Week 10: The Beginning!!!

Today is the last day of the last week of the course and I am sad. It's unbelievable how time passed so quickly, I remember my euphoria at receiving the email about my selection for this course as an event of only yesterday. I must admit this course was quite addictive, I will miss the daily and weekly rituals--- every Monday checking grades on Jupitar grades, logging on to Nicenet to check new tasks and discussion topics, every Wednesday posting in discussion thread and doing weekly readings and tasks, writing a blog every Sunday. It was my first ever online course, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Donna, you have kept us on our toes and polished up our teaching skills, thank you!

I call this week not the end but "The Beginning", because it's the beginning of a new era in our professional development. What we have learned here, we are going to apply in our classes and that will be the beginning of a whole new experience for us and for our students as well.

This week I came across LoTi framework which made me realize I have a long way to go to make my classes technology savvy. I am planning to start the semester by using interactive PPT, blogs, Nicenet, Delicious, Hotpotatoes, Rubrics, Webquests and Anvill etc in my classes. Everything that I have learned in this course is co-related and has such great relevance for EFL teaching.

Thank you my e-friends, I loved learning with you and learning from you. All of us are from different parts of the world but our experiences, expectations and problems as EFL teachers are the same and this really surprises me. I wish we all stay in touch even after the course ends.

Thank you Donna, you have been a wonderful role-model as a teacher and as a facilitator.

I wish us all the best for our future ventures!

Best wishes,
Akifa Imtiaz
aakifa@yahoo.com

week 9: Yoohoo!! I am Word Smart and People Smart!!

The week started with a very hot topic---Learning Styles! Our students, though they may look or behave similar, but they are all different from each other.They all have their own distinctive learning styles. Thanks to latest researches and trends, gone are the days when teachers taught them all in one and the same traditional dictatorial method.

Here are some of  the learning styles given by Howard Gardner:

- Linguistic / Auditory - Word-smart
- Logical-mathematical - Math-smart
- Musical - Music-smart
- Kinesthetic - Bodily-smart
- Visual / Spatial - Picture-smart
- Interpersonal - Myself-smart
- Intrapersonal - People-smart
- Naturalist - Nature-smart
- Spiritual
- Essential
- Moral

I would say, if the teacher is not able to adapt according to the needs of students s/he is not a good teacher. Best is to determine right at the beginning what are the learning styles of the students, for this one of my friends from this course, Maggie, has posted 2 URL's on her blog and I am posting them here

http://www.ldpride.net/learning-style-test.html 
http://www.wright.edu/~carole.endres/learnstyles.htm
To these two, I would add one more test site: 
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/questions/questions.cfm


 These URLs contain survey/test for determining the learning styles of the students. They can be very helpful for the teachers as well as for the students.


When I took a test to check my learning style I came somewhere between Linguistic, Interpersonal and Intrapersonal. Here are the results:

I remember when I was at school I was not quite good in Maths and never liked Physics and Chemistry. In the music class I was the one with no ear for the music too! But when I started college I selected subjects like Psychology and English Literature and they were really my domain and I used to score highest  in all the subjects in class.Now I know why some students are tagged as "poor in studies" and some as "good in studies" by the teachers.

Teachers can make use of technology to combat with the different learning styles in the classroom: Interactive PPT, Webquests, Anvill, Blogs, PBL, Audio/video, Discussion Boards, quizzes/puzzles, images etc

Finally, this week we have submitted our final project plan. Now I am sitting with my fingers crossed to see how much I score there!

Week 8: ANVILL

Hello Everyone,
Its so surprising that we will be starting week 9 in few hours.Seems like yesterday this course started.
This week was quite fruitful, just like all the previous ones. But I must say that this week was quite hectic too.

First, we had to submit the first draft of our final project, and do a peer review of our partners' drafts.I must say while I was going through the checklist provided to us for the peer review, the shortcomings in my own report started coming in my mind. So, I would say that peer-reviewing is quite a good technique which gives way to self-assessment as well.

Secondly, something amazing was introduced to us, that is, ANVILL. I wish I had known about ANVILL before, but i guess its never too late. Its just an amazing LMS, a wonderful tool for teachers and learners. And, what is best about ANVIL is that it includes all the four areas of language i.e. listening speaking reading and writing. I would love to use it with my students but first I myself need to learn all the ropes.

I have also learned to make language teaching exercises in HotPotatoes. And I created a blog site for my students. After vacations when my students will resume the semester, I plan to make use of this blog with them.

Best,
Akifa

Week 7... Learner's autonomy and one-computer classrooms

Hello,
Week 7 ended after opening yet new avenues for us. I have read about different activities that can be done in class where there is only one computer available. I also designed an activity for my students. The concept of one-computer class is very interesting, especially in the context of educational institutions in Pakistan where we do not have ready access to technology. Teachers can utilize one computer to teach in so many ways.

Next thing we discussed in detail this week was developing autonomy in the learners. Fostering complete autonomy in learners is a difficult task though. I believe if my students become autonomous learners, nothing can come in their way to stop them from reaching the heights!

This week we formed pairs/groups to check each other's project reports/plans.

Looking forward to the next week!

Best,
Akifa

week 6.... Interactive PowerPoint

week six has already ended, only four more weeks to go. I would call it the beginning of an end. It really saddens me to even think that we have only 4 weeks of learning left.

This week, like previous weeks, something amazing happened! I learned to create interactive PowerPoint presentations. I have been making PowerPoints before but I have only used hyperlinks. But now I have learned different other techniques to make my PPT more interactive. Blank screen and pointer hiding is something I never knew before. With these techniques in hand, it becomes so challenging and interesting to create such PowerPoint with Concept Test, Quick write, embedded video/audio. Also, I can create puzzles and games to teach language.

This was an interesting week, with my plan of the final project entering its final stages.
Waiting to see what challenges will greet us next week!
Akifa

Week 5.....Webquest, Rubrics, PBL and Change!!!

Hi Friends,

This week was the week of discovery. I discovered Rubrics, WebQuests and Project Based Learning.
So many new things within a span of 7 days, phewww!! it was a giant leap!

PBL and webquests are amazing! I had never thought of teaching language in this way before. The sense of community and the measure of interaction between learners heightens the motivation level in the students. I plan to take up this technique with my students so that more learning can take place in and outside the classroom.I have created my very own webquest as well.

The concept of alternative assessment is most appealing. For the first time in life I created my own rubric with the help of templates on Rubistar.Rubrics can be a very helpful tool both for teachers as well as for students. One should encourage self and peer assessment system in the class room with the help of rubrics or other alternative assessment tools.

Finally, this week we have found ways to overcome/solve the problems in our classes by introducing some change in the class. This change included introducing some new activity using technological gadgets. All my fellow participants came up with such good suggestions and plans.

Finally, I would say, it is the word 'change' that is most radical. Being language teachers we must embrace, whole-heartedly, the changes that we encounter in the teaching world.

Week 4... My Reflections

Hello everyone,
This week's tasks were quite lengthy, so much to read and making a lesson plan too. I was a bit behind the schedule during the week, but Thank God I have managed to finish before the deadline!!

So let me reflect upon what I have learned this week and how that will be useful for my students.

This week we moved a step forward on the project task and we were asked to pin point the problems faced by the students or concerns of the teacher. This was the problem-determining stage, we were not supposed to give solutions for those problems. This activity was helpful in the sense that while I was thinking about the limitations and concerns the picture of the project that I want to do with my students became clearer in my mind.

For the Discussion part we were give a few articles to read and websites to browse. I specially liked Krajka's article  about using Key Pal connections to teach vocabulary and writing  to the students. I plan to replicate similar activity with my students.

From the list of given sites, I selected 2 multi-skill websites which I think will be helpful for me and my students.First one is Breaking News English  which contains extensive lesson plans to teach writing and vocabulary improvement exercises. And the other is Lauri's ESL Website  which contains interactive exercises on grammar.

Finally, came the turn to make the most exhaustive lesson plan. It was quite tough to start with, but once I started ideas started coming easily. I made a technology enhanced lesson plan on teaching Opinion Writing to my students. I plan to actually execute this plan in my class, so lets see what results I will get. One thing is for sure, CALL makes lessons quite interesting, both for the teacher as well as for the students.

Ok.  Let's see what week 5 holds for us tomorrow... looking forward to new arenas to explore!

Week 3.... Reflections : CALL & Delicious

Week 3 of the course was really demanding with so many readings to do.

Firstly, as a step 2 of the project task I had to read  project reports  from past Webskills classes. Then I posted my comments on one of the reports on Nicenet thread.

Secondly, I created a page on Delicious  (www.delicious.com). It is a social bookmarking site where one can save URLs of different websites. I have found it quite helpful as now I will be able to access my bookmarks from anywhere and from any computer.

Thirdly, we were introduced to CALL  which focused on oral/aural skills. I must admit that I am already familiar with CALL and have been using it in my teaching, still, with technology its never the final word, one learns new things everyday. Therefore for the task I read a few articles on CALL given to us for reading and selected the one by Miller  to improve the listening skills of the students with the help of technology. Next, I explored a few websites and selected onestopenglish which I think will be useful to teach speaking skills to my students.

Furthermore, I browsed through a list of other websites provided to us and selected a few that can be useful in my teaching context. One of them is Randall's ESL Lab and the other is Blurts. I have found these two sites very comprehensive to teach/learn listening and speaking skills.

Browsing different sites, going through lesson plans, project reports and articles on CALL helped me gain quite a lot this week.

Week 2....What I have learned

I was ecstatic to see my grades of week 1 so I started the 2nd week with new enthusiasm. Well...this week was quite productive. I have learnt so much in this week. Firstly I will mention the treasure I came across...Noodletools. Wow! such a wealth of search engines and other related sites and all categorized under their respective fields.We were asked to surf the site and select one search engine and utilize it to its fullest. So I selected Truveo to search for different videos related to language teaching. Furthermore, on Noodletools I found that we can even subscribe to and use bibliography making software, so very helpful for citation and  writing bibliographies in APA or MLA styles.

Secondly, we were engaged in the step 1 of project task, which was to describe our students and setting of the class and technology available both to teacher and students in detail.

Thirdly, we were given a task to formulate an objective for our students for teaching anything from their course. This was done in Pennsylvania State University's ABCD style (Audience-Behavior-Condition-Degree). I must admit, it was a new and different experience for me. I was quite apprehensive in the beginning, then i went through the readings provided to us and understood quite easily what entails ABCD. And finally when I formulated and posted my ABCD objective on Nicenet it was much appreciated by Donna. Again, it gave me a great sense of accomplishment.

While going through the discussions about different teaching scenarios of my fellow course participants, I am quite amazed to know that problems faced by EFL teachers are the same everywhere, no matter in what part of the world you are teaching.

 Ciao!!!

Week 1.....Self-Reflections

Finally, a few words about how I managed to land here! My experience of creating the blog was somewhat confusing in the beginning, with quite a few twists and turns, but finally following the steps given in the tutorial I managed to create it.I admit I took some time in selecting the design template and choosing the name for the blog. Next step was writing a few lines to introduce myself, and checking/unchecking a few options in the settings menu. Having done with it, I posted my first post ever in a blog, which is self-explanatory of the shakiness I was feeling deep inside.After learning the ropes the next step was to visit other participants' blogs and I was/am quite impressed by them.

As far as other activities of the week are concerned i.e. Going through the course website, needs analysis survey, logging in to Nicenet, participating on the discussion board, posting my introduction, posting the blog URL on the class wiki, they posed no problem for me and I went through them quite easily. Discussion about ground rules and rubrics is quite insightful as everybody came with something new to share. 

Now that the show is on the road..... (week-1)

Now that the show is practically on the road, I have a few confessions to make. It is the end of week one and I am eagerly waiting for 2nd week's tasks. I must admit that I lagged behind a little bit during this week as sometimes I tend to follow a different tune from others! But Donna's email acted as a stimulator and shook me out of my 'learner's block'. I have always been more of a thinker, a reader and an orator, but never a writer  so blogging is a challenge for me.

While I think of myself that how blogging is waking up and shaking up the sleeping writer inside me, I also try to step into my students' shoes who are really scared of the English language. Yes!!! English in Pakistan is a foreign language which has become more of a status symbol than anything else! It is the language of official communication as well as of education. Our students when they reach college, some already have a background of learning English for 10 years at school and some for 5 years. Those coming from elite private schools have no difficulty in communicating in the English language, whereas those coming from state-run schools have very poor communication skills in English.This deficiency at times puts diverse effects on the over-all performance of the students since all the other subjects that they study are also in English. However, one thing I have found is that no matter what the proficiency level, students are always eager to use technology during the English lessons.

I will be very happy to make my students create their own blogs and write whatever comes into their minds as a first step. It will be their very own electronic diary where they will not be afraid of making mistakes, as I myself  am so so very happy to experience how a simple blog can make you feel the power you have over the thoughts and words inside your head!!

My first post... (week 1)

This is my first post after creating the blog. I have never done blogging before on the internet, so now I am feeling a bit apprehensive how I might sound here :-)

I like this activity of blogging for self-reflections and I have already formed the idea of introducing this in my English classes. It is just like writing a daily diary!