Week 10: Ignited minds continue learning ... miles to go ...

Task: Levels of Technology Integration

An interesting task for this week was to participate in a survey at http://www.loticonnection.com/. The aim was to ascertain where do we stand with regards to web based teaching and learning. 

After taking the survey I find that I need to work on Student Learning and Creativity, Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments, Digital-Age Work and Learning and Digital Citizenship and Responsibility. 

At present I see my instructional system somewhere close to level three and in one year's time I would like to reach level five as per the Loti framework. The only roadblocks can be from the administrative side because things move slowly at my place. Nevertheless as a teacher and teacher trainer I will share with others what I have learnt at this web skills course and encourage them to integrate web resources to their class  room teaching. I am confident through this "cascading" of my web skills course training I will see considerable positive change in teachers' and learners' attitudes towards blended learning. 

Discussion: Advice to Future Participants

The web skills course has updated me on web tools so much that I can use them not only to enrich my teaching but also to make my learners' learning exciting and authentic. My biggest benefit from this course was that  I have been able to blend my class based teaching with web based teaching and resolve many of the problems I face while teaching my large ESL classes. And the icing on the cake was to interact with wonderful course instructor, Robert and fantastic class mates from across the world and learn from them.

What I learnt to use and found very useful in my teaching learning context:

1.Nicenet for professional discussions and for my class use.

2.various websites which offered free resources on listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary and practically every aspect of good language teaching/learning. I also created/used tech-enhanced lesson plans using some of these web resources. 

3.Google drive, Google sites, Google survey and Google docs. I practically used them to complete course tasks and have also created my first ever web site webtools4english.

4.webQuests for enhancing students' learning. In my project I used 3 webQuests to motivate my low proficiency learners in large class.

5.my own blog and reflected on what I as well as others learnt every week. I visited my class mates' blogs and commented on their blog entries.

6.wallwisher, delicious, Hot potatoes, popplet, quizlet, Youtube, interactive powerpoint, rubistar, etc.

My gains from the course:

•A web-friendly attitude to encourage my colleagues and trainees to benefit from web based learning.

•How to use Web based self assessment of large groups

•How to explore very valuable free ready- to- use web resources ... will continue exploration

•Have a clear idea how to blend my class learning with web based learning.

•How to gradually shift from teacher-centredness to learner-centredness

•Have raised motivation level of my learners who are excited to learn authentic English, not examination-oriented English 

•Went through excellent, pointed suggested readings and resources: brief, relevant and succinct

•Participated in extremely rewarding discussion and shared ideas with class mates

•Learnt from the Course Instructor Robert Elliott from what it means to be a good online teacher (facilitator, guide, troubleshooter, motivator and knowledge provider and always supportive) 

•Gained confidence that I CAN use technology to enrich my teaching and enhance learners' learning

It would be great if the following web tools could be included in the course:

1. Moodle/Blackboard
2. Webtools 2.0
3. Web authoring tools
4.  Video conferencing