Week 10 - The Wonders of Technology

This final week seemed to pass very fast, especially when there was less pressure in managing its tasks which were easier in comparison with previous ones. I feel some relief  as a result of the work I did as part of the course and at the same time  I’m sad as I suppose I’ll miss discussions on Nicenet, reading and learning from my colleagues all over the world. It has been like an international exchange for me with many creative ideas, useful tips and great resources.

Through this course I acquired a lot of knowledge and skills related to integration of technologies into classroom. I like all topics brought up by our instructors Jodi and Sherie because I found in all of them something interesting for me, possibly appealing to my students and essential to enhance their language skills. Each opportunity including blog, skill-building websites, Delicious.com, PBL, WebQuests, rubrics, interactive PowerPoint, Nicenet, ANVILL, Google Sites, online exercises and many others is valuable for me because I familiarized myself with them, had experience trying many of them. I’d like to create a class blog or have my students create their blogs, organize discussions on Nicenet for them. I will definitely include online exercises into my lesson plans as they can be used online and offline. I also want to use PowerPoint presentations to introduce new topics to my students. In order to consolidate students’ knowledge of a broad topic and enhance their research and problem solving skills I'll try to create a WebQuest, this could be implemented as an extracurricular activity at any time during the academic year if there is lack of time due to my or the students’ busy schedule.

Of course, I’ll continue to explore the web’s opportunities to vary my lessons with technology resources appropriate to my students’ needs and share my ideas and skills gained during the course with other teachers. I hope all of us will work wonders with our students, while incorporating technology into classroom.

Thank you very much my dear teachers, Jodi and Sherie, for your guidance, advice, encouragement and hard work over ten weeks. I also appreciate my colleagues’ helpful suggestions and support and wish them all the best. 

Week 9 - Various Ways of Learning

Besides finishing my project, this week I studied learning styles which was the topic for discussion on Nicenet. I like articles for reading suggested by our course teachers. I took a great pleasure in reading most of them. There are so many ideas that were new to me and I consider them important and useful for my teaching practice. I familiarized myself with some learning styles that I haven’t known before. Thus I can describe the majority of my students as verbal, visual, interpersonal and intrapersonal learners. So to achieve effective results in teaching and learning, I should try to match my teaching techniques with these learning styles. The use of technology can facilitate learning in many ways. It offers many opportunities to cater to each student needs. I highly appreciate charts made by Hassan and Vijay as they will be helpful in finding the most suitable learning activity for the students. However as a person can possess several learning intelligences, the teacher should try to develop as many learning styles of each student as possible not inclining to deal with one or two learning styles so that students don’t experience difficulties in overcoming problems related to acquisition of knowledge and skills in their future life and career.


I’m very grateful to our teachers, Jodi and Sherie, who introduced me and my colleagues to a great diversity of valuable tools and resources. I will continue to explore web’s opportunities and use resources for teachers and students to give a special flavor to my lessons, keep my students interested in them and turn learning into a fun and interesting activity. 

Week 8 - A Challenging Week

I can’t believe that this week is over now. It was so busy and hard (especially for me with the frequent lack of electricity and when I managed that problem, there appeared another one, i.e., the internet connection at home was lost), at the same time the most fruitful in terms of gaining a lot through getting acquainted with ANVILL, discussions, project reports and tasks.

I like all the resources suggested for learning during this week. Among them the most unusual and new for me was ANVILL. I'm sad that I couldn't take part in webinar, but maybe next time I'll have a chance to participate in such kind of discussion. I think in order to use it properly and efficiently both teacher and students should have not only good computer skills, but also other technology related skills (working with webcam, making short video slides, etc.). Nevertheless I enjoyed looking through its opportunities and activities. They can so enrich students’ learning process if used in the appropriate way. You can record and even make a short video and upload it, that’s great!

Although I was late with my project report I managed to do it, so I’m glad. Then I did the peer review of my partners’ project reports. I hope that they won’t find my comments too critical. I wish them all the best, that’s why I tried to show them their weak points so that they would improve them.

I also posted my webquest on the wiki. I didn’t do this earlier because it needed some images to find and put on it.

And the last thing I did this week was creating interesting exercises through Hot Potatoes. It is also a great device to create your own exercises that will enhance students’ language skills by engaging them in funny and amusing activities. There are so many possibilities to teach and learn through the Internet that I wonder why some teachers are reluctant to spend their time and efforts on such valuable tool like computer and the Internet to achieve their goals in teaching. Otherwise, they and their students could benefit a lot from technology. I believe that using all tools and exercises presented on the course site will lead my students to better learning and high level of English knowledge. At least I hope so. 

Week 7 - One Computer's Value

Another week has passed and made me think of technology in more depth. Reading the suggested articles and my colleagues’ comments on this week’s topic, I learned more. Everything has its value. This is the case with one computer in class too. Here let me cite a well-known proverb in a different way, making some changes: “A computer in hand is worth two or more in the computer lab.” Just one computer can inspire us to not only try existing strategies, but also discover and explore the new ones. If your students have computers at home or opportunity to use it somewhere else, your work in one computer classroom becomes easier. The students can bring their findings, creative works, and presentations and show them to class. In their turn, the teacher and students have a chance to give their feedback and evaluate them. I mentioned some examples for one computer use, though there are many others. One computer classroom requires creativity along with other skills of the teacher. A creative approach to integrating technology helps teachers to vary and enrich their lessons with one computer as the only learning and teaching technology device in the classroom. Thus, try and succeed with one computer indeed. 


This week I continued working on my project with students. They wrote their resumes and cover letters as it was assigned them as homework. In class the students shared and made peer review of their work. Then I gave feedback to their work. The students listened to sample job interviews along with their transcripts to improve their aural skills and discussed how to act in a job interview. They tried to compose their own imaginary job interview and present it in class. 

Week 6 - First Steps of My Project

A few thoughts about PowerPoint presentation. Interactive PowerPoint presentation was completely new to me and I liked its interactive elements a lot both during reading and creating my presentation though it was not so easy for me. I think creating a good presentation requires many efforts and skills of a teacher which should be refined. Sharing others’ opinions on presentation was also of great help to me.

This week I’ve begun implementing my project “Finding a Good Job” with students. The goal was to enhance their speaking skills simultaneously tackling a really pressing issue. I have two classes a week with these students and I informed them of the upcoming project last week. So at our first lesson this week I asked students to answer these questions: Which English language skills are needed for better job application?  How can you evaluate which jobs are appropriate for you?  What steps should you take to achieve this goal? They thought for a while and tried to reply. In their answer to the first question they mentioned that they need to speak English fluently. The second question was a bit difficult for students to answer. They were confused; most of them told that they would be teachers. But it never came to their mind that teaching also varies according to the environment: one can work at school, college, university, private study center or training department of a factory. Thus I made some explanations in order to make students ponder over this. Concerning the last question they noted that they should write a resume and pass a job interview and if they succeeded they could get a desired position. I was pleased they could express their opinion to some extent. Then I divided a class into two groups of four, one group’s task being to search the Internet for sample resumes and another one’s for sample cover letters.  Students should bring their findings along with the links where they took them from. Next lesson we looked through what they had done and discussed which resources were reliable and appropriate to them. The two groups shared their experience and findings. Then I provided them with the links to sample resume and cover letter so that they can write their own resumes and cover letters. I also told them that if they needed any help they could ask any time coming to my workplace or by e-mail. I’m looking forward to students’ work hoping they can accomplish it well.  

Week 5 - Web's Opportunities

This week has brought many challenging ideas including PBL, webquests, and rubrics. Discussion on PBL caused me to think why our teachers didn’t use PBL and evaluate us through rubrics when we were students. Maybe it’s due to the fact that there were no such opportunities and the Internet wasn’t as popular as it is now. I wish we had studied our subjects that way. It’s an exciting experience for both a teacher and students. PBL helps to reveal students’ knowledge and skills that they themselves are unaware of. Webquests as a kind of PBL can serve as a good tool here. I can characterize them as detailed lesson plans in creation and progress of which students play a great role. As to rubrics, they motivate students to move towards success knowing their goals.

Sticking only to textbooks can be boring to students and teachers as well. So trying PBL can be a way out from such an unpleasant situation. As PBL is new to my students, it will require much effort on my part. However, it will give me a great pleasure to see my students highly motivated and intrigued by the lesson. In my opinion there’s no better reward for the teacher than students’ mastering a language on a high level.

Week 4 - Learning via the Net

This week is over. It has greatly impressed me with more things to learn. A vast variety of ideas of my colleagues from all over the world motivates me to make progress. Reading their opinions shared online, I get some useful tips for my lessons. The common saying “Time flies when you are having fun” is to the point in my case. Actually I have fun through learning, especially when I surf the Internet for any topic of my interest which can be TEFL, health, fashion, fiction, movies, national meals and so on. I found and bookmarked more useful links on my page at Delicious.com. While creating a technology-enhanced lesson plan, I analyzed the template suggested in detail. The steps we include in our lesson plan are the same with the exception of the learning styles. I found a complete description of the learning styles on the Internet in order to get a clear idea about them.

The process of gaining new knowledge via the Internet is exciting and amazing, though it isn’t always easy. But when you’re finished, you feel really relaxed and find pleasure in everything you’ve done so far.

Week 3 - More Resources Lead to More Skills

Each week gets us closer to the implementation of our project. And it’s great since we learn a lot while building our web skills. This week has impressed me much with its articles dedicated to CALL; lesson plans available online, skill building websites and a social bookmarking site Delicious.com.

I like reading very much. Although I get greater pleasure from reading fiction, articles on CALL have broadened my outlook from the English teaching aspect. I often use MP3 speaker with downloaded Internet resources for listening activities in my lessons. So several kinds of listening exercises suggested can contribute to a better understanding of authentic materials. Besides esl.about.com that I’ve visited before, I got acquainted with One Stop English and ESL – galaxy.com sites for English language teaching and learning. They will help me to vary my lessons with a plenty of resources.  In addition to the above, websites for improving listening, pronunciation and speaking skills provoked my interest in applying some of them to my lessons.

After creating a blog at www.blogger.com creating a page at Delicious.com wasn’t so difficult. By bookmarking my favourite sites at Delicious I have a chance to access my links in case they are accidentally deleted or there’s no opportunity to use my computer but any other.

I’ve been thinking about what my final project will look like. Looking through the sample project reports I became aware of what I am expected to do. Now I’m a bit more confident than before because I guess it is impossible to accomplish any task without being well-informed of its details.

Week 2 - My Review of the Week

During this week I’ve gained more knowledge and experience related to web search and EFL teaching. I found readings for the best web search very helpful and efficient while looking for any topic of my interest. I think they will save my time and efforts because short descriptions given to each search engine indicate what kind of resources and where you can get using them. Tech tips may also guide me through my Internet search though I’ve been aware of and tried some of them before (for example, omitting articles typing query in the search box).

I’ve always been wondering why we should distinguish between goal and objective. Of course, I supposed that goal implies a purpose in a broader, more general sense than objective. But now there is another type of objective which is completely new to me. ABCD objective… It helps me formulate my objective precisely including four significant ABCD elements. This model can be somehow like a reminder of what else to add or, on the contrary, to skip while planning your lesson, project or any task.

Discussions are also of great help to me since they can teach you a lot of things you haven’t known before. They make you strive for success doing your best towards your goals.  

I hope next week will be as fruitful and promising as this one. 

Week 1 - My reflections on using blogs.

Blog is a very useful tool in teaching. I carefully read the article “Blogging for ELT” and I’d like to share my thoughts about blogs. As there are three kinds of blogs, which are the tutor blog, the class blog and the learner blog, they each in their own way motivate teaching and learning EFL. The tutor blog encourages teacher to develop new methods, create assignments and new topics for discussion with the class. As it is stated in the article the class blog is a shared space where both the teacher and students are able to write their ideas. This blog promotes communication between teacher and students and raises their discussion and critical thinking skills. The learner blog helps students improve their writing and reading comprehension skills. In my opinion students can leave there their comments on what they have read or write an essay or other creative work such as a poem or a story. One of the blogging tools for teenagers is Live Journal http://www.livejournal.com and it is an online space for them to talk to those around them by writing and reading their community’s comments. 

Week 1. Starting blogging.

I've never created web blog before. It's my first experience. While doing it I learned some techniques like choosing templates, font sizes and styles, layout for a blog, etc. In short, I learned how to manage a blog. In my opinion the blog can be used as communication tool between a teacher and students where they can share ideas concerning EFL teaching.