Week 3

BOOKMARK YOUR FAVOURITE MATERIALS

On Monday I started to check the work assignment on building Teacher's Skill through the interactive web page. We were asked to study and practice four big sections along this week.

I begin to work at discussion board in our Nicenet running through del.ic.ious concept which I finally sign in into the web and making my own book marking page. It is useful in helping me to collect some websites that I frequently need for preparing resources before teaching. Even though I am now familiar with this kind of service, I am still eager to learn many aspects from the system gradually. Reading materials on how to use social book marking gave us clear idea about using del.ic.ious as one of the five top social book marking besides Furl, Notvous, Ma.gnolia, and Bluedot based on http://www.pandia.com/sew/327-social-bookmarking.html.

On the next topic on Aural / oral skill building I read all of the materials, but I focus on Lindsay Miller article on Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials. It is interesting as I face similar problems to what being explained such as listening has been less regulated to secondary position in the English Language Teaching classroom even though it is the language skill most often used in every day life, as said by Burely-Allen (1995).

Because of the class objective, since week 2 we have been discussing the final report project that should be accomplished by the end of this course. In this week we look closely to eight samples of final report from previous term students in how to write our final report. As for this discussion I chose to concentrate on Aleyda Linares (National Pedagogical University - Honduras) final project report. Compared to seven other authors this report is shorter than the others but still have chronological order in term of each content.

Generally speaking, this week is really full of learning process to build skillful and resourceful English Teacher in the web interactive learning era. I am curious to what happen next week?

Week 2

Week 2

The first week has ended on the 15 January 2012. It was great to know from Robert that we can use the so called Jupiter Grade to see our accomplishment of our very beginning stage of this online tasks. Once I made silly mistake on this Jupiter, so Robert should reset my account. But now, I can access this program again.

Motivated by the first result, I became more confident and ready to enter the second week tasks.On the nicenet we found that there were three  topics of discussion that we will have talked about.The topic on Search engine has opened my eyes to a massive range of search engines that we can operate beside google and yahoo. Robert serve us with www.noodletools.com where there are selection of comprehensive sites which practically different from google as it is classified into its own group of interest. I also learned from all the participants because they also introduce many other search engines, some that I browse are really good and recommended.I spread this information to all of my teachers mates or students at the Language Center, and I got extremely positive response from them.

Another topic for discussion this week is ABCD Objective which has given me a new experience in how we can create an effective classroom objective. A stands for Audience, B stands for behavior, C stands for Condition and D stands for Degree. It's not easy to create one as every component should complement each other. The best thing about making this objective is that the comments given by some member of the  class which can give us clue on how to find the weakness on that objective for possible revision. I assumed that the final test for an objective is with the students in the aimed class, if they understand and aware of the steps we ask them to do, means it quite reliable for our teaching and learning process.

As we  all know that the last topic of discussion for this week is our project plan. At our consent we know that starting from this week, we have to make a plan of our project, all the draft of the learners descriptions, the classroom setting, the course goal and students need should be considered. The idea here I believe that we prepare every single detail earlier so when we trap with  certain circumstances, we can get help from other member of this class to share or problem. I believe when we work seriously, there must be way out there waiting for us. The template of the project fortunately has been outline on page Building Teaching Skill Project Planning guide complete with project checklist and project plan rubric.

I know that I can not be perfect in presenting my opinions and honestly I perhaps don,t read all material completely as I might missed some of the pages from overlapped or piled material but I feel like learning thousands of new useful stuff here with all of you.

See you next time
Imas

The First Week Reflection

The letter regarding Class Opening information of the Interactive Web online course Winter 2012  was received on Sunday, January 8, 2012 at 4.30 in the morning, Indonesian time from the UO AEI (University of Oregon - Linguistic Department American English Institute).This online course has been rewarded by RELO (Regional English Language Office) under the American Embassy in the country. I am so grateful for this acceptance from this university so there will be wide opened opportunity for me and English teachers around the globe who have been previously registered  to build their skill through the Interactive Web. On top of that the improvement in English teaching approach is going to be relatively equal in almost all countries.
 
I considered that from Monday until the end of this week as a wake-up call, which gives some self evaluations and self-assessments to what have been done in my class. I also learned a lot from the tutor who has explained every problem that the students face in a supporting and respectful way so that participants are somehow motivated to study on their own phase. The reading resources provided by UO AEI during this orientation week ease the process in comprehending a lot of tasks which actually stated clearly in ample explanations. At the time, we did not understand even a basic term like Blog, the UO provided  us with Word document  (rules and rubrics), PDF files on know how and websites of practical examples to solve our curiosity.The communication between tutor to participants and participant to participant are accommodated by nicenet where the topic of discussions has been assigned prior to the conferencing session.


The awareness of using tools such as Nicenet, Wiki page and Blog like this one believed to be a good initial route toward a well developed online course. It is surprising that we could make comments to a real stranger a week ago as easy as giving comments to our classmate. That is unconsciously said on the second point of the ground rules for our discussion that  everyone should feel safe here because we respect each other.

The first week assignment has also made it possible for browsing and visiting some  inspiring sites to facilitate English teachers in delivering their material to student in a better interaction. Now, many ideas come around from the vast provision of the English resources easily accessed by English teachers including the one in the remote areas. Colorful pictures, videos, sounds have given Web novice teachers a space to imagine how a modern virtual classroom teaching in front of them.

 I have expectation that I will be able to achieve my objective which is relatively in line with the learning goal of this program. I rest my mind with my anonymous quote as "Hope make things work and Love make things beautiful".

I look forward to welcoming you and your comments soon.

Hello World!!!

I am here now.
If you want to visit my blog, I would be more than happy to welcome you!