My Bag of Tech Tricks

My learning experience throughout this course has grown as fast as a snowball. Before I just had pieces of unrelated information about web tools from conferences, seminars, articles, books, electronic village quick sessions and professional discussion.

At the beginning I kept saying “I had no idea”, “I did not know”,  but very soon I did not think about that anymore, I felt  very  attracted to the powerful tools that were handy waiting for your Mouse click. It is amazing how much I learned and how meaningful the web has become to me.

My teaching bag is full of tech stuff: 1) Delicious was a great discovery and a time saver. 2) I enjoyed our juicy nicenet online discussions 3)creating rubrics, 4) my class blog 5) and the jeopardy game.  I`m ready for 6) blogs,  7)web quests,  8)one-computer classroom, and 9) I can get and create online practices.

Still  I need more time to digest information, and incorporate course management systems, like ANVILL and MOODLE.

Thank you for helping me sprinkle magic into my lessons!

A Better Teacher

I have become a better teacher since I started this course. First, I have been exposed to a wide variety of web tools for enriching my lessons, developing learners autonomy, differentiating instruction and satisfying learners needs. Second, I have integrated some web tools into my weekly classe: online reading/writing practices, PPP, one-class computer, printables and a class blog. Third, I have started sharing my experience with my co-workers. In summary, I think I become more open to integrate the interactive web into my teaching.

I have a couple of projects in mind. At school, my idea is to empower the Newcomers program by providing extra online practices to tackle individual needs, to use ANVILL for listening and speaking, and create an ESL blog for parents. Also, I would like to share some web links and articles with teachers at a Panama TESOL seminar or conference.

I know I still need more time to digest the information, try some tech tools and continue exploring. Technology has brought up the world together! And we, teachers should keep learning and definitely sharpening our technology skills to cope with the challenges of teaching the 21^st century community.

Practice makes perfect!

Multitasking

This week has been very active and productive. At work, I was busy preparing my tech lessons and implementing them. I had a couple of tech issues during the classes, but I think it was a valuable learning experience on how to handle them in the future and be ready for offline practices. Though I was upset at first, I could handle without it. It is amazing how we soon get used to and feel threatened  by the power of web tools!

At the same time, I was writing the first draft of my project. I wasn`t sure at first if I was on the right track; fortunately, some of my colleages post their work very early and I could benefit from their input.   I  found  the Peer Review task provided feedback to both our partners and ourselves, actually very introspective.

The discovery of ANVILL was also very rewarding. ANVILL is a great tool  I can incorporate into my Newcomers program and regular classes.  I can create a class site for accompanying extra speaking and listening practices for each lesson while working face to face in class. Hot potatoes will also add a bit of salt into my lessons!

Finally, I enjoyed creating my class blog for the upcoming project on Adventure Stories and I`m looking forward to experiencing it along with my students. 

A New Teaching Perspective

Before I started this course I was kind of undecisive about using some tech tools in my daily practice, just like the man on right side of the picture."well, maybe next week", "What aobut if the internet connection is not working", "the computer lab is always taken". I think I found the perfect excuse not to use it.

Now, I feel more like the person on the left side of the picture. I feel more confident and ready to start a new journey, as I mentioned in week 2. In fact, I have realized that when planning my lessons, more tech tools and strategies pop up! "what if I prepare a web quest on adventure stories","2nd graders will love to type spelling words and listen to the pronunciation", "we can probably create a class blog to post our 5th graders`adventure stories"

The readings of this week sparkle my creativity and trigger even more my intrinsic motivation to incorporate the interactive web into my lessons; the power of the web can also be  in our hands. For sure, one- computer classroom will definitely enhance interest  while training, enforcing and shaping up our learners autonomy.

"I`ve got the whole (tech) world in my hand" 

Welcome to interactivity!

It has been a very rewarding week for me.  I read about engaging large classes by making PPP more active. Also, I got plenty of ideas from our discussion on nicenet: using the blank slide technique for Think-pair-share discussions, getting learners engage in a ConcepTest and using fewer slides with rich interactive elements, among others.

I`ve always wanted to use some of these strategies I`ve seen in plenary and concurrent sessions at some national and international conferences, but have no idea on how to do it. I spent more than 4 hours creating a jeopardy game I want to use for reviewing the unit in my second grade class this coming Thursday. Well, I have to admit that even though it took time to digest the information, practice, follow instructions and input your data;  once you see the final product you won`t regret it at all. 

I feel so proud of myself, I fnallly learned how to make my PPP more interective!

Learning is Relaxing

This has been a wonderful week! First, I felt I did have more time (I did not go to bed too late). I guess I`m becoming more confident about the content of the course and the weekly assignments.

Second, I finally could create a rubric by myself. Wow! I couldn`t believe it at first. Before, I used and adapted already made rubrics I found on the web or in books, and/or given by colleagues. I thought it was very complicated to come up with the description of each criteria but it was not at all. Once you have your expectations clear, it`s just a matter of logging in rubistar.4teachers.org and put your thoughts in writing, easily and quickly.

Third, I discovered a new world behind Web Quests. I thought I knew what they were, but it was not until I read and explored the suggested sites and some more that I realized they are not just questionnaires answered through the web. I came up with the idea of integrating at least two Web Quests per semester to empower the Science/Social Studies discussions and projects. This can be a plan for developing another complement to adhere to our ESL immersion program and help our population be more prepared for the grade level challenges. 

Jumping into my Tech Lesson

It was extremely valuable to participate in the reading, writing and vocabulary discussion this week and equip my delicious page at the same time. My classmates` comments and experiences drove me into a vast variety of web links to surf.  In fact, I still need  more time to continue checking some other suggested sites and file them into my bookmarks. The readings were interesting and informative too, and  once again shaped and enriched our knowledge on ways of incorporating technology into the reading, writing and vocabulary class.

The most challenging task this week was to develop my technology-enhanced lesson plan. I wasn`t sure how to go about it; so,  I thought about my lesson for the following  week. I made some notes and then restructured it to include tech tools and activities.  It was difficult to make decisions: what is appropriate? Do I use the computer lab, multimedia? Which sites? Should I select interactive sites? What about printable pages and worksheets or do I select online quizzes instead? I spent many hours visiting suggested children sites and exploring the resources suggested by my classmates plus others I found.

I want to thank Aveka for sharing his experience with http://www.abcteach.com and   Angela  for her lesson plan which guided me to write mine and triggered my creative technology teaching side.

It tastes so good!

This week I discovered the power of delicious into my new life as a web literate teacher, what a sweet taste!  At first, I was disappointed I did not know about it, "How much time I would have saved!", I thought. However, there is no point in regretting but thanking now I am able to tune up my web skills.

I found out my delicious page has quite a few advantages: to access information from already categorized sites, to bookmark sites recommended by colleagues and friends, to find the most popular sites, among others. But guess what? Delicious is not the only one. I learned from Mbarek that Diigo also offers bookmarking services, a plan B, as Robert and Abed suggested. I must say I enjoyed reading my classmates comments on this week`s discussion mostly because I could enrich my delicious page in the meantime. What a marvelous tool!

The above experience was just an appetizer for me. While exploring some listening / speaking websites, I felt the need of incorporating some practices right away into our Newcomers Program at school. A new course just opened on Monday and I foresee children getting extra practices to tackle their individual needs while working at their own pace; a couple of advantages of CALL mentioned by Gong in her article. Besides, I ended up increasing my knowledge about podcast too. Thanks Leena for your ideas and suggested links.

Once you taste it, you can stop trying!

A Cruise Experience

It all started during Week 2. We had to accomplish various tasks: from participating on search engines discussions to posting your second reflection.

My first stop was at the Nicenet Discussion task. I went through the suggested readings and started my journey towards the world of  finding search engines. I was fascinated with Noodle Tools and the way the information was organized, just by thinking about your goal you could have access to a wide variety of search sites. I decided to explore  Sweet Search and share my experience with others, a great search engine for students but definitely not for images. I was very happy to get feedback from Yana on other sites for images: Yahoo and Flickr,  and I started using them already to prepare the weekly vocabulary flash cards and worksheet for my students.  I also found great comparisons and suggestions on using different search sites. I started categorizing the sites that work best for me into a table. Well, I have to admit that it was really hard for me to get out of this discussion task, I wanted to answer many of your comments (it is addictive), but I soon realized I didn`t have much time and I had to continue the journey.

My second stop was at the ABCD of Writing Objectives. I enjoyed taking the practice suggested and the readings. I write objectives for each of my classes, and even though I knew and used this framework before, I haven`t considered it for a while. I think it helps us to focus and to be more selective when choosing classroom activities and planning assessment. 

My third stop was at the Project task 1. It seemed quite easy to describe my population, setting and goals, but it was difficult for me to make decisions on which group or course to choose.

My last stop was at my reflective blog. I explored some of my classmates` blogs and kept on learning much more from their experiences and suggestions too.

Now that my cruise experience is over for this week, I  now can take a rest and get ready for my next journey.

Creating my blog

Some years ago, I created a simple blog to share  ideas for special  projects for young children. I was happy with the first trial but couldn`t cope with the workload of updating it: I was always too busy or probably  I was finding the perfect excuse.

When I read one of our task was creating a blog, at first I thought it would be difficult to accomplish it on time. However, it was like playing a game, I was  very cautious of not making mistakes and soon realized this is part of the learning experience.Once I carefully followed the instructions, the blog was ready. I never thought it would be so simple, I shouldn`t be afraid of getting involved anymore.

Also, I couldn`t avoid thinking about the multiple uses of creating blogs and incorporating them into my regular classes: sharing my students`stories, training inservice teachers to use them, using them for weekly assignments, to name a few. 

Thanks Robert for reminding me that "Practice makes perfect", a treasure indeed.