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.