REFLECTIONS - WEEK FOUR

OK! That’s was some hard work this week. Lots and lots of web searching, exploring, revisiting, reading, planning, writing, and what not!  It was really a busy week. This internet is a big jungle, having a number of different roads, one leading to another. People often get lost here in search of the right path for them. When I see many links on the homepage of a new found website, or many sites on a portal, all equally attractive and inviting, I am reminded of these lines of Robert Frost,

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

How I face the same thing every week, every day. After hours of surfing, one link after the other, I find that I have lost my way. Then I want to come back to the original web site from where I’d started, but feel tired, give up and go to sleep. But then there are times when we discover exactly what we are looking for, and feel very excited, energetic and blessed.

The discovery of ‘online corpora’ was one such moment for me this week - millions of words to search according to the context.  It can be very useful in developing students’ vocabulary and writing skills. Online corpora have an immense scope in ESL teaching, I feel.

Jarek Krajka's article presents a detailed account of using the internet for teaching English Writing. The writer has analysed, in detail, the different genres of academic writing, giving some ideas for tasks and techniques done with the help of the Web. I found this article very very useful for my present students and I am sure I will be soon using these ideas and techniques in my classroom.

From Larry J. Mikulecky's article, I explored  http://www.magickeys.com/books/ and found it wonderful. It is really a great site for children's illustrated literature. I found a few 'talking e-books' on this website also. They are good for listening activities. My four year old daughter liked it very much.

And finally, the Technology Enhanced Lesson Plan looks like a successful experiment. I have integrated technology into my lessons in the past as well, but in an entirely different manner. What I did this time was something new for me.

As a whole, this week was a little hectic but very productive.