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.