This week gave us hands on tools to try and most of the participants were thrilled creating online exercises as is evidenced from their posts on discussion board.
With Nicenet down Robert set up discussions at Googe group and kept things going for us. We all learnt a good lesson on having "back up" plans.
Some of the web tools I have learnt to use in this class have
already triggered the "winds of change" in my class. And the change
seems to be quite pleasant and positive. I have felt encouraged by my learners'
responses to learning from interactive PPTs, webQuests, wallwisher,and many
relevant websites that I used in my class. With my constant support and
facilitation they were up on the job and were enjoying doing assigned tasks. I
had to be on my toes during the initial phase where I set up the tasks and was
around them to assist them in their learning quest.
So far I have tried out blog, PPT, Youtube, wallwisher, Google
survey, hot potatoes and many ELT web sites with them and now I would like to
try setting up my own website, blog and wiki and use them with my class.
Whereas wiki serves as the class dash board and a blog is for sharing ideas and
resources, it is a website with full functionalities that has the greatest
"surrender value". I particulary liked Sam's Moodle lesson. Like him I would also like to use an LMS like Moodle
as it provides a very convenient platform for all kinds of language learning
activities with a built in assessment tool. But a full featured Moodle is an
expensive proposition for now so I think I will have to make do with free
online resources till we get some funds to use Moodle.
The above tools do promote learner autonomy as they allow them
to learn anytime anywhere at their own pace. I feel they just have to get
familiar with using them and get into the "habit" of learning from
the. With support from teachers I am very sure that web tools can motivate
learners to emerge as independent or less dependent learners in a big way!
Another positive from this week was submitting my project draft and having an opportunity to peer review Safaa's project. She has done a wonderful job in applying Popplet as a very potent brain storming tool.
She also gave me some insights into my project.
Overall this has been a great week for hands-on learning experience!
Hi Rajinder: Nice blog post. One thing that I really like is that you talked about using some of the new tools with your students. I must admit that I am a little bit envious that you are able to work with them face to face and troubleshoot problems "live" when introducing a new tool. I find that kind of troubleshooting to be perhaps one of the most difficult parts of running a purely online class like our Webskills class.Troubleshooting over email only can be hard, but it makes me better at figuring out what people need. ~Robert
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