Week 10

And this is the end! Finally we completed the course!

I am so sad :-(

I remember the first week when we started with self-introduction, created our blogs and wrote our first posts! Now we are writing our final post, final reflections! :-(

I must say that this course was really a great chance for me! Because I discovered so many things within 10 weeks - blogs, Nicenet, delicious pages, interactive powerpoint presentations, rubrics, PBL, Webquests, Learner Autonomy, Learning styles, multiple intelligences, online exercises and so on. All of them are quite new for me, so it's a great opportunity for me to learn and try to apply them in my classes. As I mentioned in my final project, I am planning to use blogs, Nicenet, delicious pages, PBL for improving the writing skills of my students. Of course I will benefit from other tools such as Webquests, Interactive PPP. We need more time to explore and create the new ones for next semester.

Every week the course offered a number of websites/articles that provided us with useful information and instructions. I have saved all of them to my delicious page which I liked veryyyyy much!

And what about my colleagues, I witnessed warm atmosphere and collaboration among my classmates,  they were so active, energetic and hard-working, I benefited from their experience through this course! I wish them good luck and a lot of success in their teaching career!

And I want to mention the most important person of this course - Mrs. Donna Shaw! I don't know how to show my gratitude for all she has done for us, especially for me. Without her help, her instructions, her directions I couldn't complete the given tasks. :-)

Thank you so much, my dear instructor for everything! 

So, finally, I want to say one more, I am really happy to have participated in such educative course.

I am grateful to the staff of the University of Oregon for providing such opportunities for us!!!

May Allah bless all of you!!!

Sincerely

Gulnar

Week 9 - Multiple Intelligences/Learning Styles

Hello everybody! I can't believe that the next week is our last week! I will miss all my colleagues and my dear teacher! :-(

This week was also full of new discoveries and impressions. I learned so many new things about learning Styles/Multiple Intelligence with the help of articles inserted on our class wiki. Defining the learning styles of the students is one of the important topics in preparing our lesson plans. Using appropriate technology tools in the classes will enable the teachers to engage the students with different multiple intelligences and learning styles in the activities. I also took a quiz to define my learning styles and the results were like that: my strongest learning styles were intrapersonal, interpersonal and logical/mathematical. And I will also recommend my students to take a quiz online to discover their learning styles. I am sure they will find it interesting!

The main task of this week was to revise our draft plan/project and submit the final one. Like all my colleagues I also completed my final plan report. I hope this report will help me achieve my goals in my future activities.

Again I want to say that: Thanks a lot to the staff of the University of Oregon for creating such opportunities for us! :-)

Best regards

Gulnar

Week 8 - Technology Tools/Online Exercises

Week 8 was really challenging, but was a great fun! First of all, we had to prepare our draft project about which technology tools we had applied for our classes, what happened, how it worked, etc. Despite the health problems I had this week, I could complete my project successfully and also added reviews on my partner's project.

The most exciting moment during this week was that we were introduced many useful tools and online exercises that are very easy and practical to implement. I don't know which one to begin with  - ANVIL, Nicenet, Blogs, Crossword Puzzles, Bingo Games, Quizlet .......  I added all the URL to my delicious page and will create my own exercises for the next academic year, because we have no classes at present. But I have created a class on nicenet.org and invited my students to join the discussions on the topics I added. It worked well. They liked this idea and posted their messages on class board. And the students also created their own blogs on blogger.com and I added their URL to our class wiki which I made on sites.google.com. I added some pages - Blog Roll, Delicious pages and will improve it during summer vacation. Due to the lack of Internet connection and the end of the classes this term in our university, we will continue our activities next academic year.

What about online exercises they really contribute to several purposes as improving all the language learning skills of the students and promoting learner's autonomy. By using these tools and exercises I hope we will manage to achieve better results in teaching process!

I wish all my colleagues all the best!

Take care!

Gulnar

Week 7 - One-Computer Classroom and Padlet

Greetings to my dear instructor and colleagues!

I feel sorry that just 3 weeks is left for the end of this course, I will miss everybody! :-(

Week 7 was also full of activities, discussions and tasks! There were again 2 topics to discuss. I joined the 2nd one - the use of one-computer classroom! As I mentioned in class discussion, I am also teaching with one computer and overhead projector but no Internet access. We don't always have lessons there. Using one computer is really useful for making the students much more attentive and motivated for the given tasks. We use computer for watching videos, listening to CDs, etc. After watching a video we make discussions as a class or in groups/pairs and do some activities. Listening to the songs the students fill the empty spaces with the relevant words and even we sing them ourselves for having a fun. I sometimes divide into groups and play games (i.e. riddles). These activities enhance the students' collaborative work. Computers are also useful for powerpoint presentations. Teachers can explain and discuss new topics by using presentations. Last week I learned how to create interactive power point quiz and I 'll make several ones in the next future.

This week I chose my partners in order to prepare final project. My partners are Margarita and Maria. We share the same problem. They will also use blogs to improve the writing skills of the students. I am so glad to work together with them!

The last task was Padlet. It was quite new for me, but very interesting! Everybody posted articles, videos, documents about learner autonomy. So did I! I posted an article titled 'Self assessment for autonomous language learners' by David Gardner.

This week we had a guest - Jodi Weber. I thank her for joining the discussions and offering useful ideas to us!

I am so grateful to the staff of Oregon University for their patience, care and attention!!!

Sincerely

Gulnar

Week 6 - Reflections

Hello everybody!

This week was full of several activities to do. I'll briefly describe what I did, what I learned and what I managed during the week.

Week 6 offered us two discussions  - 1. Interactive Power Point Presentations and 2. Teaching Larger Classes. I am not teaching larger classes. So I chose Discussion #1, because I always find Power Point Presentations very interesting and educative though  I have never created PPP for my classes due to technical problems in our University. The articles that our instructor suggested provided us with a lot of valuable information about the efficiency and productivity of PPP for both teachers and students. I got aware of important tips and key elements of creating interactive PPP. I learned that by adding few texts, but more videos, images, sounds and other useful elements they really help us get rid of monotony of the lectures and workshops, the students get much more attentive and motivated for the issues presented in the class. 

One of this week's tasks was to create an Interactive Power Point Presentation. Following the instructions I could make one interactive PPP. As it was my first presentation, I met some difficulties and it took me several hours to complete this task. But I really enjoyed doing it. I created a mini quiz consisting of 10 questions making 30 slides. I used hyperlinks and added comments on the answers whether they were right or wrong. I wanted to add sounds, but it didn't work. Nevertheless, I think it doesn't look bad! :-) Now I can prepare a number of interactive PPP for next year!

As I mentioned above, our university had some problems with the access to the Internet. So I couldn't begin to apply the technology tool in my class. I hope I will do it next week and take notes about what I have done.

This week our dear colleague Hasina faced difficulties with her family! I wish God will help her and her husband and we look forward to hearing good news from her next week!!! :-)

I wish all my colleagues and my dear instructor Mrs. Donna Shaw all the best!

Take care!

Gulnar!

WEEK 5 - NEW DISCOVERIES

Week 5 is nearly over, it is unbelievable!!! I feel sorry that we have only 5 weeks left, because I have discovered so many things, useful techniques and most of all, I have witnessed warm atmosphere here.

This week was full of various tasks. First, we discussed the topic 'Alternative assessment, Project-based learning and Webquests'. All these techniques were quite new for me. I got loads of information about each of them. Especially, I was greatly impressed by the projects implemented by Susan Gaer, such as making newspapers, cookbooks and folktales. These projects motivate and encourage the students, discover their hidden abilities and personal traits and promote the sense of community, self-esteem and confidence in themselves. I have also prepared some projects for my senior students for the next year and I am sure I will succeed it.

The Alternative assessment is a great tool for both teachers and students, it makes the students get more motivated and responsible for performing the given tasks. I read the article about the rubrics and found them useful. The rubistar is an amazing website.I created a rubric for assessing the students' performances for final oral presentations.

What about Webquests, they are also interesting, involve collaborative work, develops the students' critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills. I have created my own webquest but not completed, because it is also quite new for me.I'll do it in a few days.

The last task was to choose technology tool for solving the problem we mentioned last week. In order to deal with the problem of improving the writing skills of the students and enhance their motivation I decided to use a blog and Rubrics for a class, The students will share their opinions on my posts, join discussions and comment on each other's posts. With the rubrics they will feel more responsible and self-confident. And if I succeed I will also apply Webquest. 

I wish this course didn't end! I am accustomed to the staff, my colleagues and especially our dear instructor Mrs Donna Shaw.

Thank you so much!!!!!

Sincerely

Gulnar

WEEK 4 - A CHALLENGING WEEK

This week was really challenging as I performed a lot of tasks. First, the topic of discussion was 'Reading, Writing and Vocabulary'. Our dear instructor has presented a number of valuable and useful articles and websites on improving these skills. The sites provide a wide range of activities - conversations, quizzes, exercises, etc. I will benefit from them during my classes. Besides, my colleagues have also suggested exploring other websites and I will try to add them on my Delicious page.

Every week we learn how to improve the students' language learning skills and I must say that I have discovered a number of new techniques to apply.

Another task was writing a specific issue connected with our students. This is the next step to writing our final project. Every week we work out a part of our final project so that it can be easy to prepare it. The main problem with my students is that they don't like writing, have no desire to put their thoughts into words. And once they write an essay they make gross mistakes. So I hope using new technologies I will be able to tackle the problem.

Finally I want to say that I am so happy to have taken part in this course!!! Thank you again for your attention!!!

Sincerely

Gulnar

DELICIOUS!!!!

At last I created my Delicious page! I can't believe that I did it. But thanks to my dear instructor Ms Donna and my dear colleague Anna I managed to do such wonderful task! I have never had Delicious page. It is new for me. You can add your favorite websites and keep them safe on this page. It is very very very interesting! I will also recommend my students to create their own Delicious pages and I am sure they will enjoy doing it!

I don't know what else I will learn on this course. Frankly speaking, I have made much progress in my studies.  Thank you again for your care and attention!

And I wish all my colleagues great achievements in their lives!

Best regards,

Gulnar

WEEK 3 - FEELINGS

This week was really challenging, I hope everybody did their best to accomplish the given tasks on time.

I don't know what to begin with. Because each week is full of colorful activities, you learn new techniques, get a lot of useful information about the recent innovations. The only thing to do is to apply them in your classes.

This week's discussion was Aural/Oral Skills. I read several articles about teaching listening, speaking and pronunciation by Lindsey Miller, Maria Busa and Julia Gong. The authors presented valuable information about developing these skills, especially using authentic materials. Besides I got acquainted with several websites full of activities, such as One Stop English I found more interesting First day lessons and drama activities. And esl.about.com provides with conversation activities, classroom worksheets, boardgames for all levels. All the websites suggested by our dear instructor Ms Donna are so useful that we need enough time to apply them in the classes.

Another task was to read nine final sample projects  and share our opinions about how efficiently the projects were implemented, what changes the authors made in their students, whether they achieved their goals. All the projects were clearly described, among them a project by Aleyda Linares from Universidad Pedagogica Nacional Francisco Morazan of Tegucigalpa, Honduras - Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web Project Report drew my attention. She completed her final project successfully. What I liked in her project was that we should think and satisfy the needs and interests of the students in order to make them highly-motivated in the class. Using a class blog, assessing the students' accomplishments and defining netiquette rules for them enabled her to involve the students in the activities with enthusiasm.

I want again to thank the staff of Oregon University, especially Ms Donna for nominating me for this course. I already feel positive changes in me.

Best regards

Gulnar 

MY IMPRESSIONS OF WEEK 2

I am going to share my impressions of Week 2 - how successfully I applied what I learned in my classes - and my opinions with you!

There were a number of valuable activities that we did during this week. First of all, the discussion topic was Websearching. I confess that I was familiar with a few websites like Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, I always search for the topics on these websites. But thanks to www. noodletools.com - the search engine that Ms Donna offered us, I found many websites useful for my students and me too. As I mentioned in my post there is a great choice of websites that we need time to browse them thoroughly. I will recommend them to my students as well as my colleagues in the university. I hope they will also enjoy them. The websites such as Intute which provides lots of information in all spheres - medicine, art, education, psychology, communication, etc., Bing and iSEEK Education- will be beneficial for students in preparing their reports, Ask.com - we can find the answers to any questions that interest us, Merriam-Webster Dictionary which will enable the students get the definitions of the words, their synonyms, etymology and do quizzes to test themselves. I also took into account some websites that my colleagues recommended me - eric.edu.gov, sweetsearch.com. 

Besides our dear instructor informed us with amazing statistics about the Internet users. We must acknowledge that nowadays the number of Internet users is growing exponentially. More than half of the world population have access to the Internet. As the technology becomes a tool for learning, we should benefit its power and go far in our life.

Another important task was to present our ABCD learning objective. We had to share a behavioral objective for the class we are teaching using this model. And I created my learning objective following the criteria suggested by it. It was really interesting. Without objective you can't get success in your teaching career.

And the last we had to describe our classes and inform about the class setting in detail in order to let them know whether we could apply the new technology during our classes. This is the start for our final project.

Every week I learn new things, new technologies that I really didn't expect to be like that! 

Thank you so much for giving us opportunities to benefit from your experience!

Sincerely,

Gulnar

MY FIRST WEEK IN THE SPRING 2013 WEBSKILLS COURSE

First of all, I want to mention that I am so happy to participate in this online course organized by University of Oregon, American English Institute. I am so grateful to all staff for creating such opportunities for us teachers!

I want to write about what I did during the first week.

The first week was devoted to the course and introducing ourselves to each other. There are many instructors from different countries and different cultures, so I am so glad to make new friends and share opinions with each of them. All my colleagues have devoted their lives to teaching and are professional in their jobs. So it gives me great pleasure to benefit from their experience. 

The main tasks to be performed through the whole week were filling out the needs analysis survey in order to help the course instructors determine the best class for us. And the most important task was to create a blog that I had never done it. At first I faced some problems in creating a blog, but thanks to the instructions I coped with all the difficulties and managed to do it. Every week we must post new messages and inform about how successfully we completed the tasks and given assignments.

What about discussions, I found them more enlightening among all the tasks. Because I witnessed respect and collaboration between the course members. As my colleagues mentioned, everybody took the topics seriously and presented valuable opinions. I really enjoyed them.

We were informed about the guidelines and ground rules for discussions. I absolutely agree with them. We must all follow these rules for improving ourselves and being professional online instructors.

Finally, I want to say that the course is really fantastic. I can see the progress I made during a week. And all these due to the strenuous work of the University staff, especially Ms. Donna Shaw. She is so kind and attentive to all of us. Thank you so much!!!