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or I would like to suggest, I find it difficult to answer as what is new and interesting today, will very soon be outdated and overcome.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/ 

Week 7

"…

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep."

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", Robert Frost

Familiar with these lines?

That’s exactly what I’m feeling right now: I still have a long way to go before being able to rest and sleep peacefully. Indeed I’m getting more and more excited, more and more restless with this project involving my students, Karim’s and Zeljko’s and our communication is getting more and more intense as we approach the project’s deadline.

If you check our class blogs (http://shiningasoure.blogspot.pt and http://1s1tetuan.blogspot.pt), you’ll see how busy our students have been posting and commenting. My students are very excited about being able to post themselves and not simply comment. This autonomy is something new to them and it’s doing wonders to their self-esteem. I am surprised myself (and definitely very pleased) with their enthusiasm and curiosity also towards their Moroccan peers – about their school, ages, clothing, headscarves and what it means/implies being a Muslim. Isn’t this real learning? Multiculturalism, diversity, tolerance all together! Their interest is such that Karim and his students will prepare an activity for us on Ramadan, Muslim traditions… I can hardly wait or disguise my excitement!

Though the weather has been hindering their photo taking, this blogging activity is also very encouraging and I’ve been supporting them all along by different means. In what concerns the project itself, by now, I already have some photos and when there are some more, I’ll see how to organise the material they provide. A bit slower than I was expecting, but still - that’s what it is possible. Even for the photos, my kids (as I affectionately call them) are so engaged and willing to do their best that they have asked parents for help who, in turn, have even asked the local representatives if they could provide older photos. Wow! So much buzz around the project. Delightful!

Well, I would go on and on, talking about this and haven’t even mentioned this week’s fantastic discussion topic on mobile technology. I believe I was the first teacher to allow the use of mobile phones in the English class and this completely took the students by surprise. They couldn’t believe their ears and looked around as if checking if they had listened correctly. Now it has become common place among my older groups but my kids, having heard that, have already asked to do the same ;) All started with a speaking activity: I asked them to take their cell phones and choose a picture they felt comfortable to share with others. In pairs or small groups they described the pic and the others would ask them more questions about it. It was real fun as they remembered why that particular photo was memorable and why they had taken it. Something personal and no time "wasted" to prepare it ;) Students love their mobile phones but I am no exception! I do whatever I can with it – from calls, texting, emails, audio recording, photo taking… all pics are automatically uploaded to my dropbox and at home I just have to organise the files in my laptop. Now you understand the need to create several accounts… to have more space to share and edit files ;)
So far, so good... but "miles to go before I sleep" and time for the project draft to have it ready for my fantastic colleagues and peer reviewers. How fortunate I am, don't you agree? (bet you all say the same ;))

Heart!

"The best teachers teach from the heart not from the book"

https://www.facebook.com/edutopia?fref=ts 

Week 6

This week has been dedicated to Interactive teaching, large classes and powerpoints to increase interaction. The amount of my learning just by reading the articles has been amazing and was complemented by doing, by creating an interactive powerpoint. For the first time, though, it took me ages to do my own PPt, first because I always want to develop materials that I’ll use in class and couldn’t decide what to do; second, well, you know, tired as I am and with tons of other things to do, it has been hard to focus long enough to feel pride of the final result. In the end, I came up with two (one for grammar, one for content) ready to use interactive powerpoint presentations because I really wanted to create a jeopardy game. Hope they are fine as I am unexperienced in this area :(

In the meantime, a new, outstanding experience!

As settled last week, I created a google doc (to be precise!) and shared it with Karim and Zeljko. And…voilà! Though late at night, after 2 or 3 minutes, Zeljko was accessing the document and after around ten minutes, it was Karim’s turn. We were all dead tired, Karim had just posted in our nicenet discussion… with our tired eyes and eyelids feeling heavy, all fighting sleep, yet, suddenly, there we were, the three of us, connected educators around the world, meeting virtually and collaboratively drafting a project – and well awake by then J Glorious technology!!!!!!! What an amazing experience with hardworking, dedicated, amazing colleagues I’ve never met in person. And that hasn’t happened only once, but twice already – and more virtual meetings are already scheduled for next week. There’s no time to waste, is there?

As for my own project, my students have been engaged in our blog and, weather permitting, they are willing to take photos and leave them in our new photo album. 

The same park in Summer and two days ago: flooded (as everywhere around
the country) with the ducks roaming around freely

Back to our collaborative document, by now, we have already exchanged links to our newly created class blogs so that our students can get in touch. I would like to ask YOU and YOUR students to do the same – visit and leave your comments at http://shiningasoure.blogspot.pt/ When students see that their blog is visited and commented by other teachers but, above all, by other students around the world, they’ll be over the moon to have a real audience, and their writing with that purpose in mind, will certainly increase and improve. So, please, if you have a class blog, share the link so that we can also do the same for you and your students. Even if you don’t have a class blog, I / we welcome you with open arms. Thank you.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all, wherever you are!


Here are freshly baked chocolate heart shaped muffins for my 3 Valentines.

Enjoy!!!

Teaching!

"If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow."
John Dewey

Tool: http://pinstamatic.com/#sticky 

Week 5

I wish days had more hours and weeks were longer so that I could do more. Right now the truth is that I can’t and tiredness is taking its toll.

I started this 5^th (and middle week) by reading the texts on rubrics and assessment, PBL and WebQuests, both the main texts and the additional resources and by Wednesday I had already managed to leave my post on Nicenet, our faithful asynchronous discussion platform.

Rubrics have definitely been the most difficult part. Not that they are more complex than what we have done before, but it’s just that I’m not used to creating them. I have already shared with you the link to my first rubrics and I’m pleased with them in spite of acknowledging they are very straightforward; my / our concern is that they have to be understood by our students and in my case, these are for a group of 12/13-year olds.

I have noticed that some participants are going to use WebQuests in their projects. Nice that we can share so many links of ready or almost ready to use links for WebQuests. About two years ago I created one you can find here (the links disappeared as the site underwent changes) which means I was already familiar WebQuests and PBL.  Nevertheless, I am already outlining a new one – which, in fact, has been in “lukewarm” (Portuguese saying), waiting for an opportunity to be created. If interested, please check this post, the basis for my new WebQuest, whose link I’ll share later.

While I consider WebQuests very rewarding and challenging for students (and for teachers, too), I have to choose a NEW technology tool for my project and that hasn't been that easy. On the one hand, I have to think I’m designing a project for tweens and therefore it has to be simple and doable also in what concerns my time. On the other hand, I have already tested so many tools that I feel at a crossroads… and back to the beginning of my post: if only I had more time!

Time to cheer up... Let me share with you a video that a good friend once shared to cheer me up - it worked and up to this day, it makes me smile every time I listen to it or watch it. Hope noone feels distressed...
Enjoy!

Reading!

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more things that you learn, The more places you'll go"

Dr Seuss, I can read with my eyes shut!

Tool: http://wigflip.com/roflbot/

Week 4

Week 4 is almost over and I’m feeling dead tired with so many test papers to correct and grade and our tasks here.

My new routine has been as follows: Mondays and Tuesdays are for readings; Tuesdays night for posting in the discussion and then only on Thursday night and on Fridays do I manage to focus on the course again. Along the way, one or two sleepless nights, which make me feel a bit, should I say, “stoned”.

In spite of such work overload, by now, I have already accomplished almost all tasks: I have left on Nicenet our weekly discussion post and have also commented on other participants’ posts; then the second task was to create a technology-enhanced lesson plan which I will be using soon; thirdly there is/was project task, a step further for our final project and this blog post. Yet there are still comments to write to your blogposts, which I’ll be pleased to make as soon as I finish mine.

Nevertheless, I must admit all has been fantastic and believe me I’m honest. I particularly enjoyed the readings this week once reading itself has been one of my life mottos. I have always been a reader and then a reading mother – I can proudly tell you that I have two sons who are as avid readers as I am (in Portuguese and in English!);

»» Infographic on how to get children to love Reading
(please click here to read the article and the info on the infrographic)

at school, I have promoted a lot of reading activities among my students and with other students at school and have, in the meantime, published some articles and made some presentations. If interested, please click here, here, here and here;  in this padlet, myself, colleagues and students have also been posting their book recommendations for a while also using different web2.0 tools.

Now, off to test correction! Hope to come back soon to read your comments ;)

Greetings from Portugal,

Alex

Change!

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

Mahatma Gandhi

Tool: http://tackk.com/ 

Week 3

It’s becoming common place but it’s the truth: the beginning of the week is always stressful with all the readings and the first discussion post for Wednesday. As digital as it gets, I have to download and print some of the documents… yes, I admit it, but I keep faithful to the printed word which means I spend the nights reading. Anyway, first responsibilities and commitments, and so far so good, as all has been very interesting.

This week the readings were on oral / aural skills and I couldn’t help thinking that I have neglected listening. I use many listening activities in classes but could do even more especially with authentic materials. Now that I think about it, even in my other blog, that has been the most neglected skill. In this sense, the readings were an eye-opener and the links shared a major asset: free lesson plans, printable worksheets, downloadable resources. Amazing. By now, all links and documents are already bookmarked in https://delicious.com/ .

I’m very keen on testing free tools and apps and our Serbian colleague shared an interesting link for a reading / listening activity that I immediately tried out (thank you Zeljko). The app is only available for Androids (version 4.1 and above) and iOS and the recording has to be real short. I prepared something for you: a book recommendation on “The Book Thief”, one of the books I read last year and whose movie adaptation has premiered this Thursday Jan 23^rd here in Portugal. Hope you like it.

Having done so, I still had to read a sample project report from former Webskills participants. I loved the one I picked but I kind of panicked! How I admire the colleague: so much work and so little time! I have so many plans for my class in order to integrate technology. I feel I am being too ambitious, or too naïve. That’s what I really like doing but after having read one project attentively and skimming two or three more, students need time to internalize deep changes from teacher-centred to student-centred learning, to become aware that computers are not only to play but also serve educational purposes, to know that manners matter in the Internet. What a Herculean task! Our colleagues have done wonders, now it’s me who wonders how and when I am going to accomplish a project I haven’t even started.

Let’s see the bright side: we are all in the same boat and have Donna on our side, right?

Have a great weekend.

Greetings from  Portugal,

Alex

Work!

" Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Gustave Flaubert

Tool: http://wigflip.com/automotivator/

Have a great week, y'all!

Week 2

Our second week is not over yet but there is already so much to say!

As soon as I read our week tasks and discussions, I tend to feel overwhelmed and wonder how I am going to do all this. After a while, all becomes clearer and clearer as I plan my week and manage priorities.

I started off with readings and concentrated basically on the web searching links and discussion. I was flabbergasted by this link - what a gold mine of resources, of search engines I had never heard of. Though (voluntarily) time consuming, it has been very enriching and once bookmarked, we can always come back to it. Not that I’m dismissing Google – no way! But at least we now know there are alternatives and very good ones indeed, suited to our own needs, narrowing our searches and therefore the time we may spend online searching.

I took longer for the remaining activities and tasks and most of the weeks it will be so. I try to do as much as possible on Mondays, but on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, I have such a busy schedule that I spend the whole days at school. Whenever I can, I’ll try to butt in, but I’ll definitely be more productive on Mondays and then again from Thursdays nights onwards.

I loved (re)reading Bloom’s Taxonomy – now the revised one – once I had studied it as a trainee teacher. Feeling familiar (again) with Bloom’s Taxonomy and the ABCD objectives, of all we had this week, I would say that writing measurable learning objectives as precise as Donna expected, was the most difficult part.

Describing a class was Project Task #1 and it wasn’t as simple as it seemed at first sight and again it took me longer than I expected as there was so much to say. Interesting were also the inevitable comparisons - school systems, facilities (or lack of them), number of classes / hours allocated to English or even the number of students per class. 

For the last fortnight that I’ve been feeling energized. Teacher training courses always spark lights but this one has made me rethink, revise and update much of what I have long taken for granted after over twenty years of teaching. And there is something else. No matter how diverse our origins, how diverse we all are, something unites us all: our eagerness to learn and participate, and (y)our selfless generosity in sharing!

Bless you all. Thank you,

Alex

Together!

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." Henry Ford

Tools: for the poster with quote: http://recitethis.com/; for the calendar: http://bighugelabs.com/

Wishing you all a successful week and a productive month,

Alex

Getting started - Week 1

Hi everyone!

By now, I have already joined Nicenet and taken part both in the introductions and in the first discussions. Thanks to Donna's emails and reminders, so far, so good; I don’t predict any problems here.

Now, here I am, ready to start blogging with all of you.

Though familiar with blogger and blogging, I have to admit that I'm both thrilled and anxious. Thrilled to be part of this group and to begin an exciting learning (and sharing) journey, but, at the same time, anxious if I'll be able to keep up and accomplish all tasks.

Believe me, expectations couldn't be higher! This journey will be a new one once this will be my first online course with colleagues from all over the world.

As I have just said, blogging has been in my routine for a couple of years now. I started this blog as a task for a teacher training course (just like now!) and enjoyed it so much that I am still running it :-)
Once I mentioned Thinglink in our forum and by means of introduction, I decided to roll up my sleeves and would like to challenge you all for an activity with this free tool that I've used before and with different teaching goals. I started by making a printscreen of a world map and uploaded it to Thinglink to make it interactive. Not all countries are on it - not even my own - but we all know exactly where we are. The challenge is then to ask you to tag your country on the map and add a link (can be for youtube, wikipedia, whatever) with some info about your country or the place where you are. I've left a youtube link for a video I created about Soure (the small village where I teach) with my own photos, as a way of publicizing the place but also to introduce vocabulary in a tourism course. Willing to join in? Place your cursor on the map, "edit" and double click on the map. In the end, please save.

PS: You might think this is a repetition of the activity in Donna's wiki, but my goal is to share this tool with you and more info on your countries and / or hometowns. Thank you all.