Week 10: It's Hard To Say Goodbye

It's the last week in this successful and valuable course. As much as I'm happy I have completed all the tasks and accomplished the course, I'm sad because the course came to an end. Joining this program was really rewarding, it was a fruitful and wonderful experience for me as  I have learnt so many tools that I can make use of in my teaching of ELT. I explored most of those tools and I used some of them in my lessons, and they were very effective.
Integrating technology in the classroom provides endless possibilities for teachers, and encourages students to be autonomous and active learners and therefore contributes to successful learning performance.
I enjoyed everything in the course; the readings, the discussions, exploring technology tools, blogging... All in all, I'm happy I joined this course and I was among the amazing hardworking Yellow Group Members. I will definitely share the knowledge and experience I gained from this enjoyable course with other teachers.
I will miss everyone in this course, Mrs Donna and all my friends, I will miss reading your posts and discussions. Hopefully we will keep in touch and share more of our experiences.

I wish you all good luck .

Warmest Regards from sunny Marrakesh.

Week 9: One Week to go

     

The nineth week is almost over, and I'm very sad that we still have only one in this course.  It was the most fruitful 10 weeks in my whole teaching career. I am glad to meet enthusiastic and dedicated teachers from all over the world. I learnt a lot from everybody in this course.



This week we were asked to write the final draft of our projects, I'm satisfied that I could finish my draft and submit it on due time.

Also,this week's discussion about learning strategies and Tech toolss was very interesting. It is important for teachers to know their students' learning styles to be able to design contents suitable for everybody in the class.

In my case, I  use a variety of assessments to determine how students learn. Most of my students are visual learners, so I guess that designing interactive power points, word search, using visuals to teach lessons including pictures, charts, story maps and diagrams.

Sometimes students use a combination of two or more learning styles, but in general, by figuring out how they learn and addressing that particular style,  the teacher will be making use of abilities students' possess and  help in their progress.

I wish you all  a nice weekend. 

Week 8 : A busy week

Dear all,

This was one of my busiest weeks, we had a lot of work at school, and I had to finish my project draft and create a technology tool for my classroom, but I am so happy I managed  to accomplish all the tasks.

It was a nice experience to share our projects with other colleagues for feedback. My partner Yanira has done a great job in her project, and she has given me useful comments to mine. She was a very nice partner and I liked working with her. Wish you the best of luck Yanira.

   

This week, I created a Padlet Page about "Countries and "Nationalities" for my students to practice the structure "Where are you from". I like this tool and I will try it for other topics.

This is the link for my Padlet Page:

 http://fr.padlet.com/karimaelotmani3/o7qshrfs4x2y

The second tool I created is a word Search for my students to review the topic about "Sports", it is a good tool to make them work collaboratively and interact with each other.

That's all for this week. Looking forward to reading your comments.

I wish everybody good luck in your projects.

Warmest Regards.

Week 7: Learner Autonomy,The One- computer Classroom and Padlet

"You can not teach a man anything, you can only help him find it whithin himself"

 (Galileo Galilei 1564-1642) .

Learner Autonomy is about " learning to learn" and developing assessment for  learning.  Students should take responsibility for their own learning and reflect on their experiences rather than be dependent on the teacher. The teacher's role on the other hand is to create a learning environment in which learners can be autonomous. 

Using one-computer in the classroom can be difficult and challenging. However, there are many ideas on how to use a one-computer or mobiles in the classroom.

Our task this week was to add an article or a video in Padlet. I liked this tool very much, and I found it easy and fun to use. Once I added the video and the article in our groups' padlet,  I come up with ideas on how to use Padlet with my students. It can be a place where  we can have discussions on the textbook topics, share web links or videos, and collect feedback.

I wish everybody goodluck in your projects.

Looking forward to reading your comments.

Best wishes from Sunny Marrakesh.

Week 6: The Interactive PowerPoint

        Dear all,







We have begun this week by a discussion about large classes. I've  always thought that 40 students is a large class but this week I have read that there are some of my colleagues who teach up to 60 students in one class which is really hard and difficult. Dealing with a large class is very challenging in that it is difficult to make all students participate and be active learners.





The best way to achieve that is  by applying group work. Among the benefits of group work are:

• Students have the opportunity to learn from each other and develop critical thinking.
• Students are involved in their own learning. 
• And last, shy and quiet students have the opportunity to speak among their groups.

Role paly, Think-pair-share, and one-sentence summary are techniques that I usually use with my large classes.

Our task this week was to create an Interactive Power Point, it was a fun and an interesting experience indeed. I have prepared powerpoint presentations before but I have never heard of Interactive PowerPoint.

In my Interactive PowerPoint, I prepared a grammar lesson on the present continuous tense.

I think that the Interactive PowerPoint can be a highly effective tool to aid learning if it is well planned. it can improve audience focus, it can also increase interactivity and visual impact. 

I'm planning to use my Interactive PowerPoint next week in my class.

Best wishes and have a nice week.

Week 5: Technology is Endless

         Dear all,

We are on week 5, and we are still learning and exploring  more and more amazing things about technology. I have never thought I can learn all these tools in just few weeks, and have the chance to implement them in my class.

As teachers of English, our role is to adopt assessment procedures that work as tools  to increase learning opportunities. Project Based Learning is an alternative assessment which engages students in collaborative groups, and involves them in their own learning process.

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Alike, rubrics are a mean of assessing performances and  communicating the teachers' expectations; they are a great tool that make grading objective and clear, they give students an idea on what is expected of them and clarify for them the qualities their work should have.

When reading that we will create our own rubrics, I was afraid that this task would be difficult to do, but once I log in Rubistar and follow the steps, I recognized how easy to create my own rubric and how useful it could be. Also, creating a webQuest was so much fun. 

As for the technology tool I will use to solve my students' writing problems, I choose creating a class blog. I guess that as I enjoy reading my classmates posts every week and be happy commenting on them, so will my students when creating their own class blog and be able to post their reflections and comment on each others' writings.

Looking forward to reading your comments.

Best wishes from sunny Marrakesh.

Week 4: Reading, writing, and vocabulary skills and Technology Enhanced lesson plan.

        Dear colleagues,

        This week's topic was as important as the already discussed topics. Reading and writing are also basic skills in learning the English language. Reading does not only improve students vocabulary but also their writing skills. And this is the problem I face with my students, they don't write correctly because they are not exposed to many readings. To solve this problem, as a first step, I think of creating a blog to provide students with extra readings, and for them to submit their writings and have the chance to give feedback to each other.

      The most interesting thing  this week is writing a technology enhanced lesson plan; I always write lesson plans but I have never  thought of integrating a technology in my  Lesson plan. It was a great opportunity to use some of the websites as resources instead of using only the board and the textbook. I am sure with such lesson plans my mission of making my students more motivated would be easy.


Finally, I  want to share with you this quote:

I wish everybody a nice week. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Week 3: Another worthwhile experience with" Delicious"

The 3rd week begins by the topic "The Aural/Oral Skills Building". We have discussed the importance of listening and speaking skills for the second language learners. We have learned how to improve these skills through using technology,

By exploring different websites, I found www.esl-lab.com very useful since it contains topics I currently teach. Moreover, conversations in this website are available for different levels.

We explored also the new website "Delicious", it is the first time I hear about this website, and I am glad to have an account on it . I enjoyed creating my page on "Delicious", it is a great website to save and share resources.

Our last task was to read and reflect on a sample project report. After reading Nadina's report, I was impressed with the huge  effort she made to improve and enrich her students' language abilities. She succeded  through using technology in her class to motivate her students, make them interested in learning English, and make them use the internet education wise. The outcome is that she adapted new methods in her teaching and she got positive reactions from her students.

It is amazing how I can learn all these things in one week, and how I myself become motivated and eager to use technology in my classroom.
Looking forward to reading your comments.

Best wishes from sunny Marrakesh

Karima,
Morocco

Week 2: A Fruitful week

This week was very fruitful. I was surprised with the huge amount of information a person can have from the internet. Though I have been using "google" for my academic researches all the time, I learnt that it is not the only search engine. Today, having tried "iseek", "Bing", ""surfwax", and other search engines found in noodletools, I realized that I can search for topics and articles more easily. I will definitely try more search engines, I will also recommend them to my colleagues, and I have already provided my students with some of them.

The second topic this week was about objectives, I used to write objectives for my lessons but the ABCD behavioural objectives is new for me. I learnt from this article that writing clear objectives can be useful for both teachers and students, because a well written objective statement provides  a clear picture of the outcome a teacher expect.

The last task, the description of our classes made me realize that some of my colleagues are lucky to have facilities to teach with technology, while others are still struggling and making great efforts to integrate ICT in their teaching.

I was happy with all the information I had this week, and I am eager to know, learn, and explore more,  and of course share knowledge with my coursemates.

Greetings from Marrakesh, the red city.

week 1:A New Experience

Hello everyone,

 I am so happy with this new experience. I heard a lot about blogs but I have never thought of creating my own. Thanks to this training programme, I created my blog easily.

Blogs are ideal tools for activities based on reflection, anyone  can use them to keep a reflective journal. In addition,they are easy and fun to use.

As a teacher, I can use a blog to post resources, lessons and homework assignments, I can share ideas with other educators. Also, blogging can improve my students' skills in writing and build their confidence.

I have spent a nice week learning and experimenting new things, creating my first blog, reading and commenting on  my colleagues posts on Nicenet. I am sure that I will learn a lot more from this course and from my friends' experiences.

warm regards,
Karima