Week Eight Reflections

Another week, another Learning Enrichment! How very right - We live, We learn!

This week we got an excellent opportunity to interact with Jeff Magoto - the director of the Language Center at the University of Oregon. There was a lot to learn from his experience and vision. His innovative ideas and the different ways in which teachers of English can use a wonderful technology tool ANVILL, were simply great. A valuable addition to my long list of amazing tools!

The most important part of this whole course has been the ‘Project’ and the technology change that I have implemented in my ESL classroom. Though I faced more problems in making the technology work than I had expected, the results have been nothing less than encouraging. Those of my students who were not able to access VOCAROO on their cellphones for different reasons were upset at not being able to use the new tool. Some of them are even demanding new computers and fast internet access from their parents. The enthusiasm of the modern day youth about technology is unmistakable. Now it’s our (the teachers’) duty to maintain that enthusiasm and not let the students get entangled in this complex world of WEBsites.

I’m waiting for the peer review of my draft project report and then I will give it a finishing touch before the final submission next week.

One thing that has impressed me a lot in this course is the amount of energy and activity shown by all the Webskills participants in the discussions threads. Some of them are extraordinarily active and always have a lot to say. My participation in the discussions has been more as a listener than an enthusiastic speaker, but at the same time, their views have really added a lot to my knowledge about the ways and manners of teachers from different parts of the globe.

Creating a site class site on Nicenet was another enriching experience. There were so many readings on different ways of using online resources, like creating class sites, class wikis, class blogs and class surveys etc. The discovery of new exercise generators and other web based activity generators was also wonderful. There is so much to choose from; absolutely no dearth of anything. And above all, most of it FREE! WOW!

Looking forward to Week Nine,

Darshan.