know them pretty well (I teach them for three years already). But just recently I found out that they are going to their teaching practice after the session. So now I don't know what to do. Well, I'll have another group of third year students from IT faculty, but I don't know anything about them yet. The only thing that I know is that there are 15 students and their English is fluent. I have to ask Jodi and Sherie if I can change the class for the project. 


That's all about this busy week. Despite the shortage of time and some frustration I enjoyed working in group. It really was "group work" as I learned a lot from the other participants.


N.B. I like the quotation i gave in the title, it tells us how we should be: curious to try everything in this course and resolute, 'cause not everything can be achieved with ease.

Best wishes, Ludmila.

End of week I

During the first week of the course I've done a lot of thinking. It's not that I had much work, just I was placed in an unusual situation. It was not the situation when you know everything and feel rather good, like at classes, for instance. I was asked to do things that I learnt before, but was somehow unwilling to implement, because  ... I don't know, maybe because I was simply lazy. Being asked why I don't make my own blog, I always said I have nothing to say. I think that sharing my personal feelings and thoughts is somewhat indiscreet. 


When a child, I tried to keep a diary, so I carefully put down everything that was important for me, several days later I read the first entry and .... it seemed so stupid to me. As a result, I gave it up. 

Now, this course gives me the opportunity to start again, to write about things, which are interesting  at least to10-12 people. I'm really thankful for the chance to try new and unusual things. This adventure reminds me of the novel "Daddy long Legs" by Jean Webster. Juddy, the main character, was to write a weekly letter to her guardian about her success at college. As a result, she became a writer. I think, all of us will get our reward by the end of the course. 
By the way, I know that some of my students are following this blog and I have to make the grade.  I'll do my best. I'm looking forward to new tasks.

It's like keeping a diary, isn't it?

Week 1. My first steps

Hi, people!


I'm really delighted to take part in a distance learning course. It has some advantages over the face to face courses. I shall make myself clear. In face to face courses the instructor points to the learners and shows each step, closely watching what  the learners are doing and how. Such instructions are good, but my memory has a "wonderful" feature to forget half of the given instructions. While, as I've already seen, in distance courses, the learners are very independent and have the opportunity to explore the net on their own, following the given instructions.
It took me some time to create this blog, as all the instructions on the bog spot were in Russian and I had to find the settings and change the language several times. it's a bit puzzling and I'm anxious that I won't be able to cope with the tasks. Still I hope to have enough time and persistence to fulfil all the tasks.
Besides, when I told my family about the course, my eleven-year-old son was really happy, as I would be having some home tasks, too.
It seems to me I managed to create my first post!

 I feel like this puzzled grandpa now. Hope to get rid of this unpleasant feeling soon.