Tuesday, August 23, 2011

WEEK 10
WRAP UP
It has been amazing how the time has past. This experience has been very fruitful for my career  because  it helped me to  enhance  many aspects  of  my way of teaching, I remembered  that  when I started this course  I was a little bit nervous as  I wasn`t familiar with the technology  and  it  was a surprise to me the way I  can now work with the computer and most important I can find  and create  new materials  and interactive lessons with the new tool which was  provided  to us in this course.  I absolutely believe that this new way of teaching and that I will apply it as soon as I start classes this winter.

I also want to congratulate to my fellow colleagues  for their effort and  commitment they put into this course.  I want to express my gratitude to  the instructor for her support, patience  and motivation  during this time.  
In reference to LOTI since we do not have Internet at my place of work, the students are at level Zero (0) at the moment, my plan is to use the system that I learned and teach my students by using my laptop and a projector. I hope to have them reach by this method level Two (2).

Alex                    

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

WEEK 9
Teaching Styles and Technology Connections
As before it was a fruitful week . I reinforced my knowledge  about learning styles and  theories which refreshed my memory  in how to treat and teach my students respecting their individuality and  style of learning. I enjoyed watching the videos posted in this web  http://www.edutopia.org   because they gave me a clear idea on how to  take advantage of the students knowledge and interest in order to develop  an interactive, real and virtual lesson.  I also l think it is  important  how parents support and help the students in the learning process.
I plan to continue to check anew the material Donna sent us and pick out the information that I consider most important. I am also going to apply the technology by creating my own material, in this way I will be practicing both with myself and students.
This week I completed my project with the help of Daouda and Ion who supported me and gave me many suggestions on how to improve my project.
Alex.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

WEEK 8 REFLECTIONS

TEACHER RESOURCES ONLINE
So far this has been an exhausting week. There was so much interesting information that I found that motivated me to continue checking the webs that was sent to us. It took me a long time to open and read all the webs and the time just flew by!
I reviewed the web sites above and found them to be amazing because of the large variety of activities, games, cross word  puzzles, bingo, flash cards, quizzes, etc.  With all of this material I know that I can make a change in my English lessons.
In High School I work with a boring and unmotivated textbook and now that I know how to create motivated and dynamic activities according to their ages and level of knowledge of the language. One of the beneficial out come of all of this is that my students don’t have to spend their money on buying extra material to do their work.
I find it now so easy to create a blog, a nice net, bingo, puzzles, etc., that I simply select what I need and with a touch of the keys I have all the interactivities at hand. This helps the teacher tremendously to save time and effort  and I now look forward to putting all this into practice.
Another thing I learned by exploring ANVILL was the different  tools and exercises along with the activities that we can choose from  it in order to make our lessons more dynamic and motivating for the students. I can now say  that Technology is a great tool which helps both the teachers and students in their learning process.
Alex.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

WEEK 7 Reflections


Learner Autonomy and One Computer Classroom
Another productive week has come to an end. During these days, I read articles about Autonomous Learners and One Computer Classroom. These articles were very informative because they both have interesting information that showed clear strategies to be followed by the students and teacher. It also showed how the students/teacher share their responsibilities during the teaching/learning process.

I think Autonomy is important for the students. For a student to be autonomous they must interact with other students that are constructing their own knowledge base of experiences.

In regards to the article One Computer classroom - I learned how to create and apply interesting and interactive PPT lessons. Where I teach we do not have access to computers or access to internet so we have to use a laptop and projector in the audiovisual room. What I plan to do is use this room and use prepaid internet to project the PPT that I like.

http://theeasyessay.com/?pg=reg
 Using these Webs are a good way to start with PP Lessons as I consider them to be both interactive and creative.

I will also show them a video about food groups found in the following Web site http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zt-KYP_4vg.

Alex.