Final Reflection

Hello Everyone,

It's been quite a term, hasn't it? Between the projects and the tasks we have learned a great deal and even had fun while doing it.
Even though good things come to an end, there are always new paths and roads to take and new challenges to face. When the last week was opened, I was relieved that we had finished the final project and my last post would be very easy but it was the contrary. I was one of the hardest weeks ever to say goodbye and search for new ways to connect with each other after the course had terminated.
The sessions were rewarding and we should be proud of ourselves individually and as a whole class because we accomplished a lot and we got fantastic instructors who guided us throughout the course.
I hope that we can always remain in touch, and why not maybe find ourselves working together again in the future.
I will miss every minute I have spent for this course. I wish you the best of luck in the future.

Sylvia, Lebanon

Just to make you smile!

This photo was forwarded by one of my students which I wanted to share it with you :)

Sylvia, Lebanon

Week 9: Reflection

Hello everyone,

We are almost there!
Although every week we are given new topics to learn about, I would like to focus this week on what we have created throughout the course. The materials which we have created are quite a lot and it is pity not to share them.  As participants of this course, I think each one of us should have an e-portfolio as instructors through which we can share these created materials. As our e-portfolios can be accessed online, I would also suggest protecting your material with creative commons licenses which provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for other educators. For those who are interested please visit http://creativecommons.org/
Sylvia, Lebanon

Week 8: Reflection

Hello Everyone,

Week 8 has been very tough week for me and I presume some of you had the difficulty to meet the deadlines.

Ok so I will not continue nagging and move to the positive parts which were fascinating.

Although I have missed the webinar on ANVILL and all the interesting parts of it, I would like to thank Jeff Magoto for giving his time and arranging the webinar. I would like to take the opportunity to ask whether it was recorded and how those who missed it can access what they have missed.

Another interesting part of this week was the toold to create online/offline activities.
Personally, I was attracted to the crossword puzzle (http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html). I used the website to create a puzzle for advanced nursing students taking the ESP course.
I have always used the ready-made crossword puzzles and never thought of creating my own. That is why this week I chose to create a puzzle of my own.

For this week also, I would like to thank Rachid for reading my report and write constructive comments on the peer review. It surely helps a lot to know my weaknesses in the report and turn it to a positive result!

Sylvia, Lebanon

Week 7: Reflection

Hello Everyone,

We are reaching to the end of the course.

As usual, it’s been a wonderful and exciting week. The best part of this week was exploring what we can do in a one-computer classroom and how we can implement activities with the minimum availability of technological devices.

I benefited a lot from my course-mates and the activities they have described in the thread as well as creating a lesson plan which we can implement in our classes.

I would like to take the opportunity and ask to see whether you feel the same way as I did when I replied to Hakim’s blog post. Although we are all instructors in our daily lives, we are students in this course and as students we need to create something of our own and by creating lesson plans and activities and sharing them on nicenet.org, we will remember what we have learned from each other. All in all, I believe cooperative learning will lead to better results rather than applying activities which are given to us. Do you agree?

Sylvia, Lebanon

Week 6: Reflection

Hello Everyone,

This week has been very interesting on so many levels.

The first part was the alternative choices which were given replacing the PowerPoint. I have been using Prezi before but the other remaining 4 are quite fantastic too. Personally, I am not very fond of PowerPoint unless I use it through the interactive white boards. Its utilization would interest me more as I can write on the PowerPoint additional comments for my students and save it afterwards.

The second part was Mobile Learning: will I use this new way of teaching? Ummm, based on the readings this week (http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/posting.php?ID=1020), I might consider practicing it in my classes in the future. However I think I have to master it before bringing it into my classes.

The third part is related to the project which I will be implementing in my class. It is Skype Education! As I have mentioned previously I have found my guest speaker already, but guess what? I have met him personally this week. He was on a very short mission to Lebanon and I had the pleasure to meet him before he travelled back home.  Indeed it was exciting and I have no regrets of choosing him as the guest speaker for my students…
I hope the whole project will be a fruitful one 

Sylvia, Lebanon

Week 5: Reflection

Hello to all,

We have already reached to the end of the 5^th week which is half way to the end of this wonderful course.

Before I write what I have learned this week, I want to raise few things which I was thinking about…

This course has been so far very inspiring and interactive but what I’m mostly concerned about is keeping in touch at a later stage. I’m not sure if anyone had raised this question to our dear instructors and if so, apologies for not paying attention the reply. After the course reaches to its end, will the username and password on nicenet expires and therefore we wouldn’t be able to go back to the wonderful posts of our fellow virtual classmates? How can we continue to stay in touch? Perhaps creating a small closed group on facebook would be helpful?

As for the reflection of week 5, http://rubistar.4teachers.org/is is indeed useful to create rubric in a very short time and less time consuming.  However, what I couldn’t figure out is how we can delete or create new columns and I would really appreciate if anyone could guide me on this…

Sylvia, Lebanon

Week 4 Reflection

Hello everyone,
Here is my week 4 reflection.

Although my internet connection wasn't stable during the week and I was super busy with the fall semester final exam corrections for some of the faculties, I enjoyed the tasks requested to be done. I wish I had more time to surf each and everyone of them.

One of the things I enjoyed this week was writing the lesson plan. I have learned a lot form the lesson plans of my colleagues and I would like to take the opportunity to advise you all to "create, relate and donate" your lesson plans with millions of teachers worldwide.
I have sent my lesson plan to Voki.com to be posted on their websites and I will be glad to see something I have created to be used by other teachers, of course if it requires modification to suite their classes, then why not.
What I understood is that after they post your lesson plan, you receive a link which you can paste it on your e-portfolio (in case you have).
So go for it and lets donate what we have created to other teachers,

Sylvia, Lebanon

Week 3 Reflections

Here is my reflection for week 3

Delicious: It is amazing how many of us didn’t know about this website. Thanks to our instructors who shared it with us. Usually I used internet explorer in which I used to bookmark in the favorites section divided into “stacks” as they are called in Delicious. The best part of exploring this website is that we can access it from any computer through username and password. This will be major advantage for me to start using it as I lost once all the data on my computer due to virus. If such thing happens to me again, I would be always thankful to Jodi and Sherie for introducing us delicious!

Fantastic information I got this week is the list of the best sites to practice English. I spent quite a lot of time to select among them what might be suitable for my students.  After selecting few, I believe all the links mentioned in this blog are important and could be used in a way or another. But I always say to my peer teachers that every day we will encounter new websites and new software to teach through them, but the most important factor is to use ICT( Information and communication Technology) in teaching properly and adequately and not for the sake of using technology because it won’t lead to successful results.

Sylvia, Lebanon

Week 2 Reflections

Hello Everyone

Here is my reflection for week 2

Search Engines:

Week 2 was even more interesting and new information is always welcomed.

After trying some of the engines, I wanted to get the feedback of my classmates (MA Education) too. I have shared with them the list we were given by our fantastic instructors and asked them to go home and try some. I have done this by the end of the week so I will be receiving their feedback next week. Of course while telling them about the list; I focused on I seek as most of this course’s participants liked it. All in all, I have enjoyed the search engines I have selected and I am willing to try all of them as there are few I didn’t have the chance to try.

ABCD model to write Objectives:

I have been using the ABCD model for more than a year now. I find it very clear, straight to the point and easy for the instructors to write their objectives. To reply to the thread, I have colored the objectives according to the A, B, C and the D but then I figured out we can't post a colored font. Can we change this?

Anyhow, I find the ABCD model very useful and simple to follow.

Sylvia, Lebanon

Week 1 Reflections

Dear Jodi, Sherie and course participants,

As my first post on my blog, I would like to tell you that I really enjoyed creating my first blog. After reading about it, I think I would utilize it to create extracurricular activities for my students and follow their discussions.

What I found interesting about blogs is that they can always be updated and therefore become more condensed with information as the time passes.

I am happy to start from the first week to learn new things through this course and I’m full of excitement for the upcoming tasks we have for the coming weeks.