WEEK 10 - we are going to finish our course

10 weeks run fast and it's nearly time to finish our course. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed, but I enjoyed every minute and never ever thought of quitting the course.
I'd like to thank our instructor Robert for his competent guidance, help, support and warm feedback throughout the course.
My course mates were great, creative and friendly. It was a great experience of sharing ideas, links and impressions. This course gave me a chance to meet  great teachers and friends - I hope we won't finish our communication, I'd like to do Pen Pal projects with  them and their students.
I found a great video  - just for the moment, look and enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx1XvQuAA7w

WEEK 9

 This week I have to work hard not to be late with my Final project.
And at last I may say - "I did it" - of course, it can be improved as "there are no limits for perfection"
By the end of the week I'll have much more free time,and I 'd like
to look at my peers' projects.
I suppose most of them will be great...
Also this week we had discussion about types of learners and suitable kinds of technology that teacher should use to have benefit in the classroom. It was interesting and helpful, because of different opinions and as usual we share our own ideas how to integrate technology into the lesson successfully.
We(I mean our team) used to communicate and share ideas, resources etc and though our course is going  to finish our colleagues decided to create web-page to continue collaborative work - I think it's great!

WEEK 8

I think that everything that I have to do during this week might be described in  words
  "so much work to do" .  

We were offered various online tools to explore and create some kind of handout /worksheet. I can say I haven't enough time to try everything  - only some of these:

1)"Tools for educators" offers to create various kinds of handouts like crosswords, dice game, word search,  I published my crosswords by Google.docs 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SYNwYmNRiUlC2Di4KQclZ9enUuzC8gssNawvAA4OeFw/edit
2)"Easy Test Maker" allows to create different types of tests easily, look at my variant here 
Test on Present Simple/Present Continuous
3)"Web poster Wizard" gives teacher opportunity to create Poster as the topic for discussion. I liked it and made one for my project work - look at it on Poster "What are the British like?"
4) I have created my website on Google.sites - since it was my first experience and I tried how to manage it (deleted one pages and created another - it took so much time),so I did something in a wrong way and sometimes when site opens there is a sign - "Page isn't found", in this case just click on "Home" and you there. The content of the site will be created according to my syllabus and Plan project of our web course. 
My site
When I look 8 weeks back I see my progress - maybe my site isn't good enough but I learned a lot !
The main and large task of this week - to write first draft of Project, I tried to do my best but by Wednesday I hadn't written the time-line for the project. I collaborated with Asma and Saodat - I read and evaluated my peers'drafts and they evaluated mine with checklist. They gave me helpful advice - my draft needs some corrections, it means next week will be very busy too...  

WEEK 7

Unfortunately I started to work with course materials and tasks only in the second half of a week because of the health problems - so I have to overtake my colleagues in two days. It was very difficult because of lack of time for practicing all new we have. 

• This week we discussed issue that is very familiar to me - teaching strategies if you have only one computer in the room . There were a lot of helpful advice, e.g. Jurgita shared a link with game tools for classroom activity.
• As soon as I think that's the tool I'm going to use to integrate into classroom activity, new week and of course Robert and colleagues suggest something new that is interesting and helpful too. So it's difficult to choose.   New technology again - Padlet or Wall Wisher - it's very easy to use, in fact many colleagues use this tool and shared their experience . As I see Angel's one I got ideas how to use it in my practice. 
• Also we found the partners for peer reading and feedback for our projects. My partners will be Saodat and Asma. Time is running fast and we have much work to do.
  

WEEK 6

• The biggest problem for me this week - lack of time.  I haven't enough time to explore and practice everything I liked. 

• Topic of this week - Engaging students / Large classes. Discussion was helpful as usual: interesting reading materials , e.g http://tep.uoregon.edu/technology/assessment/onlineassessment.html, tips for interactive lectures I found here http://www.thiagi.com/interactive-lectures.html.

It was rather interesting to read and watch materials about Interactive Power Point show, especially about alternative tools like Prezi http://readwrite.com/2010/11/27/hate-powerpoint-here-are-5-web-based-alternatives and also watch Samples of PPP of our colleagues - all of them are great, but the Kayyum's one is  the most impressive for me, he gave me some advice so I want to try them.

WEEK 5

•   This week was full of discoveries for me.  I read some interesting and helpful articles about project-based learning (PBL). Students  "work in groups to solve challenging problems that are authentic, curriculum-based, and often interdisciplinary».This activity allows students to demonstrate their knowledge, creativity and individuality. I used it before with my classes, nevertheless I got new ideas to try.
• I learned about Web Quest - it's a tool or software (I don't know exactly) that gives teacher opportunities to organize PBL in virtual form. I looked at some samples on Web Quest Maker – I think my students will like this form of  work. 
• Also we discussed and shared ideas about different ways of evaluating, for example rubrics. Rubrics are a great way to clarify expectations for grading of different tasks . And again technology comes to help teachers   - Rubistar Internet tool is easy  to use.






• It was rather difficult to choose and describe a technology-related change  that I will implement to do differentiated learning in my class more effective!  I haven't decided yet which technology  I'll use because I'd like to try a lot, but I'm not sure (I'm not very experienced in web technology myself). First I'll try Web Quest.... ( it's very pity I have so little time to practice)

Week 4

As usual this week was  busy.

• I have read two articles. The first one is called "Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction" by Jarek Krajka. Author suggested 3 ways of using Internet to help to teach writing - they are web pages, e-mail connection and creating class websites.  
  The second article was "Using Internet-Based Children's Literature to Teach EFL" by Larry J. Mikulecky. The information about vocabulary mastery as indicator of reading level (independent, instructional or frustrational)seems to be helpful for me and also a method of "five fingers". I liked these assignment ideas and that can foster extensive reading: to ask students to keep a list of what they have read, brief summaries of stories or chapters, and new vocabulary learned; to ask students create their own simple stories in English with illustrations. To practice in it I tried to adapt these activities into my lessons and wrote example of objectives.Also I looked at my colleagues ideas - they were great, especially Luis F. Ruiz, Angels Rodrigues, Jurgita Bertuliene and Belal Elbadry. 
• New thing for me was to create and publish documents through Google.doc   and of course to plan lesson taking into consideration usage of technology https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-Idlt5vTBgcpKRkYHE1abgprat26qSQybLU4GKE8pDA/edit?usp=sharing.
  I liked Lesson Plan of Maria Pitsaki - she used video and it enhanced didactic effect of the lesson. It's so obviously!
• This week we were asked to think about issues of class I have chosen for my project. The main problem here - different levels of English, so I should think which way of using technology can help me to answer different needs of all students and to avoid ...   (you see I'm trying the options of blog -how to make a list and insert images)
  
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