Week 8

Two more weeks to go before the graduation party: The celebration of a great learning session. Thank god this week was off thanks to the end of term 1 break in Morocco which for me means more time to dedicate to the course under no pressure at all. At least, that was what I had thought. This time the pressure came from my children who wanted a change of air during the break. Guess what? The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it as Oscar Wild used to say. I myself need to recharge my batteries to start a new term on good grounds especially that a major project is underway this year thanks to my participation in this online course. However, when you are away from home, all the routines that you have established these past weeks collapse. To make things worse, the internet connection is unstable as some areas in Morocco are not wired. Hopefully, I have managed to strike a balance between my duties and spending quality time with my children. Although I am tempted to describe my vacation, I won't yield to the temptation this time because I know that you will feel jealous and it will affect your performance on the course. That's why I am going to focus only on the learning experience of this week which as usual was very fruitful. Writing the draft of the project and peer editing a partner's draft was a very enriching experience.  As you may know, we are the only group of three partners in this course project and Donna would probably confirm to us whether this was unprecedented. If you are interested in our projects, please feel free to pay a visit to our blogs here or here. In addition to the project, this week was also rewarding in terms of the new web-tools that I learned about which catered for all the skills and activities ranging from creating simple offline printable worksheets such as crossword puzzles (which I enjoy doing) to a more complicated CMS (Class Management Systems) such as ANVILL which I am considering for my future projects after the course now that I am hooked on integrating technology in my teaching. I may now say that I have overcome the tech phobia that some teachers have when they hear about the new trends in teaching. I believe that I am well prepared to try any innovative tool regardless of its complexity for the benefit of our students.