Done at the last minutes!

I am not lazy and I am good at time management. However, it is impossible to control myself this week when people seem to ask me to accomplish all my work of a semester in 7 days.

I spent a lot of time readings all the links and even print them out for reading when I am not with my PC. Most of the information and hints are very familiar to me. I do not mean that the reading this week was not meaningful, but it gives me another idea. I am pretty sure that I have known about 80% of them and applied the techniques for building interactive powerpoint many times.

I have an idea of why I do not try to focus on writing these experiences using my own language (both English and Vietnamese) to share with more friends and teachers who are not familiar with English. I bet that some people have done that in my country; however, it is better if the ones who do that focus on teaching and working experiences to be shared.

I posted most of my ideas this week late - at the end of the week since I have some things to do in the remote area where the internet access is quite difficult. I have read any of my friends' blog this week but I did view most of my friends' powerpoint files on our class wiki. I have just posted mine there too and spend time to write a new post before I head back to read the rest of my friends' discussion in Nicenet.

I have started the project, but I still find problems with the notion of "changes" or conduct some changes to the current teaching courses. Why? I am excited to work on a course of problem-solving skills which I am not teaching right now and it is quite difficult for me to modify it when it has not happened yet. Of course, I have some other courses right now. I am still confused to give decision on what I should do as I usually ask Deborah for what have posted if the posts are related to the course that I am developing.

I have learned a lot from my friends this week. They give me a different view of using powerpoint in teaching although it is somewhat simple to me. The other hard-working week is waiting and I still face a lot of problems with my current job because it is the last weeks of an academic year. Good luck to me and peace to all of you!

Khang
KGCC

Busy week, but still fine.

Last week was awful to me. I had to spend about 2 full days for meetings and there will be three days with no power, including tomorrow.

I have searched and read many interesting ideas and theory about the intelligences which I have heard somewhere a long time ago. It could be interesting that I always tell my friends, teachers, and students that I am a visual learners. I can learn better when I see on my eyes (please show me what I need to do.) I think that I do not really understand what I should discuss this week on learning styles. Of course, I did but with a little bit hesitation. I think it is normal because the term "technology" this time means too broad (although it is clarified a bit).

I also have some minor problems with the alternative assessment and the rubrics. Since I am currently teaching some courses such as general English, Pronunciation, listening and speaking... and the course of "problem-solving skills" is what I am going to teach next semester (after September). And I am developing it every week and I try to focus on it. That is the reason why I am confused of what should I post.

I do not have much time to read my friends' blogs this week and hope I will have time to do it on Sunday. I have enjoyed reading many blogs. Blogging in this course teaches me a lot on how to help my students develop their self-studying, critical thinking, and writing. I remember the reasons that I started my first blog was that I want my students to spend time online doing something useful for their major, not in their own native language.

Oh, I have visited and read the rubrics from Rubistar and it is great too. However, I decided not to sign up for an account on it this week. I am having a lot of things to do this week with a very limited of free time. I have difficulties with the power and the computer I used could be from any Internet services. I should do it at home on my own computer so that the firefox can remember the account and password easily. Of course, it is safe at home.

To make sure that I will be back to Rubistar later, I already add link to my bookmark on Delicious. I also upload a file of rubrics on our wiki. But I am not sure that it is the right place to post it or not since Prem and Nalini posted them on the Participants files.

I wish for peace to all of you and a better luck of next week for myself.

Khang
KGCC

P/S: I am going to travel to the university that I took my M.Ed. in TEFL to attend the graduation ceremony by the end of this month.

It has been productive and I have my first WebQuest!

I have to agree that the tasks this week cost me a lot of time to accomplish. I think we - the participants of this course - should be given 2 weeks to finish all the tasks of this week.

Since it is the first time that I created a webquest, I found it interesting and I prefer to have some more practices in this matter. I do have a lot of plans NOW and webquest is a suitable place for myself and my students to try something new. Although I have heard about it before, this course brings me the opportunity to create it.

Webquest is good, but it may cost money if we would like to have more than one. Free account hits the limit of only one webquest. However, nothing could prevent me to continue on another webquest which will be very useful for my students. I create another account and what I need to do is to find a place to memorize the other username and password. It's fun.

I have visited the "Student Projects Sampler," by Susan Gaer and I am not able to find out the ways to accomplish my tasks this week until Ruslana posted the webquest on the Nicenet. It is much easier and I continue to spend more time in reading materials for my chapter in webquest, searching and downloading the appropriate information for it. It is a sort of failure to launch and when Ruslana provided a hint, it is much easier and brings more fun.

I have read most of the materials and links this week, but could not find time to share on the discussion of Nicenet. I will try to do all of them by the end of this weekend. If I do have some more freetime, I will keep finishing my second webquest as another practice.

I bet you agree with me that when we are finding something useful, we better try to do it several times. Doing that will facilitate it to become a skill so that I can do or share what I have learned to my colleagues in the future.

I still have a few posts ahead to accomplish and a thousand of chores in my office since it is the end of the semester. Good luck to me!

Thanks Deborah, another wonderful lesson and tasks for this week! But do you think that the due date should be modified this time?

Khang
KGCC

It is somewhat harder but useful!

I have to convince myself this week that the tasks are quite difficult but very effective. I was worry at first that I will not have enough time to accomplish everything in time (The power has gone out for 16 to 20 hours everyday and we have a long 4-day off for national holidays).

I commented on a friend's post about the issues in teaching language which share a lot of similarities with the context of language teaching in my country. I have been suffer for those situations even when I was student at university. My friend's issues again give me a broader overview of the Asian viewpoints and attitudes to language learning.

I have not spent time to read my friends' blogs yet this week. I will do it soon and give comments tomorrow. After what I have done, I think I should reflect what I learned first. And the lesson plan is still waiting for me to do it.

Basically, I have learned that when I focus on writing the issues and the ABCD objective for my class, it seems that I understand my students even more. The actions give me more opportunities to think thouroughly about what I should plan and teach for every lesson. I find that learning more about the course which I am going to teach and what I have practiced for planning every week trains me how to do my job better. The tasks always raise my awareness on what should be done and planned.

I also tried to access and register to a free domain in the free pages that Deborah suggested me. The web page is useful when it introduces many free hosting domains. I will be back soon to this one and figure out how to create my own sources.

Again, everything is fine with me although finding some websites for my course of "problem-solving skills", particularly for reading and writing, costs me a lot of time.

Khang
KGCC

A long great and fruitful night of learning!

It is never too late to learn. This week brings me a lot of new information and useful solutions for using technology in teaching.

I have learned and created a place for keeping the bookmarks which could be shared to many students and colleagues later. Delicious is an interesting place for posting the good and useful links as easy as my account to be created. This website resolve a disadvantage of the saved bookmarks on other web-browsers that the bookmarks will be deleted after a certain period of time. It is very useful when we can see that the Delicious account can be accessed at any time and anywhere while the bookmarks I stored on my laptop could not be opened when I used another computers during a working trip. Many useful and interesting URL have been shared and posted. I think that these useful tools would help me even more in my real teaching in the coming time after I explore them.

It could be seen that most of the participants this week showed their experiences in using technology as a useful tool for EFL teaching. I have learned many different ways of using, teaching, or integrating the skills to the web sites. Hundreds of excellent web-sites have been introduced. For further learning objective, I would prefer to learn from anyone of this class a way to post the MP3, wav. files, or videos to a free web host. This could help me create my own sources for listening courses in the future.

In addition, the readings are also very interesting and I could see different perspectives from their writings. For all what I found, the most valuable thing from their articles is the confirmation about the philosophy of using technology as a tool of EFL language teaching. It is not a teacher, but a tool. Using this tool with a clear purpose or objective brings us the most effective results.

It has been useful a lot after a week of reading the discussion. It is unfair for me this week that I do not have enough time to read and give comments to all of my friends' posts. I will continue doing that and hope that my friends pay some attention to my posts as well.

Khang
KGCC

It is effective!

It could be seen that this week task focuses me on starting and refining my teaching course which I tried last week. After one more week, I think that we have done very well the class requirements - discussion - which it is quite difficult of may not work well in my college where nobody has started it.

I actually learned from different class situations and settings from different classmates. Every of them brings me the different senses.

At first, I think it is also weird that the professor ask me to discuss about different searching engines since most of my friends use GOOGLE.COM. It is great when we know and share to the group more useful search engines; however, passive students in my college may only use the search engines that I recommend to them.

I also see more meaningful tasks in the way that I will work on my objectives and soon will be the teaching project at the same time of learning the course. This idea is significant to my teaching philosophy. We teach students what they can learn and apply as a trial when they are learning. This level of acquisition could be seen as one of the highest one in the Bloom's Taxonomy. We do what we learned and we learn from what we have done.

Khang
KGCC

Great Opportunity!

It could be nothing to everyone, but this class means a lot to me. I have actually learned about the design of this course. It seems a little bit easy, friendly, but professional. I have chances to learn from the excellent ideas of the participants as I am.

I also made an important decision today that I am going to create a class account. This class will start soon next week. This is the first time that I try to do something new at the same time that I am learning how to do it.

Khang