(reading) week 3

Week 3 – reading week

This was definitely reading week. On Monday, I thought it was just a few reading pages, some sites to review and Nicenet postings will cover this week. And when I started downloading documents with much more pages than I expected, I was a little bit scare. Should I reach Wednesday first post? What about comments on project? When I started reading, I thought it was boring and too academic for me, but, later, if you survived academic part, it was pretty interesting, full with interesting and practical ideas that could give you an idea on how to improve teaching and teaching techniques. This week we were focused on aural/oral skills. To be honest, teachers sometimes don’t pay too much attention on listening and speaking skills. In Serbia, I often meet teachers who like to teach just grammar, sometimes reading or writing, but oral and aural skills are absolutely put away from their teaching practice. These readings tasks helped me to think more serious on oral and aural skills, and I even got an idea to make a workshop on this topic and point out the importance of these skills for our students.  

Another task was pretty amusing for me. We had to make comments on final project of previous participants. This was my first time to se final project looked like. Wow, we have to create these kinds of reports up to the end of February. Well, it is possible, isn’t it?  I paid attention on Zlatka’s report, although I have to read all projects reports in order to decide which one to comment.  What was so special, and absolutely new for me, was WebQests. The idea of the project was familiar to my personal view on teaching process, and reminded me on current situation in my country. Teacher centered classroom, passive learners, and unproductive school (educational) system. Famous Russian writer Tolstoy said “everybody thinks of changing the world, nobody thinks of changing himself …. “, and   Zlatka did it! She carefully thought about change way she was teaching and did amazing project that inspired me very much.

I have to post one comment more on Nicenet, and one comment on blog.... hmm, week 4 will begin soon, what should expect ? …. more (useful) readings? ….     

            

week 2 - reflection

this week (week 2) is pretty rush , very specific in terms of expectations from the participants. Rush, indeed,  but very innovative and week full of new discoveries for me.
We were asked to participate in online discussion about web-searching. What is there to discuss about?  Go to Google, type word and that's all. But, when I opened link that was offered in available materials on blackboard, I was really amazed. Very good structured link to "Finding the Best Search for your Information Needs." , and a search for the search could begin. I surfed (opened) tens and tens of the sites with different topics and ideas. I posted my feelings and impressions, and I've seen that many of my course mates share same feeling. Well, this was "funny" part of the week .

ABCD was (is) something I do not feel well about. A lot of background information you should know in order to formulate your ABCD objective. I was familiar with Bloom's taxonomy,  and using one of the searching engines and downloaded adjectives that could help me more to formulate my project on ABCD objective. Those adjectives clearly show the level of expected outcome either it was remember(knowledge), understand (comprehension), apply, analyze, evaluate or create as it is classified in the taxonomy. This helped me very much in whole process of initiating, formulating and reformulating my ABCD objective, and again , I'm still not sure about B(behavior), if I formulated it correctly. 

Describing class as our third discussion on Mr. Nicenet, wasn't so easy as I thought. It looked like simple and easy, but when you start to describe , so many details are popping up in front of your keyboard and you don't know simply what to do with all of them. My "artists", as I often call them, are group of very talented, creative young people. Of course , very often they are young, talented  and creative but extremely lazy people. This is a point where I take my chance to motivate them and give them acceptable tools for their laziness. Ideas, useful links , methodology learned on this course will be one of my secret tools that I'm going to offer them just when they need. I recently read , in additional readings for this week, that the idea is to roof all technologies into one revolutionary search engine, that "can find exactly what you’re looking for based on your location, your friends suggestions, the image you just uploaded, the song playing from your car stereo, the bar-code you just scanned, the things you already like and other non-traditional concepts".  This is , actually that all of my students (and some teachers) would like to have and experience.

Now, I'm writing blog. As you can see , blogging has recently become part of learning process for me.This is great chance to share your thoughts and observation with course mates and, of course, to get good or not so bad feedback from teachers from around the world.

zeljko ,
greetings from Serbia

        

week 1 - almost done

Now I know this was pretty good, relaxing and very interesting week. So many excellent teachers, from all parts of the world, that I'm going to share and learn together in next 10 (9) weeks , was the most fascinating facts for me. Multicultural and multinational surrounding would give me chance to step out of my comfort zone and see teaching process from another perspective.
In the beginning, I thought it was much more complicated, that involves a lot of computer knowledge and skills. Actually, I was afraid of unknown web maters, doing their serious job, somewhere across America. The first mails came. It was Donna writing, greeting us and inviting us to fill out some course surveys and asking us to introduce ourselves on our very first topic. I was surprised but lost and confused at the same time. I have done these kinds of surveys with my students, and it was brilliant, it gave me exact picture of my class and my students. Hm, are they doing absolutely the same thing with us?  Another mail came. It was Donna again. What a relief, she explained that she was going to lead us, step-by-step, through the week. Excellent! Thank you. I felt safe and sound.

Finally, we started with postings, sharing positive comments, ideas on our first introduction topic on nice-net. It was brilliant experience for me. I was reading comments, writing comments, exploring the ideas, and thoughts. I read so many, amusing, impressive stories and, finally found out something about my fellow teachers I’m at the course with. Discussions, our second topic on nice-net, were pretty interesting. There are excellent links and excellent teachers who are willing to share with other fellow teachers.

And then, imagine that, Mr. nice-net was down…. Mmmmm, we have to wait! …. after few hours everything was as before: “It-s alive! It’s alive!” I shouted.

Meanwhile,  Donna was very hard working and she sent us instructions, check lists, mails that Mr. nice-net is working (it’s alive) again and …. Wait! Remember Step-by-step! Now I’m writing this blog, than I have to link it on Dona’s wiki then I’ll comment posts on Mr. Nice-net discussion and blogs topic …. Hope I didn’t forget anything more???!! What about you?