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!