Week 10

I can't believe that tomorrow is the last day of our course. These ten weeks have been very intensive and they have changed my life. I have become a modern teacher of the era of technology. I feel proud and excited.

In my view, all the topics of the course were important and all the tools we were introduced to were relevant. Most of all, I was amazed by WebQuests, ANVILL, Wallwisher, Rubrics, Interactive PPT, Blogger. But I'm going to study and try many other Internet wonders in my work. Now I feel that after I have opened this door together with my students, we will move farther and farther exploring the web.

I also liked the way we were led to our final project report, step by step. It was a good example how we should lead our students in their project work.    

Now I'd like to give a short outlook of my learning experience and my feelings during these 10 weeks.

Week 1. Creating the blog. A blog? Me? Can I do it? Wow! I did it!

Week 2. Search englines. Not GOOGLE? How many!!!

              ABCD objectives. What's this? A hard nut to crack. I need to read more.

Week 3. Aural / Oral skill-building websites. Fantastic! Useful!

              Creating Delicious page. What a good idea! Yummy!

Week 4. Reading / Writing skill-building websites. Useful again.
             Creating a technology-enhanced lesson plan. The Internet in class? The first try ... and quite successful. How could I do without it before?

Week 5. Project-based learning and WebQuests. I adore WebQuests! I must make a WebQuest in my final project.

               Rubrics and alternative assessment. Great! Students can assess themselves!

Week 6. Creating student-centered learning. Discussion boards and LMS - super!

               Interactive PPT. It's like making a puzzle. I like it! So do the students!

Week 7. Learner atonomy. One-computer classroom. Good tips!

               Wallwisher. I'm so charmed that want to make it immediately!    
                                   (http://padlet.com/wall/t79i90xyaq)

               Implementing a technology-related change. A bit nervous. Excited. Exhausted.

Week 8. ANVILL. How does it work? I want to try it. Wow! It's a treasure!

               Creating an online exercise. Hot potatoes - super!

               Draft report. I need to concentrate. It's important.

Week 9. Learning styles. More useful tips and things to think over.

               Final project report. Hope I managed to improve it.

Week 10. I'm sad.

Good-bye!

Week 9

This week was very productive. I countinued carrying out my technology-based project. After analysing the first results I had to make some changes in the project such as changing the deadlines for the WebQuest tasks, drawing students' attention to some rubric points, making discussion questions more specific to check students’ listening comprehension skills. 

At the beginning of the week I read some articles and other participants' posts on learner intelligences. I learnt a lot of theoretical and practical things, how technology could help us to address to different learning styles. It helped me to look at my project and at using technological tools in a new way. I realised that technology offers a lot of opportunities for students with different types of intelligence to learn English most effectively. And we, teachers, should take advantage of it while planning our lessons.

Another thing I worked on was improving my final project report. I'm grateful to Robert and my partner Yubaraj for their useful recommendations which helped me to complete my work. I uploaded the report on our class wiki.

I got the first feedback from my students.I created a post on the classes’ blogs in which I asked them to share their thoughts on the changes that technology had brought to their English lessons and to the process of learning English in general. 94% think positively about the new change and would like to continue using technology for learning English. So, in the future I will definitely keep on using the Internet and computer technologies in my lessons. I have only touched a small part of them and I'm going to try many more things technology offers. I 'm so excited! 

Also I answered the questions of the survey related to the course evaluation. I was sincere while giving my answers and I really think this course deserves the highest grade. 
 

Week 8

Another very intensive week is coming to an end.

At first, I had to write a draft version of my final project report and send it to my partner, Yubaraj. Actually, it was quite time consuming in spite of the fact that we had been led to it step by step for several weeks. I used some final projects of past years' participants as an example and I tried to answer the questions stated in the project report template. I realised it was not complete when I finished, but I was lacking in time. I uploaded my draft version on our class wiki in my team's work place.

Then I read my partner's draft report, downloaded the checklist for peer review template and wrote my review with some comments and advice. I hope they will be useful for Yubaraj. While I was checking his draft report, I was able to look critically at my own report and I worked out what I needed to do to improve it. Now I'm looking forward to getting my partner's comments to have the whole picture.

This week has made another discovery for me - ANVILL. This virtual language lab is a real wonder. It gives a lot of opportunities for developing listening, speaking, writing skills, for practising pronunciation and reading aloud. At first, it looked a bit complicated but then, with the help of Jeff Magoto, this week's guest, and his clear explanations and demonstrations I managed to work out how to use ANVILL. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to join the webinar about ANVILL but I'm going to watch its recording soon. 

Another task was to create an online course site or an exercise to use online or offline. I decided to try to use ANVILL and create my video course. In my ANVILL course students have to do the three tasks: to watch the episode, to do the quiz and to record a short summary with the help of Voiceboards. I was amazed by the way it worked.You can make either video or audio recording. It allows having the recordings and the quiz results of all the students doing the course. It's a very convenient, easy to use and effective language toolbox. Students can do the tasks at home at their own speed and the teacher has the opportunity to listen to each student. In the future, I am going  to add more lessons to the course. You can see my video course here: https://anvill.uoregon.edu/anvill2/node/43344

Also I used the Hot Potatoes software and created a crossword on the topic "Family" for my Grade 9 students and uploaded it on the Internet.  I have been using Hot Potatoes for a year but I have never uploaded my documents on the net. I usually made HTML documents to use in our language laboratory for practising new vocabulary and grammar, reading comprehension or for testing. It's a very convenient tool which allows you to make exercises based on the material you are teaching. You can see it here: http://uk3.hotpotatoes.net/ex/98589/PUAZATBQ.php

And, of course, I continued my work on implementing new technologies in my lessons. I have made several changes in the project after getting the first results. I hope this project will help students to improve their language skills and encourage their autonomy.