Week 10 Final

Hello All,

I cannot believe that 9 weeks have already passed and we are approaching the webskills project end.

You never know that those things you initially are afraid of very much and try to postpone the time to deal with them directly, are just our fears that once you have overcome they will seem you just a bad dream you saw the other night.

Today when all things read, practised and reflected on I am at ease to say that I am not only afraid of them but I LIKE THEM! And this is so wonderful to realise!

I am very thankful to Robert, all those who contributed to the project, course participants and of course the organizers of the course. It was really exciting course that taught me a lot where, along with many other, the biggest achievement for myself I consider overcoming fear of technology.

I would love to recommend this course to everyone who I am sure will benefit from it greatly!

And as Robert used to say ‘see you soon’!

Look forward to new exciting courses.

My best wishes,

Yuriy

Week 9 Learning Styles/Multiple Intelligences/Final Project

Hi All,


I cannot imagine that it is Week 9 already and we have already submitted our Final Projects. The week turned to be quite intensive because what we had to do is to revise our projects after they had been viewed by our partners, to consider the feedback received from partners and reflect it in our final project, which we then had to upload to the Wiki. What I must say is that I am very thankful to Tharanga, my Final Project partner, who helped me greatly in identifying those parts which needed some amendments and who provided me with some precious advice to make the project better. Thank you, Tharanga!

Apart from our final paper, we also had lots of reading on Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences. We had very interesting discussions around these two in the Nicenet.

It was great to have two editors of FORUM (academic journal) this week, Max Koller and Tom Glass, who we had a chance to ask questions regarding the journal and potential submitting our articles to this journal.

Finally, we also had to fill out the course evaluation, where, to tell you by secret, shshshsh, I gave very positive feedback to the course.

Thank you!

Yuriy

Week 8 Reflections

Hi All,

I think this was the most hectic week since the very beginning of the course.

It was the time when I learned a lot of new things about new technology that can help us personally and our students at the same time to become more autonomous.
Starting from ANVILL and finishing with creating our own online exercises or documents made this week very full of things to do and learn.

I created several things this week: a Nicenet thread, Google document and a blog for students who are involved in reading.

I believe that when I share the knowledge gained this week with my students and colleagues, they will also get very much attracted by the course.

Can't imagine that the following week will be even more energetic.

All the best wishes,
Yuriy

Week 7 LA (Learner Autonomy)

Hi All,

Webskills again proved itself to be a very broad programme which introduces all of us, participants of the course, not only with skills we need to make our classes better with technology, but it also equips us with knowledge that we need in our everyday practices.

This week we had a topic of Learner Autonomy (LA), the topic I love personally. We had nice discussions in the Nicenet about different ways how each perceives LA and it was extremely interesting to find out what everybdy thinks about LA, and to see contributions all made to discussions.

This week we also shared our ideas on One computer class, and some even offered ideas on zero computer class. To my mind, we need to be as creative as possible in order to do without technology at all. Those who are luckier having all equipment in the classrooms should still remember that no technology can substitute a teacher who is creative and resourcesful, and who loves their job.
It was very interesting to follow ideas that programme participants offered on this topic. And the thing I have learned from all is that there is no borders for imagination as all lessons were really exciting.

This week we also found partners for our final project work. I am happy to work with two partners who kindly responded to my offer: Tharanga and Ana! I am confident we will make up a great trio!

All the best to all,

Yuriy

Project-Based Learning/Webquests

Hello Everyone,

During the Week 5 we had nice reads about Project-based learning, Creating rubric, and Webquest. I found these materials very useful as they help a lot in structuring the way we are teaching our students. They also help how to motivate our students better, and how literally create assessment grids which will help us to evaluate our students more objectively against concrete criteria. 

A special attention should go to the Webquest that I found a really exciting thing to offer my students. I think that those students who are aware of it will be even more motivated to proceed with it further on, and for those who do not know of it will show their great interest too, and thus, become more motivated in learning. I will look forward to seeing their surprised faces and sparkling eyes when the next time I see them and share this experience with them.

 

All the best,

 

Yuriy

Week 4 Lesson Planning

This week was intensive in terms of reading a lot of materials on Lesson Planning. Though currently I do not teach at school, university or college, it was still really interesting experience to me to remember how I was writing my lesson plans back those times and to learn a number of new things.

In my turn I offered a lesson plan which involved teachers of the English language. It was especially important to me because I realize that they, EL teachers, are the multipliers as they are working with audiences. And sharing knowledge with teachers proved me again that teachers should be educated how to use technology in their classes as it is the instrument that motivates students a lot and can not be escaped.

That was not the first time that I used the http://iteslj.org website, and whenever I use it I find a lot of useful either conversational topics and questions, and lesson plans, articles, jokes and games. The two articles offered this week were nice really reads which could be used practically: 1) Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books and 2) Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction.

Together with this website mentioned above, I would also like to recommend everyone to use the following website for nice articles to read and reflect on: www.teachingenglish.org.uk

Many thanks,

Yuriy

Delicious it Was!

Hi everyone!

This week, Week 3 of the Wiki course, was delicious for me.
I have learned how to bookmark my favourite websites, URLs. I created them and forgot for a while, when suddenly after a couple of days opening my delicious account I found not a single one there.
SOS, was the first thought I had in my mind. I could not believe my eyes. I remember I saved the URLs of the websites I use almost every day, and now I saw that there was not a single one. Could not even imagine what went wrong. Did anybody have the same problem?

This week was also full of reading the interesting articles. The one I especially liked and had something to say about was Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials by Lindsay Miller. I found this article very useful practically because it offers a number of approaches and reasons how and why listening can be developed. Thank you for the article!

Look forward to the beginning of the Week 4.

Best regards,

Yuriy-Delicious!