Week 04: …first lesson plan and a need driven project…

In the second semester of a program in theoretical linguistics, with a work load above the head and where nearly everything is scientific and where you have very little space to express yourself  might force one’s life to be boring. Quite contrary to that, the web-skills course I find offers space and scope for imagination and an opportunity to express myself. I wish I could contribute more to the discussion threads. But, right now it is a fight against time and a determination to never give up.

What was most important for me this week was leaning to prepare a lesson plan. This was my first lesson plan ever and, to add to its excitement was the “technology enhanced” part. It was enjoyable.

The discussion based on the evaluation, usefulness and effectiveness of the websites for reading, writing and vocabulary development provided me with an opportunity to learn not only a lot of websites that are really useful but also ways to evaluate the uses of a website. It also helped me find a gem like website: Learning Resources, which is my favorite now.

Writing about an ‘issue in the class that technology can help solve’ taught me to think about ways to plan need-driven class projects. This is quite contrary to what I used to do with regard to lesson planning and projects. All in all it was a week full of excitements and a lot of new learning.

Tharanga

Week 03: …Learning New Things…

Though it was one of the busiest weeks, I managed to complete the tasks and discussion threads. I am planning to do my project on a web-based English language learning course and was on a hunt for good web pages for developing aural and oral skills. This week’s task on discussion thread provided me with not only a large number of websites to be used but also the knowledge about how useful they are. I am already planning to include many of those websites to my web-based English language learning course.

Then the task on creating the Delicious page opened up a new world of possibilities to keep and keep track of the useful web sites by providing the opportunity to handle them on one page and share useful websites with our peers. This also can be incorporated into my courses where I get my students to create their own Delicious pages and use the very useful websites to improve their English.

And, writing the blog itself is highly effective where I get an opportunity to contemplate on what I learned, how useful it is and how I can apply the newly learnt things to my TLA activities. Though, I was just writing the blogs in the past two weeks, it was in this week that I fully realized how important the activity of writing the blog is.

Tharanga  

Week 2: …a great Going and Going…

Week 2: …a great Going and Going…

It has been a very productive week with a lot of new input and feedback. In the first phase, it really created a lot of new knowledge about the new search engines. Most of the search engines such as Intute, INFORMINE, Google Scholar etc proved to be very useful and I did not even know that they existed. Until then, I did not know even about the Google Scholar. What is important about these search engines is the way they direct us to important and reliable sites and articles for the specific information we look for.

  

Then, it was really exciting experience writing about learning objectives. I used to write learning outcomes or learning objectives for the courses I taught at university in the past, but I was never able to synthesize the meanings of students, background and conditions for TLA (teaching, learning, assessment) activities to get it onto one “objective statement”. This is actually what I learnt with writing clear objectives under ABCD method.

Posting the first sort of “getting into the real water” like paragraph for the final project was rewarding from a few perspectives. First, for me it established a very good background to sit and think about what I am really going to do for my project and in my real class. Second, It helped establish a good framework to think about working for an online English language teaching course. It was really good that we started to work on it this early so that we can think about and plan what we can incorporate   into our TLA activities from the input we get from this class (importantly) while the class is going on.

Another interesting thing is that though I was already familiar with the Blooms Taxonomy and used the components of its different domains for writing learning outcomes for my courses, this is first time, I heard and read about Taxonomy for Digital /Technology Domain. It was really interesting to learn the different domains in a hierarchical order such as literacy, collaboration, decision making, technology for learning, technology for teaching, and tech-ology (the study of technology). I think, I have reached the level  “technology for teaching” and if I get to the next level of tech-ology I will be better able to make effective use of technology for my TLA activities.

Tharanga

Week 1 : [A wonderful opportunity, a beginning and Going…

I felt very excited when I got the message about the opportunity to follow the Building Teaching Skills online course. I am someone who is always on the look out for the best methods to be used in language teaching, learning and assessment activities in classrooms. For a long time I have been looking for a course of this nature and I feel very privileged to have been able to join the course. With the new knowledge, methods and experience gained through the course, I wish to learn and do great things to facilitate language learning in my class rooms at my university in Sri Lanka.

I taught ESL to undergraduates in a computer and multimedia facilitated language laboratory at my university, but I hardly ever tried using wikis and blogs to assist my teaching, because I did not know how to use them effectively. What I have experienced in this week has convinced me of the huge potential it has for learning and sharing knowledge.

It is wonderful that being at home, without exerting ourselves much, we can teach, learn and take part in discussions. It is really interesting to see, we, from different parts of the world from different backgrounds, without having to travel thousands of kilometres loaded with luggage, are on one platform sharing in our knowledge and experience. Technology has made it possible and let us live with it and go ahead with it and we can really make use of the opportunities made possible by it in the days to come, only if we do it today.