A Teacher's Day Note

Dear Teacher, You are the best teacher ever! You paint the little minds with knowledge and care You light tier path with inspiration and dedication. You stimulate their every little effort with encouragement and reinforcement You make the lesson fun and teach them to be gentle and kind You see their potential and believe their little minds I appreciate you and your hard work with gratitude and appreciation Happy Teacher's Day!

Regional Seminar for UNESCO Resource Distribution and Training Centres

Regional Seminar for UNESCO Resource Distribution and Training Centres USM Campus, Penang, Malaysia, 9-11 October 2013 more information On behalf of Maldives National University, MNU, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to UNESCO and USM for the opportunity to participate in this seminar for RTDCs. I met great people with wonderful innovative minds in the conference and got lot of ideas on the 21st Century learning which I hope I could make use of to make my learning and teaching more interactive, interesting and meaningful for the students. Also, I am enthusiastic to start the workshops here in Maldives. As I work in the distance and open learning center and with blended mode of courses, I believe the information I gathered from the seminar are of immense use. Thank you for accepting me for the seminar and hope to attend more of those. UNESCO Bangkok ICT in Education has inaugurated its official TEI network, that is the UNESCO Resource Distribution and Training Centres (RDTCs) who will serve as national/local focal points to promote the pedagogical integration of ICTs. The year’s Regional Seminar was co-organized with Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang, Malaysia on 9-11 October 2013. The RDTCs expected to become full-fledged partners of UNESCO in cascading UNESCO-designed capacity building programmes locally, utilizing the innovative pedagogical approaches and various CD resources developed by UNESCO. RDTC focal points had the opportunity share relevant cases on ICT integration in education at institutional and national levels during the Seminar. Country cum institutional reports were requested from RDC focal points to share a general overview of ICT in Education, Teacher Training practices to promote ICT integration and the challenges and lessons learnt. RDTC representatives participated in the planning session of the RDTC activities to further identify areas for support and prioritize the needs for the annual gathering. As for the inaugural year, the RDTC focal points will be trained on developing pedagogies for enhancing student 21st century skills incorporating the 21st Century Learning Design (21 CLD), a global professional development programme developed by Microsoft Partners in Learning.

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.

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

Week 10, Discussion: Advice to Future Participants

Today a friend of mine called me and said she got a chance from this course. ( in fact I shared the link with lot of friends and requested them to apply.) So I have already started advising her on what to do and what not to do.

Do's
Decide a time specially for this course work and do it daily.
Have a good internet connection.
Try to explore the tools which are emphasized in each week.
Try to connect the tools to your teaching.
Always participate in the discussions and share your experience.
Remember the good manners when doing posts on the discussions.
Give yourself time to do all the necessary readings.
Do lot of research on the internet.
Download the readings on a separate folder.
Keep all the links where you can find easily (like delicious.com).
Be careful with the time difference if there is any synchronous discussion.

Don'ts
Do not wait until the last moment.
Do not skip the readings.
Do not try to be over confident.

Week 10, Levels of Technology Integration (LoTI) at COL

The LoTi Framework focuses on instruction, assessment, and the effective use of digital tools and resources to promote higher order thinking, engaged student learning, and authentic assessment practices in the classroom. These are vital characteristics of 21st Century teaching and learning.

The LoTi Framework is catagorised into Seven levels and each described in details. The levels are:

LoTi Level 0 - Non-use
LoTi Level 1 – Awareness
LoTi Level 2 – Exploration
Level 3 – Infusion
Level 4a – Integration: Mechanical
Level 4b – Integration: Routine
Level 5 – Expansion
Level 6 - Refinement

I believe my institution, Centre for Open Learning, falls in infusion level, level 3. At a Level 3 (Infusion), the instructional focus emphasizes student higher order thinking (i.e., application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation) and engaged learning. Digital tools and resources are used by students to carry out teacher-directed tasks that emphasize higher levels of student cognitive processing relating to the content under investigation. Teachers are using power point presentations for each lesson, with different URLs and audio and video clips. Students do research, explore some issues and do their own individual and group presentations and online chat sessions. Also, students write to forums and complete online exercise and activities. These activities are teacher directed.

The centre now has to focus on Level 4A Integration: Mechanical, in which students are engaged in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources.

Blog: Course Reflection

When I look back to the nine weeks I have spend with this course, not only my knowledge on technology tools have improved but I have done some practical work with them and I realized the potential of those technology tools and how to incorporate them in my teaching and learning. For this, I thank the Webskills course for giving me this opportunity and Robert for assisting and guiding us towards the correct path. Also, my heartfelt thanks to all my colleagues who has shared their valuable experience with me and commented on my work, which provided encouragement and enthusiasm to continue.

These are some of the article I have read regarding technology.
• Blogs and ESL class
• Web searching
• Digital Bloom's Taxonomy
• How to Write Clear Objectives
• Teaching aural/oral skills
• Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials
• Speaking lesson plans
• Multi-skill websites
• Reading/vocabulary
• Articles about using CALL in writing and reading activities
• Technology-enhanced lesson plans
• Rubrics and Alternative Assessment
• Project-based Learning (PBL)
• WebQuests
• Engaging Students - Technology
• Interactive PowerPoint
• Large Classes
• Learner autonomy
• One-computer classroom
• Make exercises online to use online
• Make exercises to use online or offline on a computer or to print out
• ANVILL
• Learning Styles/Multiple Intelligences
• Learning styles
• Voicethread

These are some of the tools I have tried
• Create my own blog at www.blogger.com,
• Completed a need analysis survey using Google survey forms
• Used Google maps to show where my place is and added some information regarding my country.
• Created a Social Bookmarking site on Delicious.com
• Create a rubric using rubistar
• Create a technology-enhanced project or WebQuest
• Created an Interactive Power Point Presentation
• Created ABCD Objectives for a lesson

These are also some of the tasks I have completed during this course.
• Continuously writing weekly reflection and updating the discussions I do on Nicenet.
• Preparing a technology-enhanced lesson plan
• Assessment, rubrics and project-based learning
• Create a sample lesson for a one-computer classroom
• Create an online course site or an exercise to use online or offline
• Contributed to the discussions on Ground rules for discussion on Nicenet.
• Participated in the discussions - comparing rubrics
How will I integrate what I have learned

I have already thought of integrating some of these tools in my lesson. For example, I have been using PowerPoint presentation for nearly all my lessons. However, there are features like blank slides and action slides which I have learned in this course and I will use that in my lessons. Also, I have created Voicethreads for my final projects and some students liked it very much, although many of them did not get time to comment. I plan to use those threads for my future lessons. Blogging and Nicenet are my favourite tools and I will use them for improving students writing skills and communication skills. Webquest is another tool I plan to use to enhance my students’ presentation and writing skills. In general, I plan to use all the tools, however, the ones mentioned about will be used most with the students.

I will continue to learn about these tools through the internet and through different Websites which gives information about technology and teaching.