Last WeeK , week 10.   The End is here.

It is so hard to decide what was useful for me. It would be easier for me to say that the last useful issue was dealing with Rubrics, because Rubrics is a topic that I handle since more than two years ago.

The rest of the tools, and topic were so useful, and now are part of my teaching.

I used to use blogs, but only to inform my students about specific tasks, now I have the big picture on this great tool. I liked so much to write on my blog, writing down my experiences on a diary or journal.

The ABCD model is been so useful to, because it had helped me to narrow my expectations, on my students, what do I expect them to do, considering the Bloom taxonomy, and also the new digital taxonomy. The ABCD is helping me as a map, letting me know where I really want to take my students.

This course was also offering great tools for teachers such as Twurdy, this search engine is a big help telling us how difficult the articles are.

An amazing and incredible bookmarking DELICIOUS, WOW, I can say that I love it. This has been so useful, because where ever you are, you can check your links, and there on that page you can classify them, this is great!!!

All the links that the course offers me about listening and speaking are good tools. I couldn’t believe that at the web we can find esl-labs.

This course every week surprised me. When I was finishing a week, my thought was, well after this great topic, what else is coming? Because on that moment I thought that, the material for that week was the best, but it wasn´t there were more best coming…..

I can´t stop mentioning what else was amazing, but webquest, killed me!!!

I couldn´t believe when I saw my creation at the web, for the entire world, and I did it with the instructions, from this magnificent course.

The course was not only about links, ideas, it also contained good articles that teachers should know like independent work, PBL, assessments, projects, learning styles, ideas to teach large classes, how to use one computer at the classroom etc.

 As I mention before I can´t believed what the course invite me to create, I got surprised when I did (just as a sample, because it is short) a JEOPARDY game, yes, an interactive game!! Puff! Amazing, you can feel so good when you see the product.

I learned how to use Google docs. I got many ideas and links to create games, puzzles, crosswords, hot potatoes, etc.

During these ten short weeks, I had the opportunity to elaborate a project; I decided to use a webquest, to improve the reading skill at my students. As teacher I can mentions that this was a great experience for my students, they like the webquest, even though they did not realize that they were reading.

At the end I evaluate myself about how am I integrating technology in my classroom. I could see that I have too much to do, and this is my new and next challenge for me and also my students.

Everything on this course is through the web; through the web it is very easy to send links, instructions, task, etc. I wouldn´t be able to finish this course if I did not have a good teacher, a good leader, a good friend. Janine.

Janine you are so kind, I love the way you were leading this course.

Of course another part of this course was my nice, respectful, responsible and professional web classmates that now become my  friends.  

Now that I ask myself what is comming next? well, first I am going to have time enough to apply all these new knowledge, to practice, to implement and improve my teaching skills, and also I will look for a similar course, so good as this one.

                                                 WITH ALL MY LOVE SINCERELY      ANDREA.

                                                        WEEK 9  !!

It has been very interesting topic for this week. Learning style, I already knew about the topic. But I did never think on technology and learning styles. When I was writing my post at nicenet about what I read and what kind of activities can I use to connect learning styles and technology, I post some examples, but now I am thinking that I can plan an activity where all the learning styles were involve. Honestly something that I have done is after checking the predominant learning styles of a group I prepare my class focusing more on that dominant learning style, now after reading how important is and useful to give a class capture the attention of most of the students. But I was thinking that maybe I can use a tool where I call the attention of all kind of learners. It could be a PPT with music with visuals, graphics, and activities where the kinesthetic take part of them tool.

Maybe I am dreaming, but maybe we can, why not? If we do not try, who is going to do it??

Teacher Resources.

Right now I think that on this week 8 we got a long list of teacher resources.  What I think is that although these resources are on the web, free for everybody, we have to be conscious about the way we use these tools.  I think that we have to plan an ABCD objective for each activity, like puzzles, scrambles, bingo etc. I have seen that many teachers use them because they did not plan anything, or because they just want to wais time, to have students doing something instead of use them as a tool connected with our lesson plan programs.

I create a verb exercise, for one of my beginners group. I also practice with Google doc.

The idea to have these exercises done or to be able to elaborate yours covering your students needs is a time saving for teachers like us, who are busy all day all night.

This week is full of work.

I will start mentioning that my project was running so good, until I started writing down at the computer. On my journal report for this project I wrote clue words, phrases, sentences, some aspects for me, but when I started putting everything, in order, like translating from those clue words etc, took me some time, days later I decided to include the new tools that I learnt on this week, and as I did not have enough experience with these tools, it took me more time to do it. But I think that I am killing two birds with one stone, working and practice the new tools.

But the thing began to complicate a little more, when I saw these great virtual lab. How incredible it is that it exist something like this tool.  I asked at  nicenet  if after this course we will be able to use it. I need more time to go deeper with this tool, at first it was kind of complicated to understand how it works.  

(Frank Sinatra song!!!)

Today I feel that ……………  THE END IS NEAR…….

(Frank Sinatra song!!!)

After reading all your post on my blog I start feeling that I will be missing you!!!

I have learned from your post, and also I have seen that all of you have a big heart!!!

That is why you are teachers, good teachers, interested in growing in your careers, ready to transcend.

 I started working on my project, my students are motivated, I love what I am doing, and at the end I will see how much they love this kind of work.

I feel that I invited them to a trip, the immediately answer was YES!!! Then they were ready with their luggage. To travel somewhere…………

The only one who knows the route of this trip is me.

Any way all of them are ready on the boat. (They do not know where are they going) but they trust on me.

When you see in front of you this kind of students, hungry for something new, thirsty to work using technology, is when you reflect on yourself, how important is my teaching to them.

When they are like little birds eating in your hand, you can do whatever you want with them. Then you can change the perspective of your teaching, and your student’s life.  

.  

I feel very sad. It looks like no one likes my project or things like that.   

I thought it would not be difficult to find a partner, but now I see everybody looking for one, but no one pick others, I already asked directly to tow people, I am still waiting for their answer.

I am so excited with this project, when I invited my students the first reaction was that they felt proud of her teacher, and that was a nice feeling. Everything began, one day when I share to them about the way I got enroll on the course, specially I mentioned about this to my students because they are always saying that to be writing their essays for their journal file is not useful, But when I narrated the process how I got involved emphasizing the 2000 essay words, is when I connect them to the real word and their question what for.?

What I am trying to do in my project is to use as many as possible new knowledge from this course, and to see how it works, I decided to motivate my students reading process with a web quest. The topic of our unit is adaptable for this situation. I found interesting material to set on my web quest, where I tried never to forget the goal, Push my students to read, and find out how useful reading is.

                      

What a great week. Week 7.

We almost finish with this week, if someone would ask me about the most interesting week, I wouldn´t answer, every week in this course is surprising me.

I have read about constructivism before, but I never imagine my students building their knowledge.

The point is that this course, open my mind and now I think that I am able to generate independent and autonomous students. When I start reading the articles, writing my thoughts, and reading my web mates opinions, is when I realized what I can do. This idea did not stop there, after reading the article about one computer in a class, my mind start flying so far. My classroom only contains an obsolete TV with a VHS, and a broken DVD. But I have my own technology stuff such as a lap top, an iPad, and also I have access to internet at my room, so I can start modifying my teaching inviting my students to be independent and responsible for their learning process. Talking about this process, last week I invite my group to be part of this project, I invite one of my most enthusiastic and a participative group, the answer that I got was a strong yes!!! (I did it with the pertinent permissions and authorization) The only question that comes to my mind was while each student is going to be working at the computer, what is going to be doing the rest of the group?

As I have to teach everybody the same, I think that I have to plan another kind of independent work for them, so everybody is busy. As my groups are small groups at last 25 students, I think that this is not going to be difficult.

Let see what is next.......

I don´t know why but for reasons I ALWAYS have to work extra hours. (Like this course, with my web quest) I stop modifying it until I got what I wanted.
 
I don´t know why but for reasons I ALWAYS have to work extra hours. (Like this course, with my web quest) I stop modifying it until I got what I wanted.

Each week that passes, I can´t believe how much have I learned!!!

Thank Janine for this greate course. Thanks to Oregon University and all the people who are involved in this great project, this is like the Bible says:  You just spread the seeds and they will grow.  The seed that you are spreading in my case is going to deep and too far, it is reaching my students, Mexican teenagers that through you and me they are going to learn in a better way.

During this 6^th    week, that almost finish……I learned how to make an interactive PPT. I thought that it would be more difficult than it was. But more than learn how to do it on tech terms, I mean the importance to have this kind of material in our classes, the way that the students learn is different, they show more interest for the class.  I feel very proud of myself each time that I see my web quest. This task was consuming task for me. It is not easy to elaborate it. I had to check many web sites, check the vocabulary, and think on what could be an obstacle for my students. Check if the sites were inside of my goal, check if the topic was so close to mine, check the photos if they are the rights for my student’s age and so on, that is why it took me so long. I did something similar with other sources, like the videos, I watched them before and checked everything that I mentioned before. Now what I am planning for next semester that begins on August, is that at the same time that students are working at class, they can continue working at home with a PBL or a web quest. In this way they are walking on different roads that will take them to the same point, but on a different way with different experience, interactive power points and also web quest are so useful for kinesthetic, listener and visual learners.

It was a good idea to prepare Jeopardy, while I was doing this games I though in other kind of games that I can elaborate with specific vocabulary words or grammar topics from my English program. 

After watching Batool Jeopardy I feel kind of frustrated, Batool´s Jeopardy looks GREAT!! , but I am learning, I am now like my students, and I will like to elaborate an attractive modern and funny Jeopardy as he did. Mine looks like a beginner student, and very serious any way I feel proud because is the first time that I do something like this.

Another difficult part was creating my web quest. When I started with this project I was very enthusiastic, but now I am so tired, it is because until my web page was on Janine´s wiki and I opened to see it, THERE on that precise moment I realize that all my work went somewhere else ( to the CIBER space) , but did not keep there. I think that AS I AM LEARNIG, I did not make the correct clicks to save EVERYTHING.

So I have to check it again, and to redo it, but it took me a lot of time, because I wanted it the same as I  planned, so I started looking again for all the sources, such as YouTube videos, music, PPT, and it was time consuming.

The only reason I can find now, is that, as I do not belong to the tech stage, I have to work twice or more, but finally I did what I planned to do.

WEEK 5 GREAT TIME!!

This week was great for me. The topics motivated me a lot.

Although I have been working with Rubrics since long ago, I think that I can improve this tool through your experiences after reading them.

According to the other two topics PBL and web quest, today I feel high motivated with these issues. Your comments had enriched me greatly.

 Referring to the Web Quest I have many things to mention. I knew about this tool before, but I did not have time to experiment with it. When I started to weigh on my project, I though on doing something that really help me, and the big problem that I have encountered in these recent semesters is the lack of interest on reading. I could criticize, judge harshly the material that the institution provides to students, but regardless, I know this is a real problem Although the institutions’ believe they have the best material for students, which perhaps it is correct, but nor all the students are made for the material, which brings me to my reality, me in front of a group that each time that we have to read, they fall asleep. As any other   teacher I could say: this is because of the material, or this is because of the time class, or any other validity reason, the point is that finding a culprit is not difficult, but since I am not that kind of teacher, here I am researching what I can do to motive my students, and the best tool that I found in this moment is a Web Quest. This web quest, will take my students to read in a very different way, virtual reading, reading power point presentations with images and sounds. I realize that to make this web quest, I spent many time, I think most of the students will be taken to resolve it less time that the time I spent on preparing it. What is coming next is to see what happen, is the web quest really going to motivate my students to read? Are they going to be reading enthusiastically?

Will see what happen.......?????

ALMOST FINISHING WEEK 4 !!!

            

I´m learning from everybody experience´s. Reading your blogs and nicenet´s post make increase my knowledge and also I´m learning from your experiences.

I have open some web sites that you recommend, and also your links at delicious.

The websites from this week are so useful; there are different kinds of activities, that we can use exactly as the website indicates, but also we can adapt the material to our needs.

Now that I start thinking on my final project, I can see how it is slowly moving, at the beginning I was thinking on a different issue, but to be honest, READING is a hard task to my students, I do not understand why they do not like to read, even neither to follow the reading with their eyes, or to follow it by listening the CD.

 I am a reader. I had tried to transmit this love to them, but they haven´t catch it. I already start brainstorming on what kind of technology I can implement into my class to improve reading, to make my students read. If you check my delicious page, from the first time up to today it has increased, now I have some important links that I am reading in order to elaborate this project. All this is what I have been done during week 4!!!

Internet    w w w     and more Internet!!!!

WEEK 4  

It is amazing to find many useful sites for teaching.

I am realizing my next semester, full of technology. With all the information that I am learning I think that not only my teaching style is changing. I think that my students are going to find my class more attractive.

It supposes that for the next semester that starts on August, our English classrooms will get a canyon!! This is the best news that I got during this week. I can´t imagine how my classes are going to be. The semester is next to the corner, and to work with technology as Batool mentioned with technology maybe we have to work more, but if I start planning, looking for web sites and using my delicious bookmark, everything will be easier.

Andrea.

Nicenet and blogging. with adolescents?????

I will like to tell you how useful these two tools have been in my teaching daily live.

I know that almost all, who form this group, are adults, I will like to put on practice these tools with adolescents, I have not tried them yet, my question is. Are they mature enough to be reading and to answer, as well as to reflect on their knowledge???

I will like to know if someone has practice this with students from 15 to 18 years old. Please share your experience with me. I really will appreciate that.

Changing my idea???

Now what???

After reading all the papers and my web mates comments; I´m thinking again about my final project. At the beginning of the course I had an idea but   now that ideas is been changing. Now I find many tools so attractive, and so interesting to be used by me and my students to improve their English. What shall I do??

At least I will keep thinking……

Week 3 from Apri 23 to 27.My experience during these days.....

All the time when I was a student (attending to school) I used to have specific material as students.

When I became a teacher, 28 years ago, I used to have special material to teach, only for teachers.

Today with the use of CALL applications, both students and teachers can learn.

Computer has been attractive for any student. Computer by itself motive students.

During this week when I started to do my homework, especially when I opened the delicious page, my first thought was, what is this? What for? As I saw many pictures on the page it creates confusion inside of me, and I got more confused when I started reading sports, technology, food, I asked myself where is the relation with the topic of this course?, Do I have to elaborate a commercial or designed something?

What I did not realize was the use of the website, until I read the instructions to create one. Wow! On that moment I felt safe!!

I started creating my delicious site, and now I can say that this is another amazing tool that I learnt in this course. I found it helpful for me. To paste  my favorite sites, but also I am planning to create another where my students can find sites that I recommend to them, including topics that have a relation with our course.

I got an Idea!!!

This week after reading almost all the comments pasted on nicenet. I had the opportunity to see how helpful this tool was. To be clear, all of us were commenting about the ABCD approach, and if you read all the post, you can see that Janine gave feedback to almost all of them, this was the useful aspect.

Thinking on my context working with adolescents between 15-18 year old, I do not know if they have the maturity to read all their classmates comments, because if they will have it, they will learn to much from our feedback, the same that I learnt from Janine.

Every head is a world, on nicenet we can show and share these entire world to our students where they are solving their doubts, they will understand better, the knowledge will be like an open window.

Week 2. April 16-20. What a WEEK!!!!

I will like to star writing that I have been working so hard... I have been reading a lot, and searching with the new tips from the new sites!!!



The task about ABCD approach, looked easy, but when I start to elaborate it, is where I start thinking, and I realize how all the aspects have to be synchronized, I cannot evaluate, or ask about something that I did not teach, or maybe not exactly that I did not teach, I would say under the same condition or the same behavior. Sometimes on the material that I use as teacher which is my teacher´s book and the students book, I find exercises where students are asked to identify something, for example " relative pronouns" and then on the test that someone else elaborate I find the instruction to write a sentence using relative pronouns. My question here is, in what time of you class, did your students practice elaborating sentences with relative pronouns?



If on the workbook the exercises asked them only to identify them. I think that as teachers, as someone who knows, we can do it, but let’s be on the shoes of our students.



This point disappoints me a lot. As my students are in a processes of learning I do not consider fair to ask the same topic with a different behavior, because they did not have the practice.



Teacher should not be supposing what students can or not can do, just ask ourselves, do we practice this at class?

Now that I have been reading my international classmates comments about the rules, I realize how important these are. I have worked with blogs at my English class, fortunately I have never have any problem, the point is that I did not use to give them  rules, they are young adolescents ( teenagers from 15 to 18) years old, they  just follow my instructions, and they have been respectful, but know I can realize the importance of this issue, to teach them how to behave at the web, maybe they are going to be surprised but I am sure that this topic is going to be so helpful for their  near future.

Week 1 April 9-13

During this week I have been surfing on the course web, trying to find out the correct places for the wikis, creating my blog page, and checking everything, including reading the advices or recommendations from people that already took this course.


My reflection:

I have worked with blogs before. I consider them so useful, but I have never use them as a journal. I think that writing my reflections here is a kind of journal to share with everybody at the web. I use the blog with my students to communicate, to let them know about homework, about the entries for the journals that they have to write every week, about study guides for exams etc. Right now I think that is a good idea to use it as a reflecting journal, so we (teachers) can read what do they think, about what or how they are learning, and in that way they will not feel like they are going to be evaluated, it can be a useful tool for me to know how are they doing with the language.


Talking about this first week it surprised me the organization of this course. How technology can connect people from all around the world that have something in common, the same interest that is teaching. I consider now as an adult that work in this way is going to be a great experience full of knowledge, and this is something that we can generate or create between students around the world, those that are learning English as a second language, or that are interested in practice the language.