I'll miss you

Week 10

And this is it!

This is the end of our adventuresome learning experience of 10 weeks… Relieved but sad, conflicting feelings after this journey, these hard working weeks in which we have created empathy and bonds, and after which I am pretty sure I’ll never hear from some of you again…hope I’m wrong!

From ABCD objectives, to more effective web searching, skill-building websites, bookmarking, technology-enhanced lesson plans, PBL, webquests, rubrics, student-centred classes, interactive PPts, learner autonomy, one-computer classroom, mobile learning, teacher online resources, peer reviewing, MI and LS… well in ten weeks, that’s a lot and tough! I learned a lot every single week by reading and by investing my time and effort in all tasks to make them useful, purposeful and relevant for myself, my students and you.

I can’t really say what topics were most successful, useful, or relevant once I tried them all in classes and will keep on using them in different classes with different age groups and different levels of proficiency. All are equally successful, useful and relevant if used sensibly and it’s up to us teachers to do that part.

This last week I have equally accomplished the required tasks and readings. When asked about what other tools might the course have covered or I would like to suggest, I find it difficult to answer as what is new and interesting today, will very soon be outdated and overcome. This is particularly true in what concerns new technologies, gadgets and tools. I would say that it also depends on our interest and time to find out what is out there and how we can apply to teaching / our classes. After reading https://www.calico.org/html/article_683.pdf I came across this very recent article http://www.teslej.org/wordpress/issues/volume17/ej68/ej68a1/    

that I would strongly advise you to read and which has a suggestive question for a start “Is CALL obsolete?”. It does shed some light on this fast paced (and unstoppable) evolution process which was unpredictable in 2008 when the former article was published.

As I’ve stated before, this elearning course has been the most enriching and comprehensive I have ever been enrolled in. It has surprised me by its scope (honestly speaking I wasn’t really sure what to expect), fulfilled me professionally and has filled my days for the last couple of weeks because… it has been perfect! It has been a wonderful learning experience, under Donna’s supervision and guidance, to get to know and share so much with hardworking and committed learners / teachers as the participants in this course have proved to be and I do hope we can establish more international projects in the future.

Working with Karim and Zeljko virtually has been a most rewarding experience. Dedicated, focussed, really professional and inspiring as teachers, and real gentlemen – not else was expected but still worth my words of praise - I couldn’t have had better teammates! Hope this project and/or other projects take(s) us further and who knows? May be we can meet, one day, in person. Just like students say “That would be cool!” In the meantime, a poem, not dedicated to any lover as it was Yeats’s case, but dedicated to ourselves as committed teachers / learners as well as to our students: we all have our dreams and therefore tread softly!

“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

W.B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds 1899

Hope I have been treading softly on my students' dreams. I am thankful to them: I teach for them and learn with them every single day;

Thank you all for sharing and commenting; 

Thank you, Donna, for your constant support and encouragement.

Alex

Technology!

"Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important."
Bill Gates

Tool: http://muzy.com

Week 9

Almost there, only another week to go!

I may sound pleased – and I am – but at the same time, sad because this brilliant community of worldwide educators led by Donna is soon to come to an end and nothing will ever be the same.

The truth is that we’ve connected as teachers of English, some more closely than others, and I wish I had the chance to get to know you in person – at least some, to be reasonable, the ones closer to Portugal. Though Donna is so far away, I would really like to meet her to congratulate her personally or a follow-up with the same group of participants in one, two years’ time… As the word cloud above clearly shows, I am deeply grateful for the opportunity provided by the UO, by Donna’s omnipresence and words of encouragement. Also thankful to you, dear participants, you have been the heart and soul of this group!

Week nine is almost over and while MI and  LS have long been of my interest, I confess I feel a bit disappointed for not having managed to access some of the suggested links. The nicenet discussion is done and so is my final project, my biggest concern for the last days. And how relieved I feel – relieved for having finished it on time and for having managed to complete the tasks with the students - and so well – active learning via photography! I am really proud, and so are the kiddos and their parents. Couldn’t have been better, really! Hope the same happened with your projects and classes J By the way, I was thinking about downloading all documents, hope there is no problem about that.

Before we part ways, I have one request if I may…

In the first week, I had asked to tag your countries on the map, but there are only 8. It’s so easy:

1. place your cursor on the map

2. on the left hand side you’ll see some icons – click on the one that looks like a pen

3. click on edit

4. place the cursor on the map and double click to tag your country – you can choose the icon, leave a link with info to your country or simply write down your name.

5. In the end Save Tag / Save. Done!

 And again, thank you so much.

Learning!

"Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners."

John Holt

Tool: http://recitethis.com/

Week 8 (updated)

Another week has gone by and fast, very fast our course is coming to an end. I started the week struggling to finish my draft and didn’t even have the time to reread it attentively, which I’ll do this weekend once I fear I missed some details and some other positive aspects.
By now, I have already taken part in the nicenet discussion, explored the links shared by Donna and created a website which I intend to use with my classes for assignments, resources. In it, I included my ready to use resources for the lesson plan I shared with you a couple of weeks ago but added crosswords and a word search using some of this week’s new tools. Not much to read but a lot to create and that's what I really like - hands on activities and projects, always making the best possible use of everything learnt each week. Among others, I've also tried Hotpoatoes, the freeware that allows us to easily create a multitude of exercises for our classes; padlet, the blank wall that allows us / anyone to put up post-its about virtually everything; the ones I've used for this week's examples,  http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html and http://www.toolsforeducators.com/ which, in the twinkling of an eye and simply by introducing our data, allow us to create free crosswords, wordsearches, worksheets...for further consolidation and practice, or simply for fun - the only problem is that they are not embeddable, we can't save them for later use.
Yet to be done… Karim’s draft to read and gaining some courage to read Zeljko’s comments on mine. How I “envy” you who manage to accomplish everything so fast and well. It’s a compliment, believe me, because I am slow but I spend the whole day at school and only manage to have some time by Friday which means that I have to do a lot overnight.
Saturday I’ll read Karim’s draft and will reread mine surely to be rewritten. In the meantime, I have my children / students sending me material from photos to texts, ideas and comments always popping up. They are absolutely delighted with the blog and their virtual friends!
Best of luck to all and a great weekend,
Alex

Here I am again.
I’ve just checked here that it was indeed Charles Dickens who started “Tale of Two Cities” with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way...” Please don’t laugh at me, but as you have already noticed I have my ups and downs, and these antitheses somehow mirror my state of mind.
I have participated in a few teacher training courses both at home and abroad (the latter always with Comenius Funding) but this has been, by far, the best but also the most demanding course! As we have discussed in nicenet, every week I/we come across so many great sites, links, suggestions – real goldmines for some, pearls for others. I feel completely overwhelmed by the stuff that is shared and then also by the required tasks. I wish I had (much) more time to dedicate to this course as some of the sites will have to be further explored. I try to do my best, but by now I am feeling drained by so many hours of classes, school meetings and the course without breaks, holidays. Consequently, I get the feeling I am not doing my best and I’m not pleased with what I do. Those around me tell me I should not be as demanding with myself and therefore with students. Poor children… hope I haven’t set too high standards and expectations. They have managed to do what was expected, (victory! wow!) and on their own also as expected, but I wasn’t counting on so many obstacles with Flickr. Maybe my fault, maybe theirs for their dependency and lack of autonomy, but that’s what may happen when you do something for the first time, right? They are doing fine and I’m really pleased with their blogging, commenting, photo skills (almost 300 beautiful photos), text production... Learning the hard way, for the students as well as the teacher.
Now, back to the quote… on the one hand, taking all the pressure aside, after so much learning and sharing with such a supportive and encouraging group, I am now starting to feel I am going to miss this enriching and rewarding experience, this amazing contact with all of you. Even the stress.
I don’t think I can now measure the impact or the benefit this course will have in myself, my teaching and my students. One thing is certain: it will!
Thank you so much,
Alex

Autonomy!

Morpheus: "I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one who must walk through it." (from the movie "The Matrix")

Tool: http://wigflip.com/roflbot/