Week 3

This week, week 3, is a lot different than the first or the second week. For me, this is the real week 1 of this online course because in the first week, I didn't really have much to do and week 2 was not much of a challenge because I had plenty of time to read and do the assignments thanks to a two-day break. However, this week was quite demanding as I have a very tough schedule at school and the responsibility of a father of two cute teenage daughters. In order to cope with all my chores at home, school and online, it is absolutely necessary to get to know how to manage my time efficiently so as to honor my commitments. At school, it was a week of tests; the term's final exams. This means 200 papers to grade for next week. Week 3 was also pressing for we had a lot to do: to create a delicious page, which I didn't have to do since I already had one but that I didn't really use very much; to read some articles about CALL for listening and pronunciation and to explore some skill-building websites for teacher and learner use. The articles were very informative but I thought they lacked recency. I mean that since we are dealing with technology which is so rapidly changing and developing, we could also read about the latest research findings and developments in technology and pedagogy. The websites, however, were fantastic. Most of them provided practical lesson plans and hands-on activities, downloadable audio/video material and photocopiable worksheets. The only trouble is that most of them were addressed to ESL learners with an American or British accent. I may be wrong because I have not been able to explore all the sites but I am sure they exist. Onestopenglish and the BBC are an exception. Finally, the sample projects gave me a clearer idea of what is expected to do on the final project. I went through all of them but managed to find only one that is a bit closer to my teaching situation. Clearly, Week 4 is going to be a tough one both at school and online but I am more than ready for the challenge. I wish to extend my sincerest thanks to Donna for her precious help and guidance without which I would not have been able to write this post today.

Karim

Week 2

Thank God Tuesday and Wednesday were holidays in Morocco, otherwise it would have been impossible for me to do all the readings and the postings by Wednesday. Monday is a killer for me this year (I don't like Mondays, you know the song? Summer 79 ) because I teach  six classes of varying levels from 8 to 6 and  I get to deal with about 180 students on the first day of the week. You can just imagine what would be the first thing  to do after I reach home. I envy  ;-) my course mates who were able to respond to the tasks right after Donna posted them. Amazingly unbeatable. I definitely need help here because I am unable to manage my time to successfully meet the deadlines under these circumstances.

Having said that, week 2 was very fruitful in terms of content and interactivity especially with the web searching task. Almost every one of us realized how Googleholic we were. Noodletools is a gold mine for all teachers without exception but especially those of us who are coping with the use of technology in our teaching situations. Noddletools deserves to go to the top of the list of my bookmarks. Reading the reactions of my colleagues was also an enriching activity as I learned much more than I did myself from the findings they shared. Reading my colleagues reactions was the best part of the tasks of this week. Also, the ABCD objectives made the task of writing lesson plan objectives easier and clearer for our students. With Bloom’s Taxonomy in mind, and a little practice, the confusing objectives will soon be revised and updated. As for the project task, I discovered something that I was not aware of. That is the majority of my student population is girls. I learned this when I was collecting the information to describe my class. However, I am not clear about the project itself and which technology to use to solve which issue. I trust that the coming weeks will help to get a clearer idea about this.

 In the end, I would like to invite you all to listen to the song that inspired this blog post. I am sure many of you from my generation know the clip. 

Enjoy

Week 1

Reflection

This is definitely not my first blogging experience and it certainly won’t be the last. Back in 2006, I started blogging without really knowing what the word meant. It was rather a new lexical item in my vocabulary as I was learning about the new trends in technology. In fact, I first learned about blogging when I joined EVO (The Electronic Village Online) a free online course sponsored by TESOL.  It was then that I really acquired the basic skills and experience in blogging. I even managed to create my own blogs and published my own products online for an audience that ranged from immediate family to the entire world. I helped some of my colleagues to start their blogs and I even created some class blogs for my students. Back then, however, very few students had access to the Internet especially I the school where I teach because it is located in an under served neighborhood where they had other priorities than computers and Internet. In addition, the quality of the connection was so poor that it was very frustrating and time-consuming to upload and download material online. Feedback was not that encouraging either as very few people (students mainly) commented. Then, little by little I began to lose interest in the experience as it was a little too early in my teaching context to engage in such an endeavor. Also, new trends in social media started to emerge gaining field over blogging. After six years, my blogs are still online but missing some embedded items such as images, audio … Now that I started this course, the hook for a new blogging experience seems to be bigger since the potential readers share nearly the same interests and motivations. Apart from Blogger.com, there are other platforms such as wordpress.com that offer similar functionalities but blogger is my favorite because it is easy to use especially now as that there is a wider range of very attractive templates. We can also personalize the design of the blog to give it an original and look if time permits. I am definitely looking forward to start the experience and see what the other participants come up with. 

Good luck to everyone.