WEEK 3
All ready in the 3rd week of the Building Teacher Skills course. How time flies!
I created a bookmarking page at Delicious.com today which I'm sure will prove useful, indeed. However, whilst creating it, much to my regret, I had to accept that I am what Marc Prensky (2001) describes as a digital immigrant with an "accent!!  Having an accent means that one does things like printing out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on the screen) or bringing people physically into the office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL). I had to go through the steps several times before I actually was able to create my page.....All is not lost, it's how you play the game that counts! 

I read a Final Project report in which the teacher used a Blog mainly to teach her students grammar and to give them extra practice. I found that interesting because a blog is something I would like to use with my students.  However, I was under the impression that blogs are more for comments to be posted by readers and a good way to allow interaction, something like a low key forum. I now see that blogs can be used for other purposes and I wonder if some of these are "mis-purposed".

WEEK 2
By reading the class descriptions that we were asked to upload on Nicenet.com, I realized that although the geography may be different, the students and the challenges of teaching are pretty much the same worldwide. We are sometimes faced with limited resources and perhaps little support from school administrators, not to mention large classes with students who may not be altogether motivated towards foreign language acquisition. Despite all this, we are teachers. I believe one reason is that we find conveying our love of discovery to others very rewarding.

This week I learned that following the ABCD model makes for unambiguous, observable and measurable learning objectives. This made me remember my teacher training days when our instructors always emphasized the importance of including clearly written objectives not only in academic programs but also in our daily lesson planning.

I also had the opportunity to use a variety of totally new (for me) search engines. The list in NoodleTools proved  to be exceedingly helpful. http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html
It will take me some time to go through the list and try all of them out. I must remember, however, that information on Internet is not permanent and that some of these search engines might soon disappear.  

I especially liked IDEA Portal  http://www.idebate.org/portal/ for its resource content that will be useful to set up debates with my advanced level students. Another cool place to get updated in-depth news is BBC Special reports http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special_reports/ 

WEEK 1

Greetings!
Now that I have created my blog, I can't wait to get started! It will be fun to write and share my reflections with my colleagues throughout the Spring 2012 online "Building Teacher skills Through the Interactive Web" course.

Here's to a happy start!