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.