WEEK 3

The more effort we make, the happier we are after we have done all the tasks. I think that everybody agrees. The third week, the third step we made, proved fatidic to me since I didn’t have enough time to solve the tasks relaxed, due to some exams that approach, but in an allert pace. Did you know that living in an allert rhythm keeps you younger for a longer period of time? So, Thank you, Donna.

Concerning the articles we had to read for the discussions post, I especially enjoyed reading Lindsay Miller’s article “Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials” because listening was this year my favourite activity since I discovered my students’ interest growing lesson by lesson. I usually followed the steps she mentions, but after reading her article I will insist more on post-listening activities through extended discussions or role-play activities since they enjoy acting so much. I like the lessons where the receptive skill , listening is then followed by the productive one, speaking. Lidsay showed in her article that “There are several benefits computer software has over radio or television. For instance, many CD-ROMs now have glossaries and online scripts, so that when problems are encountered, the learners can get online help.” but each of us has to adapt to the materials we have, and as long as listening authentic material is practised, the results will be visible. Our students will become both good listeners and speakers in these lessons.

Creating my delicious page was another thing which made me step further in the world of technology after creating my blog. The fact that I can access my delicious page from any computer and I can share sites with everybody, made me tell about “this discovery”  to all my colleagues. Some were very enthusiastic about it. I got to the conclusion that the biography lists which were given to us at the end of the school years will be quite soon replaced by tags on the bookmarking sites. In the article “ Technology Tip of the Month”, Deborah Healey writes that “You may want to go back and add or change tags as you get more precise in your categories”, which makes Delicious a flexible tool at hand , but  for our minds.


No wonder Donna let us read some samples of final projects. As a result, we have given our brain commands to start looking for ideas, put them together and give birth something nicely written but feasible in the same time, otherwise being superficial and useless work. I have chosen Nadina Nicolici’s project from the Lorin Salagean Technical High School in Drobeta Turnu Severin, Romania. The teacher had as goals helping her students improve their reading and communication abilities and also use the internet for what is important not just for entertainment. She described how her classes looked before and after implementing technology in the way she was taught at this course. The project respected all the requests and all the information she used came to support the final result. She made such a good description of using technology in her classes , referring to the increasing interest of her students and to the good results she obtained with them, that all the teachers who read her project might be easily convinced to use technology in their classes.

Nobody can become better unless s/he is stimulated and motivated. Donna has given us both opportunities, stimulated us to accomplish the tasks and motivated us to start thinking to our final project. The task, the discussions and the project task seemed demanding and required some time, but the effort was rewarding.

  

WEEK 2

       Without using technology, our classes can't be attractive, as much as we try keeping our students occupied and interested in what we're teaching. So technology in our classroom is a blessing.

     What I liked a lot about this week so far was the fact that I found out much new information by reading the articles proposed before completing the assignements. http://pages.uoregon.edu/dhealey/techtips/june2009.html is such an example. Accessing the site we were recommended, www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html- I was amazed of its clear organization and presentation. I would compare it with an enormous tree with an infinite number of branches and sub branches. Some articles I found here, and I can’t enumerate them all, can really help my students read authentic materials, and also will give them the possibility to work on genuine texts. Accessing this site, I understood that especially for teachers, it is much better to access specialised sites, rather than Google for at least two reasons: the information we find may be more complex and it is not as time consuming as it would be accessing the other common sites.

      Referring to the other topic we had to deal with, namely writing objectives, I admit that whenever we wrote objectives for our lessons, we tended to omit at least one of the four categories we have properly used in this course. I will personally pay more attention  not only in writing them correctly, but also in using them in classroom considering all four perspectives: audience, behaviour, conditions and degree. The students will benefit as much as we do, since we have everything clearly organised from the very beginning: sources and expectation, input and output.

     I thank all my colleagues for the valuable information they have posted on the Nicenet and to you Donna for your prompt and encouraging feed-back.

INTRODUCING MYSELF TO A NEW DIGITAL AREA: BLOGGING

Creating my blog was an experience I have longed for some time, but I didn't have either the opportunity or the necessary knowledge to put this into practice. Most of my students spend their time sharing ideas and posting comments on different blogs, but unfortunately not too often in English.
Having created this blog, I also have the chance of  being closer to my students, and why not to their parents. Using this blog may be a possibility of  bringing  all these factors of education together, namely the teachers, the students and their parents. The idea of creating special sections for each category mentioned above may be constructive. Along the years, I have noticed that my students are not fond of the idea of reading books in the classic format , but are keen on reading almost everything ( commentaries, summaries, articles, studies and even books) on the internet or on blogs. So, the classic format of books is not so popular anymore, but using multi-media in order to be informed is adopted and in a continuous increase. All these being said, I consider that being informed in a pleasant manner, being given the possibility of changing information with others, will be both attractive and useful, for everybody who will access it. I hope that this interesting and apparently new way of communication will be used by everybody in the best way possible.