Reflecting Teaching and Learning

Friday, December 2, 2011

Week 10 A Final Word

Since I work as a coordinator/lecturer of distance and online courses, this Webskills course has provided me with appropriate knowledge and information regarding most modern technology tools which can be used for developing different skills students need and how to incorporate those tools in the lessons. It also has given me the opportunity to practice the knowledge and use the tools to find out how much it fits to my students and the environment. I have already been using technology and will be using most modern and most appropriate tools for my teaching and learning in the future.

Many thanks to the Webskills course for accepting me and giving this opportunity and my appreciation goes to Robert for guiding and assisting me with his invaluable comments during this journey to complete this course. Also, I thank all my course mates for sharing their experience and for their encouraging and constructive comments which helped a lot in my improvement and completion of the course.

Good Luck to us all and THANKS.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Week 10 Final Reflection



What topics were most successful or most useful for me?

The following are the main topics we have discussed during the ten weeks of the Webskillls course.

Week 1: Introductions; creating an Academic Blog (New to me and most interesting and consider most successful).
Week 2: The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches (Not new to me and I have been using it before. However, some new search engines were introduced).
Week 3: Skill-building Websites for Oral/Aural Skills and Saving Bookmarks with Delicious. (Very good websites for Oral/Aural skills and creating bookmarks is another interesting and useful thing).
Week 4: Skill-building Websites for Reading/Writing Skills and Technology-enhanced Lesson Plans. ( Reading /Writing websites are very important for me and also learning how to incorporate them in the lessons as well).
Week 5: Project-based Learning, WebQuests, and rubrics. (project based learning is not new. However, Webquests and Rubrics are new and those two are very useful).
Week 6: Creating Student-centered Classes and Interactive PowerPoint (Both topics not new and power point presentations are normally used in the classrooms. However, there are new features learned in this course. eg the action slide and blank slide when making presentations).
Week 7: Learner Autonomy and the One-computer Classroom. (This is also a new topic and from this Webskills course we have got quite useful information when there is a difficulty having access to enough resources).
Week 8: Teacher Resources Online. (I did not get time to explore this. This could be of immense use for teachers and I will try and refer back to the information given in week 8 regarding this topic).
Week 9: Learning styles - technology connections. (Before this course I have got some information regarding learning styles).

I consider creating an academic blog as the most successful and useful topic as this can be integrated for any subject, topic and for different types of activities and in this course we have been doing posts on it several times every week and I love it. Also, I am going to start blogging with my students and use it in my lessons. WebQuests, are the second most useful for me regarding teaching and learning as students will be actively involved in the activities in a WebQuest. Websites for Oral/Aural Skills and Reading/Writing Skills are the next most important for me as a teacher. These websites are full of resources I can use while practicing those four skills especially like Randall's Cyber Listening Lab and I am really grateful for this Webskills course and Robert for introducing these to me. Delicious.com and rubrics are also two important things ad a teacher. Delicious.com allowed me to bookmark all the important websites we have explored in this course and creating rubrics using websites like rubistar is a really helpful and time saving tool for a teacher.

Which tools I will use in my classes.

I am very much determined to use the following tools, and integrate them in my lessons.
•Blogs
•WebQuests
•ANVILL
•Voicethread
•Google survey forms
•Google maps
•Nicenet.
•Interactive PowerPoint
•Web searching
•Project-based Learning (PBL)
•Websites for Oral/Aural Skills and Reading/Writing Skills.

What other tools might we have covered or would you suggest that we could have looked at?
•Hot potatoes
•Prezi - presentation software
•Moodle - course management system
•Voicethread - collaborative slideshows
•Storybird - collaborative storytelling
•Edublogs - educational blogging tool
•kubbu
•ClassTools.net
•xical.org