Week 3 - UO Winter 2014 Webskills for teachers - Skill-building Websites for Oral/Aural Skills and Saving Bookmarks with Delicious

To sum up this week's impact on me, I´m really into refining the focus of the course project.

Every week the course contents provide us with so many possible tools that there's the feeling  one might just overview them without going deeper. That´s why I consider very strategic and profitable to develop the project that, from my understanding, help participants achieve this goal of customizing and using the course with an accountable result.

Reading a previous course project at this stage has been fundamental. It´s definitely wise to count on role models. They work as a guide as well as a mirror to help us observe and reflect on our own project goals. 

Social bookmarking is really delicious! The more we organize ideas and access to content of interest the more and the better we fell like improving this ability. I´m really interested in learning more how to make the best of use of tags & stacks. It´s also nice to be able to share with students & colleagues in a very practical and easy way the links you´ve been collecting. I found it very appropriate to introduce this idea at this stage of the course, as one can add the links we´ve been exposed to.

When it comes to aural and oral skills, nowadays, my view of learning a language is that one is a future user of the language as a means of communication. When it comes to English, it's a lingua franca, one that´s used around the world for this purpose.  So, I notice many learners really focus on developing aural and oral skills as a priority. The readings and activities shared provided both reflective content as well as practical tools for development.

Interacting with  each other´s  posts as well as receiving feedback is another enriching experience.

Well, time to move on. Welcome week 4!

Week 2 - UO WebSkills for Teachers - The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches

Week 2 - UO WebSkills for Teachers

This week I feel much more at ease with the course dynamics. To me, it´s been essential to keep a print and soft copy of the week assignments. The more I read them the easier to organize ideas and also plan my schedule. I always read the assignment before starting a task and after I finish it. 

As I´m an early bird, Whenever possible, I prefer  to dedicate  early morning for the course activities.

As per the readings, as they´re available on the course site for all the weeks I´ve been prioritizing the course readings suggestions so that during the week I allow time and space for digesting the ideas. Some are more challenging than others, tough.

I really appreciated the ongoing assessment. It was very motivating to check grades from week 1 as feedback is essential to help us plan the journey ahead.

Working with ABCD objectives reminded me of how important it is to keep instructions clear and simple which requires quality time for planning. And to me the image that comes to mind is that during a class this process is used over and over again. And as quoted by many in week 1 introductions  - Practice makes perfect.

It took me sometime to decide on each class I would focus for final project task 1. Finally, I decided on the online blended course I´ve been working with for the last 3 semesters.  As the project unfolds, I´m  sure lots of new ideas will come up.

I concentrated more on going deeper into the tasks and less in reading all the participants posts in detail. I used skimming and scanning a lot. I noticed there has been a kind offer from one of the course participants to join the class " ICTs4Teaching- EDU 2.0 a Great Tool". Despite the kind offer, I´m afraid that will be a bit overwhelming to me. I think for the time being I´d rather concentrate on this course. 

To me, the most challenging task was the web searching one. I went through the links many times. It was time consuming and sometimes demotivating as - according to the readings I could notice how far I am from becoming a skilled websearcher. But anyway, I accept  the challenge. After all, that´s why we are here for.

Wishing us all another rewarding week, 

Regards, 

Juliana, EFL and online teaching, Brazil

Week 1 - Introductions; creating an Academic Blog

This is the first l blog created 100% by myself. So,  I'm to be congratulated.

I've already used class blogs for writing projects. I decided to use them to encourage process writing. As the article Blogging for ELT by Graham Stanley, British Council, Barcelona (www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/blogging-elt) suggests, the key factor for me were: to allow student's written work to be read by peers - a real audience (not the teachers are unreal - but a rather limited audience).

But, the main reason I used class blogs was to use a tool students  were interested in  to deal with a skill

they´re usually not interested at all - writing. That´s why I already worked with blogs, despite the fact blogs are still finding a place in my own heart.

Honestly speaking, journaling on a notebook is still quite appealing to me and I believe depending on the area your working with - intrapersonal skills, for example, it is even more effective. So, blogging is definitely a new skill to me and I feel one of my aims with the course is to  be able to use them in a more structured way as I have already lost class blogs URLs from the past.

During the creation it took me some time to think of a relevant title and address. Finally and decided to be as simple as possible as simplicity really helps me when dealing with new endeavors.

Looking forward to finding a new meaning to blogging with you all.

Best, 

Juliana