Week 3 : Reflection

Week 3: Reflection

The journey on “Building Teaching Skills through Interactive Webs” has almost completed its third week and it has been interesting, insightful and challenging for me.  I heartily thank Donna for her motivation and inspiration.  I have got a wonderful learning community and have learnt a lot from their experiences.

I began this week by reading two articles: Lindsay Miller's "Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials" and Julia Gong's "The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills". My attention was especially caught by Lindsay Miller’s article as listening is almost neglected in our classroom situations. I realized its importance and after reading it. I really enjoyed looking at Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab (www.esl-lab.com) and was amazed at its usefulness in enhancing all the skills of language learning. I shared it among my colleagues and I am going to suggest it to my students as well. I have learnt that technology makes learning lively and interesting.

This is the first time I heard about http:// delicious.com: Social Bookmarking for storing our online finds.  I have created my delicious page http://delicious.com/beni486 . The descriptions have eased to find the required materials. This is easy and time saving, isn’t it?

 I read the final project report by the author Zlatka Dyankova from Tryana Private High School of Languages and IT, Stava Zagora, Bulgaria in which s/he used WebQuest to break the traditional practices in teaching and promote passive learners’ interest and motivation. I am impressed the way s/he selected the technological tools and the topic for his/her students. I salute his/her optimistic attitude towards bringing efficient learning environment in his/her school. I am fully convinced that technology can bring a positive change in my school. The report has been quite insightful to me for my journey ahead.

Thank you friends for your insightful comments and exchange of ideas. You have made this week’s journey really wonderful. 

Kiran

Nepal

WEEK 2: REFLECTION
The ABCD  Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Websearches

Hello Everyone,
This very second week has been an interesting and challenging experience for me. We were assigned to explore different search engines other than google. After a huge reading, it was my first experience to explore different search engines like bing.com, Intute,  Yahoo and ask.com etc. and amazed at the accessibility, easiness and the numbers of results although I was excited and nervous in the begining. It has been an insightful experience to me. Our classmates' discussions are wonderful and I have learnt a lot from them. Thank you everyone.

The second nicenet discussion gave a lively picture of our classmates' classrooms. Some of them have advanced and techno enhanced classrooms and some are at the stage of introducing and enhancing technology in their classrooms. It was a woderful experience to read the students and their classroom along with the use of technology around the globe. I really enjoyed it.

I consider ABCD Learning Behavioral Objectives to be very new and challenging for a teacher like me practising traditional lesson planning. I wondered that a goal can be set in single sentence. Many teachers in Nepal do not prepare a lesson plan for it is lengthy and time consuming. The ABCD model is really exemplary. I have learnt it through reading and the insights from my classmates and promise to prepare it before I go to classroom. I am going to share it among my colleagues. Thank you Donna and friends for it.

Again it was another exciting experience of finding grades in the Blackboard. It was my first try in the website to find grades and felt that how lucky and interested my students would be if we could have the practice in our class!
This week went through intensive readings, discussions and comments on them. Web searching has taught me a lot.
I hope to learn a lot!
Kiran
Nepal

Week 1:Reflecion

Greetings from Nepal!
Hello Everyone!
It has been a wonderful experience for me to get connected with the professionals from around the globe through this course. I take this opportunity  to thank US Department of State and University of Oregon for the opportunity.
Till now I have been sincerely putting my efforts to follow the instructions of our instructor Donna Shaw and went through the course website and enjoyed exploring it. I also filled the need assessment survey and joined the Nicenet. I posted my self introduction in "Week 1 Discussion: Topic 1- Self Introduction" and   commented on Yiling's and Angel's post. Then I went through Guidelines for Discussions and Readings and posted my comment.
I have created a blog for the first time through this opportunity and posting my reflections of my first week till now.
Kiran
Nepal