Dear All,
With a very good reading on 7 Principles and a site worthy of delicious: Larry Ferlazzo's blog - I am positng my last blog for this e-Course.
I have posted my views on 'What topics were most successful? Most useful for you? Which, if any, do you think were not relevant to what you do or will do?' on nicenet so I am not repeating it here.
We had very good evaluation of our projects under 'level of technology integration'. LoIT scaffold is one of the best ways of evaluating our courses which are framed on technological basis. It was great to see where we stand and what should be our ultimate goal in technology integration. Nice reading and task, indeed!
Well, at the end of tenth week, when I look back, I feel that I got some firm ground to stand on. I was using technology for last 5 years. But it was like flying in the air - directionless - kite orbiting, drifting and shilly-shallying - not getting into air to fly confidently. In matter-of-fact style I would say the use of technology was pointless, meaningless, useless, worthless and purposeless. I found problems with students that they are not learning new things in new way... I found problem with lack of technological infrastructure in the college... I found problems with colleagues... in short, I found problems with all that was out of me... never sought to peep within me.
This course gave me space and opportunity to peep into my self. From ABCD to LoIT and then 7 Principles - these all redeading resources helped me understand my role as teacher and a teacher who uses technology. I would frankly admit that the tool was not appropriately used. Now, I got direction, I found meaning in usign it and I also realised its worthyness and purpose of using it.
The change that this e-Course has brought ( I would rather say 'initiated' than 'brought' as it is going to continue for long time) in me cannot be expressed in words.
I remember, I read somewhere about the experience with God. One saint who had an experience with God was trying to convince an atheist that God do exist and he has seen it with his naked eyes. But the language failed to express his experience in words. The atheist laughed and the saint was termed as fool.
I feel similaryly. The language does not have power to express my experience of this e-Course and if I go on attempting it writing here, you will label me as fool.
Wish you all the best in putting this learning into practice. I hope if we an collaborate with each other on some research projects it will be very good to carry out these pratices. I am Indian and work with Bhavnagar University in Gujarat state of India. If any of you happen to visit India or is planning to have any research project, I would be glad to offer my services.
I can be approached through this blog, my website (www.dilipbarad.com), email (dilipbarad@gmail.com), Google Talk (dilipbarad), Orkut (Dilip Barad), Face Book (Dilip Barad), Second Life (Bardil Joyce), Skype (dilip.barad) and Yahoo msnger (d_barad).
Hope you have collaborative research with someone!
Dilip (India)
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Week 9 (8-14 March): Teacher Resources Online
Dear All,
At the fag end of the course I am feeled with curious feelings. They are curiously contradictory in their nature. On one hand I fee, 'thank GOd, it will end and I will be free to have weekends with my family and friends'... and on the other, 'Oh! God! Great learning experience is near its end... now I will not have new learning experiences... after long time I got opportunity to learn something which was very useful in practical teaching'.
I am over powered by second feeling. If I look back at my career as teacher, in last decade, I have read ad listened lots of things about teaching, methodology, technology etc etc.... all was blah...blah.... None gave me an expereince to 'do' something which can be taken directly in the classroom and put into practice. This course gave me not one but several such tools. And what is more important is, it has widened mental horizons... i have cultivated habit of thinking beyong horizons.. thinking out of the box. And this is unforgettable learning experience.
Well, during this week we were supposed to do following task:
1. On-line Tools for Enhancing Learning.
2. Create online course site or exercise.
3. Peer review of project
My partner Andreja from Croatia did wonderful scrutiny of my project. It really helped in making my project better. I also peer-reviewed her project which was prepared so well that it did not left much for my comments.
This week, I was first to post on nicenet.org. I am overwhelmed by the responce of other participants to my posting. I found everbody refeering back to my post and adding their own. It was wonderful experience to read all your comments - agreeign and disagreeing - on my views.
I have prepared my exercise with the tools like wikieducator and moodle. Thanks to Sandra for giving positive comment on my exercise. I have viewed a few exercise also. I like Christos and Raphael's exercises. It was great to see how several exercise to enhance language skills is possible through technology.
By and large, it was yet another wonderful week full of learning new things.
Your comments are invited.
Dilip (India)
At the fag end of the course I am feeled with curious feelings. They are curiously contradictory in their nature. On one hand I fee, 'thank GOd, it will end and I will be free to have weekends with my family and friends'... and on the other, 'Oh! God! Great learning experience is near its end... now I will not have new learning experiences... after long time I got opportunity to learn something which was very useful in practical teaching'.
I am over powered by second feeling. If I look back at my career as teacher, in last decade, I have read ad listened lots of things about teaching, methodology, technology etc etc.... all was blah...blah.... None gave me an expereince to 'do' something which can be taken directly in the classroom and put into practice. This course gave me not one but several such tools. And what is more important is, it has widened mental horizons... i have cultivated habit of thinking beyong horizons.. thinking out of the box. And this is unforgettable learning experience.
Well, during this week we were supposed to do following task:
1. On-line Tools for Enhancing Learning.
2. Create online course site or exercise.
3. Peer review of project
My partner Andreja from Croatia did wonderful scrutiny of my project. It really helped in making my project better. I also peer-reviewed her project which was prepared so well that it did not left much for my comments.
This week, I was first to post on nicenet.org. I am overwhelmed by the responce of other participants to my posting. I found everbody refeering back to my post and adding their own. It was wonderful experience to read all your comments - agreeign and disagreeing - on my views.
I have prepared my exercise with the tools like wikieducator and moodle. Thanks to Sandra for giving positive comment on my exercise. I have viewed a few exercise also. I like Christos and Raphael's exercises. It was great to see how several exercise to enhance language skills is possible through technology.
By and large, it was yet another wonderful week full of learning new things.
Your comments are invited.
Dilip (India)
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Week 8 (1-7 March): Learner Autonomy and the One-computer Classroom
Dear All,
This week gave us an opportunity to think about:
1. Learner Autonomy from different angel.
2. limited technological resources.
I had limited understanding aobut learner autonomy. I thought that freedom given to students to learn on their own is 'learner autonomy'. I thought that giving liberty to study is learner autonomy. But the articles and other reading resources led me into the sun-shine of better understanding of this concept. Today, I believe that Teacher has very important role in learner autonomy. The teacher is the controller of entire teaching / learner environment. The learner is made more responsible and more tasks are demanded from him.
Secondly, to think about one-computer class in very good mental exercise. One should always have Plan B ready when teacher is using technology. Technology can fail any time, but teacher should not fail. Over dependency on tehnology may lead teacher into troubled waters. Thus, one has to think about limited technological resources also.
Regards to all
Dilip (India)
This week gave us an opportunity to think about:
1. Learner Autonomy from different angel.
2. limited technological resources.
I had limited understanding aobut learner autonomy. I thought that freedom given to students to learn on their own is 'learner autonomy'. I thought that giving liberty to study is learner autonomy. But the articles and other reading resources led me into the sun-shine of better understanding of this concept. Today, I believe that Teacher has very important role in learner autonomy. The teacher is the controller of entire teaching / learner environment. The learner is made more responsible and more tasks are demanded from him.
Secondly, to think about one-computer class in very good mental exercise. One should always have Plan B ready when teacher is using technology. Technology can fail any time, but teacher should not fail. Over dependency on tehnology may lead teacher into troubled waters. Thus, one has to think about limited technological resources also.
Regards to all
Dilip (India)
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Week 7 (22-28 February): Creating Student-centered Large Classes and Interactive PowerPoint
Dear All,
The week seven came with new colours. (Aside: The colour metaphor comes here because we are celebrating Festival of Colours known as Holi in India). It came with colourful lessons on teaching large classes with myriad number of students (large classes). It also gave colourful articles in pdf, presentation and you tube videos to prepare painted interactive presentations.
Well, if I give an objective, frank and distant overview (wearing BLUE cap of Edward De Bono), I would like to say that this week did not give much new things to learn. I say NEW things. In all previous week, delicious, rubric, web quest, search engines, blog etc brought wonderful surprises. Surprises because I was using those things but here, in this course I found NEW meaning in them and learnt innovative usages.
So far as last week and its two major topics of discussions are concerned (viz. teaching large classes and interactive PowerPoint), I did not get innovative ideas form the reading resources. Yes, I enjoyed reading Chinese research articles. I was happy to learn that Chinese classes are also overcrowded like Indians, to learn English. We Indians always believed that Chinese do not care for English.
Any way, I personally believe that managing large classes require incessant new ideas and innovative implementation of those ideas in the classroom. No one technique can work for longer time. The teacher has to go on changing methods of teaching and activities. Task based, story telling, role-play, play-cards, group activities, games, presentations etc needs to be incorporated to make class live and interactive.
My recent experiments with technology also help as one of the method of teaching innovatively to large classes.
Well, so far as PowerPoint is concerned, I enjoyed watching YouTube videos. As I am using ppt since long, I did not find anything very interesting.
Yes, the way simple ppt and interactive ppt (iPPT) are differentiated was interesting. I got a word for my workshops… iPPT. Initially, I found Quiz interesting on PPTs. But as I now work on Moodle, I find it far better than iPPTs. I would confess that I was not using other component of ppts often in my teaching. Now I will make optimum use of it.
Though this week did not gave anything new as a surprise as it was in previous week, yet I learnt that ‘Knowledge is not Power unless it is acted upon’. Only knowing things is not important, what is important is using it, and implementing it innovatively in the classroom environment. This is the valuable lesson for me from the seventh week of this course.
Dilip (India)
The week seven came with new colours. (Aside: The colour metaphor comes here because we are celebrating Festival of Colours known as Holi in India). It came with colourful lessons on teaching large classes with myriad number of students (large classes). It also gave colourful articles in pdf, presentation and you tube videos to prepare painted interactive presentations.
Well, if I give an objective, frank and distant overview (wearing BLUE cap of Edward De Bono), I would like to say that this week did not give much new things to learn. I say NEW things. In all previous week, delicious, rubric, web quest, search engines, blog etc brought wonderful surprises. Surprises because I was using those things but here, in this course I found NEW meaning in them and learnt innovative usages.
So far as last week and its two major topics of discussions are concerned (viz. teaching large classes and interactive PowerPoint), I did not get innovative ideas form the reading resources. Yes, I enjoyed reading Chinese research articles. I was happy to learn that Chinese classes are also overcrowded like Indians, to learn English. We Indians always believed that Chinese do not care for English.
Any way, I personally believe that managing large classes require incessant new ideas and innovative implementation of those ideas in the classroom. No one technique can work for longer time. The teacher has to go on changing methods of teaching and activities. Task based, story telling, role-play, play-cards, group activities, games, presentations etc needs to be incorporated to make class live and interactive.
My recent experiments with technology also help as one of the method of teaching innovatively to large classes.
Well, so far as PowerPoint is concerned, I enjoyed watching YouTube videos. As I am using ppt since long, I did not find anything very interesting.
Yes, the way simple ppt and interactive ppt (iPPT) are differentiated was interesting. I got a word for my workshops… iPPT. Initially, I found Quiz interesting on PPTs. But as I now work on Moodle, I find it far better than iPPTs. I would confess that I was not using other component of ppts often in my teaching. Now I will make optimum use of it.
Though this week did not gave anything new as a surprise as it was in previous week, yet I learnt that ‘Knowledge is not Power unless it is acted upon’. Only knowing things is not important, what is important is using it, and implementing it innovatively in the classroom environment. This is the valuable lesson for me from the seventh week of this course.
Dilip (India)
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Week 6 (15-21 February): Rubrics, Alternative Assessment, and Learning Styles
Dear Sandra, Deborah and George (guest facilitator) and participants,
Some of the participants have expressed the views that with sixth week now the countdown has began and we have started climbing downwards. I do not agree with it. I think with this week, the road to destination is getting tough. It seems we now enter into unknown territory.
Two very useful things I learnt form this weeks tasks. First, MI and learning styles. I believed that there are three types of learners... and Howard has moved quite ahead to identify that there are more than seven types of learners. It was indeed a very good learning lesson.
Secondly, rubric. I undestood first time during the reading of the tasks that rubric is so important. And I am surprised to learn that I was member of several syllabus framing committees, and never ever we talk about rubric is this manner. I would say, more concentration should be give to rubrics. It should be shared with students. You all will be surprised to learn that in our traditional courses, we never share rubric with students. In fact, we do not have such well-framed rubric. Students are playing blind game in their learning and evaluation. Most teachers are also blind to the fact of that there is connection between teaching and evalution.
I have attempted to prepare one rubric and posted on google sites. But I still feel that I need more time to read and think over it.
By and large, the week ended with good learning and introspective exercise. I read Mr. George's comments on nicenet. He was very active through out the week to respond and thus encourage participants to discuss more.
Regards to all,
Dilip (India)
Some of the participants have expressed the views that with sixth week now the countdown has began and we have started climbing downwards. I do not agree with it. I think with this week, the road to destination is getting tough. It seems we now enter into unknown territory.
Two very useful things I learnt form this weeks tasks. First, MI and learning styles. I believed that there are three types of learners... and Howard has moved quite ahead to identify that there are more than seven types of learners. It was indeed a very good learning lesson.
Secondly, rubric. I undestood first time during the reading of the tasks that rubric is so important. And I am surprised to learn that I was member of several syllabus framing committees, and never ever we talk about rubric is this manner. I would say, more concentration should be give to rubrics. It should be shared with students. You all will be surprised to learn that in our traditional courses, we never share rubric with students. In fact, we do not have such well-framed rubric. Students are playing blind game in their learning and evaluation. Most teachers are also blind to the fact of that there is connection between teaching and evalution.
I have attempted to prepare one rubric and posted on google sites. But I still feel that I need more time to read and think over it.
By and large, the week ended with good learning and introspective exercise. I read Mr. George's comments on nicenet. He was very active through out the week to respond and thus encourage participants to discuss more.
Regards to all,
Dilip (India)
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Week 5 (8-14 February): Project-based Learning and WebQuests
Dear Failitator and Participants,
This was yet another excellent week. The things I have learnt in this last week had opened my horizons to the use of technology in Project Based Learning. Frankly speaking, I did know about WebQUest and PBL. But my knowledge was very limited. By WebQuest I meant Web Search. I did not know the differene between the two. I did not know how WQ can be used for PBL and organised learning. I always overlooked WQ, thinking it is all simple and stupid things. But the links that were shared had wonderfully explained innovative use of WQ.
PBL had also been of similar thing to me. I never used Project is such useful manner in my class. I did use it but it was all haphazard. Now, I learnt the lesson to organised PBL and WQ to make optimum use of both in lesson plan.
Thanks to facilitator for giving mid-term extra point task to create web quest. This was essentially necessary. It is wonderful experience to create our own WQ on questgarden.com.
One very important observation. Many of us shared our issues and problems. The major problem was inavailability of computers and internet in the classroom. Now with this WQ and PBL, we can have a lesson without without technology or with minimal technolog or no technology.
Regards to all.
Dilip (India)
This was yet another excellent week. The things I have learnt in this last week had opened my horizons to the use of technology in Project Based Learning. Frankly speaking, I did know about WebQUest and PBL. But my knowledge was very limited. By WebQuest I meant Web Search. I did not know the differene between the two. I did not know how WQ can be used for PBL and organised learning. I always overlooked WQ, thinking it is all simple and stupid things. But the links that were shared had wonderfully explained innovative use of WQ.
PBL had also been of similar thing to me. I never used Project is such useful manner in my class. I did use it but it was all haphazard. Now, I learnt the lesson to organised PBL and WQ to make optimum use of both in lesson plan.
Thanks to facilitator for giving mid-term extra point task to create web quest. This was essentially necessary. It is wonderful experience to create our own WQ on questgarden.com.
One very important observation. Many of us shared our issues and problems. The major problem was inavailability of computers and internet in the classroom. Now with this WQ and PBL, we can have a lesson without without technology or with minimal technolog or no technology.
Regards to all.
Dilip (India)
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Week 4 (1-7 February): Skill-building Websites for Reading/Writing Skills and Technology-enhanced Lesson Plans
Dear Sandra, Leslie and all participants,
Yet another equally interesting week ends today. This time I was expremely busy with Faculty Development Programme at our University. It was very diffiult to spare time and hence I was able to complete my tasks today only.
It was great learning to read other participants postings. It helped me a lot in understanding task in better light.
This week we had new failititator, Ms. Leslie. The tasks she gave were very interesting. I like her way of giving sample postings. Her rubrics are also very clear and specific.
Optional discussion given by Sandra helped in looking back to out edu-system. In this discussion I came to know how things are with other universities when it comes to technology. This gave me realization that we are still far away from incorporating technology in our syllabus. And unless we do that, there is no way teaching through technology.
Leslie's task on multiskill websites gave me some useful web-resoures and the task helped me to understand how I can integrate these web-resouces with my lesson plan.
The project task 1 and 2 gave simulating ideas. It was while working on these tasks that I realised poor infrastruture for internalization of technology in regular teaching. It is very important to think before we act. Both these tasks were thought provoking. It gave me understanding regarding what sort facilities I need to augment before preparing tech - enhanced lesson plans. It was an eye-opener to think on the issues. Had there been no such task, I would have never thought on what I have written in my posting.
At the end I would say that it was incredible learnign experience in the week (1-8 Feb).
Regards to all
Dilip (India)
Yet another equally interesting week ends today. This time I was expremely busy with Faculty Development Programme at our University. It was very diffiult to spare time and hence I was able to complete my tasks today only.
It was great learning to read other participants postings. It helped me a lot in understanding task in better light.
This week we had new failititator, Ms. Leslie. The tasks she gave were very interesting. I like her way of giving sample postings. Her rubrics are also very clear and specific.
Optional discussion given by Sandra helped in looking back to out edu-system. In this discussion I came to know how things are with other universities when it comes to technology. This gave me realization that we are still far away from incorporating technology in our syllabus. And unless we do that, there is no way teaching through technology.
Leslie's task on multiskill websites gave me some useful web-resoures and the task helped me to understand how I can integrate these web-resouces with my lesson plan.
The project task 1 and 2 gave simulating ideas. It was while working on these tasks that I realised poor infrastruture for internalization of technology in regular teaching. It is very important to think before we act. Both these tasks were thought provoking. It gave me understanding regarding what sort facilities I need to augment before preparing tech - enhanced lesson plans. It was an eye-opener to think on the issues. Had there been no such task, I would have never thought on what I have written in my posting.
At the end I would say that it was incredible learnign experience in the week (1-8 Feb).
Regards to all
Dilip (India)
Friday, 29 January 2010
Week 3 (25-31 January): Skill-building Websites for Oral/Aural Skills and Saving Bookmarks with Delicious
Dear Sandra, Deborah and Participants,
At the fag end of the third week, I feel submerged in this course. When I joined the course, I thought I will give a day or so and complete my task. But now it has become habit to visit nicenet.org everyday and read what all participants are discussing. The credit of this involvement in the course goes to Sandra and Deborah. Their comments, emails and feedback are very encouraging. Thier freindly approach has helped me in my involvement in this e-Course.
This is the major change I felt in last week.
Well, so far the task based activities are concerned, I have completed following tasks:
1. delicious bookmarking
2. Reading CALL material/websites for LSP (Listening, Speaking and Pronunciation) skills.
3. Reviewing skill building website for oral/aural skills.
I already had delicious page but never used it. I know that it is for bookmarking but as I never gave serious consideration to it, I never realised its true importance. As it was mandatory in this course, I bookmarked several sites. Now I understnad that delicious.com is really delicious. The best advantage I will make is in sharing useful links with my students. Now I will have to ask my students to go and visit my delicious page to learn about useful weblinks. Earlier, I have to give them links through email or sms.
For the second task, I read several CALL4LSP related material and links shared by facilitator and participants. It helped me in understanding what sort of research in made and ongoing in this field. It is always a very good learning experience from what others are doing. It saves our time and energy form repetiting similar experiments.
For the thirst task on skill building website, I wrote about sparknotes.com. Thought I got several positive responses from other participants for this website, One of the particiants (Luba) draw my attention to the point that we have to discuss LSP skill developing website and not literary skill developing website. Thus, I posted another item with the same objective. The entire discussion and activity was fruitful.
By and large, this week was fruitful on the groud that I am getting engrossed in this course. Now it seems I am drawing myself near to some of the participants and facilitators.
Your comments are invited.
Dilip (India)
At the fag end of the third week, I feel submerged in this course. When I joined the course, I thought I will give a day or so and complete my task. But now it has become habit to visit nicenet.org everyday and read what all participants are discussing. The credit of this involvement in the course goes to Sandra and Deborah. Their comments, emails and feedback are very encouraging. Thier freindly approach has helped me in my involvement in this e-Course.
This is the major change I felt in last week.
Well, so far the task based activities are concerned, I have completed following tasks:
1. delicious bookmarking
2. Reading CALL material/websites for LSP (Listening, Speaking and Pronunciation) skills.
3. Reviewing skill building website for oral/aural skills.
I already had delicious page but never used it. I know that it is for bookmarking but as I never gave serious consideration to it, I never realised its true importance. As it was mandatory in this course, I bookmarked several sites. Now I understnad that delicious.com is really delicious. The best advantage I will make is in sharing useful links with my students. Now I will have to ask my students to go and visit my delicious page to learn about useful weblinks. Earlier, I have to give them links through email or sms.
For the second task, I read several CALL4LSP related material and links shared by facilitator and participants. It helped me in understanding what sort of research in made and ongoing in this field. It is always a very good learning experience from what others are doing. It saves our time and energy form repetiting similar experiments.
For the thirst task on skill building website, I wrote about sparknotes.com. Thought I got several positive responses from other participants for this website, One of the particiants (Luba) draw my attention to the point that we have to discuss LSP skill developing website and not literary skill developing website. Thus, I posted another item with the same objective. The entire discussion and activity was fruitful.
By and large, this week was fruitful on the groud that I am getting engrossed in this course. Now it seems I am drawing myself near to some of the participants and facilitators.
Your comments are invited.
Dilip (India)
Monday, 25 January 2010
Week 2 (18-24 January): The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches
Blog: Weekly Reflection
The task I did in last week can be bulleted as below:
* Describing Class and Learning Objectives
* Web Searching
In first task (i.e. Class description and Learning Objectives), the ABCD formula was very helpful. What exatly i did in class description is not repeated here as it is already posted on www.nicenet.org. Here, I would like to share my views on this task. I learnt the importance of understanding my Class. I also learnt the importance of Learning Objectives. Before going into this mental process, I 'thought' I know my class very well and my objectives are very clear. But as I undergo this process, I realised that how mistaken I was in both these aspects. Ans surprisingly, these are very vital aspects of teaching. One very important thing I realised is the wide range of variations among the students. To cater the needs of these studetns, Learning Obhectives must be more precise. This mental exercise gave me very good learning experience. Today, I can say, I understand my class better and have framed better Learning Objectives for them.
The second task was on Web Searcing. We were asked to test some new Web Searching Tools (WSTs) in lieu of Google. It was unique experience. Rarely, I have tried any other WST than Google. I came to know that there are some highly specialised WSTs which can help us in fast, precise and specific search results. These noodletools are very important in WebQuests. Earlier when I replied to the Pre-Course questionnaire, I said that my WebQuest skills are excellent. Now I say I have yet to learn a lot in WebQuests.
It is well said that the true learning begins when we realise what we 'dont' know.
How I might apply it in my teaching? Very important question to ponder over. It is not only necessary to learn but it is equally important to see how our learning an affect our teaching.
Firstly, after assessing my class on ABCD parameters and Learning Objectives, I would have a curriculum whih is precisely showing its learnig objectives. The LOs will be shared with the class, which was not done earlier.
Secondly, the use of search engines in the teaching will go an overhaul change. Earlier it was all Google, Google, Google. Now we will have more specific WSTs for varied searches. The students always came with the complain that it is very difficult to seach specific items on Google. It is like seaching needle in the stock of hay. Now, I suppose, they may be happy browsing internt for WebQuest.
Dear Sandra,
I hope you will give new comment after reading the entire blog. Your first comment came much earlier than I expected, which I have mentioned in the below given comments also.
Dear Participants,
Your comments will help me in better understanding of what I am learning from this course.
Thanks and regards,
Dilip (India)
The task I did in last week can be bulleted as below:
* Describing Class and Learning Objectives
* Web Searching
In first task (i.e. Class description and Learning Objectives), the ABCD formula was very helpful. What exatly i did in class description is not repeated here as it is already posted on www.nicenet.org. Here, I would like to share my views on this task. I learnt the importance of understanding my Class. I also learnt the importance of Learning Objectives. Before going into this mental process, I 'thought' I know my class very well and my objectives are very clear. But as I undergo this process, I realised that how mistaken I was in both these aspects. Ans surprisingly, these are very vital aspects of teaching. One very important thing I realised is the wide range of variations among the students. To cater the needs of these studetns, Learning Obhectives must be more precise. This mental exercise gave me very good learning experience. Today, I can say, I understand my class better and have framed better Learning Objectives for them.
The second task was on Web Searcing. We were asked to test some new Web Searching Tools (WSTs) in lieu of Google. It was unique experience. Rarely, I have tried any other WST than Google. I came to know that there are some highly specialised WSTs which can help us in fast, precise and specific search results. These noodletools are very important in WebQuests. Earlier when I replied to the Pre-Course questionnaire, I said that my WebQuest skills are excellent. Now I say I have yet to learn a lot in WebQuests.
It is well said that the true learning begins when we realise what we 'dont' know.
How I might apply it in my teaching? Very important question to ponder over. It is not only necessary to learn but it is equally important to see how our learning an affect our teaching.
Firstly, after assessing my class on ABCD parameters and Learning Objectives, I would have a curriculum whih is precisely showing its learnig objectives. The LOs will be shared with the class, which was not done earlier.
Secondly, the use of search engines in the teaching will go an overhaul change. Earlier it was all Google, Google, Google. Now we will have more specific WSTs for varied searches. The students always came with the complain that it is very difficult to seach specific items on Google. It is like seaching needle in the stock of hay. Now, I suppose, they may be happy browsing internt for WebQuest.
Dear Sandra,
I hope you will give new comment after reading the entire blog. Your first comment came much earlier than I expected, which I have mentioned in the below given comments also.
Dear Participants,
Your comments will help me in better understanding of what I am learning from this course.
Thanks and regards,
Dilip (India)
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Week 1 (11-17 January): Creating an Academic Blog
Dear Deborah and Sandra,
Dear Partiipants of Online Course on Webskills for Teachers,
I apologize for giving the links of my already existing blogs instead of posting new blog for this course.
It is indeed great idea to create a new blog with a few things in mind. As suggested by Deborah and Sandra, we have to keep in mind what sort of things happen when we are creatign blog for teaching.
Identifying problems helps in preparing theory for 'blogs for teaching'. The followers do not have to 'repeat' the same mistakes we made on our way.
I note down what sort of problems I faced while creating this blog. I am using blogs since long and have created several blogs for my self, my students, friends and relatives. But this time I kept a close watch and identified following problems:
1. Availability of NAME is very crucial. It is always difficult to have name of our own choice. More popular names are never 'available'. One has to go for 'unusual' names. I passed almost half an hour online in selecting a name for the blog and at last has the compromise with the this one. If teacher thinks and discusses several names (more usually, unusual names) before going online. It will help them get better name and need not compromise.
2. Some of the default setting create problem. One is 'enabled transliteration'. I do not know how transliteration was enalbed. What ever I typed was transliterated into Hindi language. I had terrible time during my last workshop teaching teachers how to create blog for teaching. Today, I got some time to resolve the issue. I have to go into 'Setting' and clicked last button 'Enable Transliteration' to disable it.
3. There are old and new version of Edit on blogger. Older one allows to post image and video. The new one (perhaps) does not have easy image and video editing/posting servies. (I need to check it agian to see latest upgradation).
Dear Partiipants of Online Course on Webskills for Teachers,
I apologize for giving the links of my already existing blogs instead of posting new blog for this course.
It is indeed great idea to create a new blog with a few things in mind. As suggested by Deborah and Sandra, we have to keep in mind what sort of things happen when we are creatign blog for teaching.
Identifying problems helps in preparing theory for 'blogs for teaching'. The followers do not have to 'repeat' the same mistakes we made on our way.
I note down what sort of problems I faced while creating this blog. I am using blogs since long and have created several blogs for my self, my students, friends and relatives. But this time I kept a close watch and identified following problems:
1. Availability of NAME is very crucial. It is always difficult to have name of our own choice. More popular names are never 'available'. One has to go for 'unusual' names. I passed almost half an hour online in selecting a name for the blog and at last has the compromise with the this one. If teacher thinks and discusses several names (more usually, unusual names) before going online. It will help them get better name and need not compromise.
2. Some of the default setting create problem. One is 'enabled transliteration'. I do not know how transliteration was enalbed. What ever I typed was transliterated into Hindi language. I had terrible time during my last workshop teaching teachers how to create blog for teaching. Today, I got some time to resolve the issue. I have to go into 'Setting' and clicked last button 'Enable Transliteration' to disable it.
3. There are old and new version of Edit on blogger. Older one allows to post image and video. The new one (perhaps) does not have easy image and video editing/posting servies. (I need to check it agian to see latest upgradation).
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