Dear Courtney and all friends,
The time has come to say good bye to all of you and we should bow down to the law of nature. However, the sweet memories will retain as ever lasting marks within me. Courtney, the Course Coordinator was really a role model. We all wanted to be one like her.
After introducing ourselves we started with posting to the Nicenet and Blogging.The mere concepts turned into real life activities. The ground rules we all presented along with self introduction were like a revelation of character of each one. We developed strong bonds despite the fact each one lives thousand miles far away from the other.
Each week we had to post on Nicenet and the on the Blogger. From the very beginning we were informed about the final project. Commenting on the posts of the peers once again was a marvelous experience and we learned how to learn.
Nicenet, ABCD model, Delicious page, Noodle tools, Rubi star, Web quest, Level of Technology Integration were completely unheard concepts for me. Blogging, Web Searching ,Project Based Learning, Using Technology in Large Classes, Rubrics, Learner Autonomy, One Computer Classrooms, Online tools for Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing and Grammar, Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences are known but little tested concepts.
The interesting revelations about ourselves were made through Learning Styles and Levels of Technology Integration. They were pleasant surprises for me which can be useful throughout my teaching career. Moreover, I should make a note of Technology in Large Classes. They would have been frightening experiences for me forever, hadn't the web sites been provided through the course material.
I was asked to conduct a one day workshop on the web skills by the Coordinator, Extension Courses in English, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.Since I feel confident,I agreed to do it for about 50 teachers in January 2013.
All these things will be real life experiences to me because of you Courtney. You are unique and the way you conducted the course impressed me a lot.Here, I would be failing in my duties if I could not mention about my course mates. I shared knowledge, attitudes and skills with you too.Thank you very much.
Wish you joy, happiness and victory in all your future endeavors.
Disna.
Disna's First Blog on Blogger
Friday, December 7, 2012
Monday, December 3, 2012
Reflections of week 9
Dear all,
It's so painful to me to think the course is nearing to its end .But according to the law of nature everything started should come to an end.In spite of the busy schedule,immense happiness i derived from the course cannot be expressed in words.I was fully engrossed and I cannot think of a life without readings,discussion threads and other web resources.
My husband and the son had hard times when I was doing my work .But two of them were very cooperative and encouraged me to the very end.Nicenet forum,blogger,google docs.were all new experiences to me.For a long time ,I wanted to create a class.I never asked anyone and I was waiting till the right time comes.I'm so lucky that I got the chance to follow the web course through a friend of a mine.I worked enthusiastically,to get good grades from Courtney, my dear lecturer.I was fully engrossed with technology enhanced lesson plans,project Based Learning,Alternative Assessment,learner Autonomy,Rubrics and Blogging.Though the work load was very heavy,I didn't neglect my routing work till the middle of the seventh week .
I had a fall on the 14thNovember and my right hand was fractured I was in tears not for the pain but fear of not being able to finish my assignments at the web course.Courtney was informed the situation by my son ,I was permitted to do the assignments of week7 later.If not the words of encouragement by Courtney,the course would have been only a dream.Apart from the assistance of Courtney, I would never forget the support I got from the school. The principal, English teachers at the Advanced Level section and my dear students assisted me a lot. I conducted the class for the students whom I selected to do the project of the course. The students were encouraged by the course work. First they wrote on the class blog and then on their own blogs. I was amazed at their creativity of them and actually it was the students who encouraged me to fulfill everything on time, They wrote summaries and their future plans and commented on the work of the peers. Beside, they did online grammar exercises. They enjoyed their work to the maximum and were offering the full support.
. They were learning to learn and understood that learning was a process. Furthermore They realized the responsibility of learning lies in their hands too. They loved self and peer correction.I realized that technology related change worked out very well and they worked enthusiastically..It was the first time that they wrote on a blog and it was a big experience for them. Furthermore,they understood the correct way of using tenses and prepositions. They expressed their happiness when they got a chance to upload images on the blogs.Catering to the different learning styles may be secret of success.
We, the participants of the course should be grateful to Courtney, the Coordinator of the course. She has planned the course from simple to the complex set of information and tools. I had to seek her assistance several times and she readily offered me help .. To be frank, she is the guiding star throughout the course.I was amazed by the maturity and the tolerance she displayed to the very end. Here, I would be failing my duties if I did not say anything about my peers. Yes,my peers,you all are definitely wonderful friends and many a times I was benefited a lot by you.
Let me conclude wishing you every happiness and victory in all your future endeavors .Best of luck.
With lots of love,
Disna
Dear all,
It's so painful to me to think the course is nearing to its end .But according to the law of nature everything started should come to an end.In spite of the busy schedule,immense happiness i derived from the course cannot be expressed in words.I was fully engrossed and I cannot think of a life without readings,discussion threads and other web resources.
My husband and the son had hard times when I was doing my work .But two of them were very cooperative and encouraged me to the very end.Nicenet forum,blogger,google docs.were all new experiences to me.For a long time ,I wanted to create a class.I never asked anyone and I was waiting till the right time comes.I'm so lucky that I got the chance to follow the web course through a friend of a mine.I worked enthusiastically,to get good grades from Courtney, my dear lecturer.I was fully engrossed with technology enhanced lesson plans,project Based Learning,Alternative Assessment,learner Autonomy,Rubrics and Blogging.Though the work load was very heavy,I didn't neglect my routing work till the middle of the seventh week .
I had a fall on the 14thNovember and my right hand was fractured I was in tears not for the pain but fear of not being able to finish my assignments at the web course.Courtney was informed the situation by my son ,I was permitted to do the assignments of week7 later.If not the words of encouragement by Courtney,the course would have been only a dream.Apart from the assistance of Courtney, I would never forget the support I got from the school. The principal, English teachers at the Advanced Level section and my dear students assisted me a lot. I conducted the class for the students whom I selected to do the project of the course. The students were encouraged by the course work. First they wrote on the class blog and then on their own blogs. I was amazed at their creativity of them and actually it was the students who encouraged me to fulfill everything on time, They wrote summaries and their future plans and commented on the work of the peers. Beside, they did online grammar exercises. They enjoyed their work to the maximum and were offering the full support.
. They were learning to learn and understood that learning was a process. Furthermore They realized the responsibility of learning lies in their hands too. They loved self and peer correction.I realized that technology related change worked out very well and they worked enthusiastically..It was the first time that they wrote on a blog and it was a big experience for them. Furthermore,they understood the correct way of using tenses and prepositions. They expressed their happiness when they got a chance to upload images on the blogs.Catering to the different learning styles may be secret of success.
We, the participants of the course should be grateful to Courtney, the Coordinator of the course. She has planned the course from simple to the complex set of information and tools. I had to seek her assistance several times and she readily offered me help .. To be frank, she is the guiding star throughout the course.I was amazed by the maturity and the tolerance she displayed to the very end. Here, I would be failing my duties if I did not say anything about my peers. Yes,my peers,you all are definitely wonderful friends and many a times I was benefited a lot by you.
Let me conclude wishing you every happiness and victory in all your future endeavors .Best of luck.
With lots of love,
Disna
Monday, November 26, 2012
Week8-Reflections
I feel very happy and excited since I learned so many things .Experience showed me the correct path many a times throughout the week.I explored the the same website several times and learned those facts.From the very beginning of life, I l used to hard things rather than easy things.I believe these hard earned things made me what I am today .The web skills I learned are priceless assets to me.
I found out Nice net,,Blogger ,Google docs very useful tools in creating classes.They each serves different purposes.Nice net is the best for discussion forums.Blogger can be used to comment on work of each other. Google docs is very user friendly method of sending messages and documents to people. Specially, students feel that it is a reason to be proud to use all these methods. They consider themselves autonomous learners.
Exploring Tools for Educators,Lantern fish,Easy Test Makers,Hot Potatoes 'Crossword Puzzle Games are all great learning experiences. Easy Test Makers is the favorite of mine as it saves time. Moreover,it offers various different exercises such as Multiple Choice, True/False,Filling in the Blanks,Matching etc. Cross Word Puzzle Games are really assets to the teachers as well as to the students.
I must appreciate Blogging as it is the method which I was guided on the correct path.When other methods were far reaching goals for me, Bogger showed the way to educate young 30 teenagers in their writing skills. The students who used to write in their exercise books marched a long way with me and today they write on their own Blogs.Oh what an achievement it is.!In this busy fast moving world,they are in the process of creating the History.and we ,teachers should play our part correctly for the betterment of whole mankind.
I feel very happy and excited since I learned so many things .Experience showed me the correct path many a times throughout the week.I explored the the same website several times and learned those facts.From the very beginning of life, I l used to hard things rather than easy things.I believe these hard earned things made me what I am today .The web skills I learned are priceless assets to me.
I found out Nice net,,Blogger ,Google docs very useful tools in creating classes.They each serves different purposes.Nice net is the best for discussion forums.Blogger can be used to comment on work of each other. Google docs is very user friendly method of sending messages and documents to people. Specially, students feel that it is a reason to be proud to use all these methods. They consider themselves autonomous learners.
Exploring Tools for Educators,Lantern fish,Easy Test Makers,Hot Potatoes 'Crossword Puzzle Games are all great learning experiences. Easy Test Makers is the favorite of mine as it saves time. Moreover,it offers various different exercises such as Multiple Choice, True/False,Filling in the Blanks,Matching etc. Cross Word Puzzle Games are really assets to the teachers as well as to the students.
I must appreciate Blogging as it is the method which I was guided on the correct path.When other methods were far reaching goals for me, Bogger showed the way to educate young 30 teenagers in their writing skills. The students who used to write in their exercise books marched a long way with me and today they write on their own Blogs.Oh what an achievement it is.!In this busy fast moving world,they are in the process of creating the History.and we ,teachers should play our part correctly for the betterment of whole mankind.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Week 7 My reflections
I had to start very late due to the fall I had. My right arm was fractured and still I'm not very well fit enough to work. ' Time and Tide waits for no man ' and I started .because I didn't want to be left alone..
The articles on learner autonomy were really interesting. I learned a lot. I understood an autonomous learner can do wonders in the world with the help of an autonomous teacher. I was specially impressed by the article ' Learner Autonomy : Bird-in-the-hand or Bird-in-the-bush '. The author sends us a message to be an autonomous teachers..
Project
Background:
It is a class of 30 boys who sit for the G.C.E. advanced Level Examination.. They are all teenagers of 18 years old. They don't care about their grammar when they speak and their writing skills are low. Because their main aim is getting through the examination and entering the campus, they are not highly motivated to learn English.
Setting :-
The class room and the interactive white board room.
The goals of the course :-
- to develop the grammatical competence to contribute to accuracy and fluency.
- to write precisely connecting all the given ideas.
- to develop capacity to work in groups.
- to develop capacity for analysis and synthesis.
- to develop independent learning making them autonomous learners.
- to develop their critical thinking by commenting on others writing.
Technology related change project goals :-
- to access and write creatively on the blog which the teacher has created for them.
- to create their own blogs according to the instructions given by the teacher.
- to educate them the clear purpose for creating and posting to the blogs.
Needs of the learners ;-
- to develop writing and reading skills to communicate more effectively in English.
- to develop technology skills along with their English language skills.
- to be more resourceful and autonomous learners.
Achievements up to now :-
- They were highly motivated.
- They were able to write precisely, accurately and appropriately.
- The overall ability of critical thinking was fairly good.
I'm proud.myself.Everything was possible .because of you Courtney... Thanks a lot Courtney and all the course mates.
Disna
I had to start very late due to the fall I had. My right arm was fractured and still I'm not very well fit enough to work. ' Time and Tide waits for no man ' and I started .because I didn't want to be left alone..
The articles on learner autonomy were really interesting. I learned a lot. I understood an autonomous learner can do wonders in the world with the help of an autonomous teacher. I was specially impressed by the article ' Learner Autonomy : Bird-in-the-hand or Bird-in-the-bush '. The author sends us a message to be an autonomous teachers..
Project
Background:
It is a class of 30 boys who sit for the G.C.E. advanced Level Examination.. They are all teenagers of 18 years old. They don't care about their grammar when they speak and their writing skills are low. Because their main aim is getting through the examination and entering the campus, they are not highly motivated to learn English.
Setting :-
The class room and the interactive white board room.
The goals of the course :-
- to develop the grammatical competence to contribute to accuracy and fluency.
- to write precisely connecting all the given ideas.
- to develop capacity to work in groups.
- to develop capacity for analysis and synthesis.
- to develop independent learning making them autonomous learners.
- to develop their critical thinking by commenting on others writing.
Technology related change project goals :-
- to access and write creatively on the blog which the teacher has created for them.
- to create their own blogs according to the instructions given by the teacher.
- to educate them the clear purpose for creating and posting to the blogs.
Needs of the learners ;-
- to develop writing and reading skills to communicate more effectively in English.
- to develop technology skills along with their English language skills.
- to be more resourceful and autonomous learners.
Achievements up to now :-
- They were highly motivated.
- They were able to write precisely, accurately and appropriately.
- The overall ability of critical thinking was fairly good.
I'm proud.myself.Everything was possible .because of you Courtney... Thanks a lot Courtney and all the course mates.
Disna
Monday, November 12, 2012
Week6 My reflections
Dear Everyone,
It's indeed a pleasure to finish my assignments on time.I was fascinated by the discussions on engaging students and numerous ways technology can be used to teach large classes. I read the articles carefully and accomplished my tasks very well.Out of all the articles ,I particularly liked the article on Enhancing Learning by Engaging students from Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw .The techniques described there, are forms of alternative assignments.Basically I learned that "learning is a social process that occurs through interpersonal interaction within a cooperative context" as suggested by the given quotations on http:/www.ntlf.com/html/lib/quotes.htm.I was educated about cooperative and collaborative learning experiences ,and small group informal learnjng activities.Specially I like think-pair-share, and concept maps which can be used in both brain storming and feedback sessions
.Creating interactive Power point presentationswas attracted by me a lot.I created my first interactive power point presentation .I felt very excited. It was on summarizing.
The third and last assignment was on the project task.Certainly the whole week was dedicated on this and I had a very tough time.I was encouraged by the problems.Earlier ,I was planning to show a video presentation on edx organized by Harvard university and MIT.But later I had to change the topic and conducted a multimedia presentation on EDEX2012) .This is an annual event organized by the Royal College union(my own school) It is a fantastic source of information on career guidance .Certainly it was an event they all had participated earlier and they wanted to know the details once again.It was a collection of chances they can have after the advanced level Examination.Students were particularly interested in knowing about scholarships by foreign universities.I told them about the discussion forum . Here Courtney , my dear lecturer ,suggested me to use nicenet as a tool.Here I was confronted with some practical problems and I couldn't meet the needs of the students.Ultimately I created another Blog and asked them to write on it about their aspirations of their future career.(based on the information they got from the multimedia presentation)thirty students posted their the reflections on the Blog.on the relevant page and commented on their ideas.The students who commented on the Blog were taken for the project ,though the multimedia presentation was shown to about 75 students.Next I created a power point presentation on summarizing and showed to those 30 students .and instructed them to write a summary on the relevant page of the Class Blog. (They were taken to the Interactive White Boardroom.)They all have done it and I commented on it.I thought of giving them some more texts to be summarized.Meanwhile they would be instructed to create their on blog.sfor future activities.Definitely with loads of difficulties I was able to accomplish my tasks .Hope Courtney would apologize to me for not informing the details beforehand.
I learned a lot through my experiences.!Thank You Courtney and all friends.
Warm regards,
Disna
It's indeed a pleasure to finish my assignments on time.I was fascinated by the discussions on engaging students and numerous ways technology can be used to teach large classes. I read the articles carefully and accomplished my tasks very well.Out of all the articles ,I particularly liked the article on Enhancing Learning by Engaging students from Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw .The techniques described there, are forms of alternative assignments.Basically I learned that "learning is a social process that occurs through interpersonal interaction within a cooperative context" as suggested by the given quotations on http:/www.ntlf.com/html/lib/quotes.htm.I was educated about cooperative and collaborative learning experiences ,and small group informal learnjng activities.Specially I like think-pair-share, and concept maps which can be used in both brain storming and feedback sessions
.Creating interactive Power point presentationswas attracted by me a lot.I created my first interactive power point presentation .I felt very excited. It was on summarizing.
The third and last assignment was on the project task.Certainly the whole week was dedicated on this and I had a very tough time.I was encouraged by the problems.Earlier ,I was planning to show a video presentation on edx organized by Harvard university and MIT.But later I had to change the topic and conducted a multimedia presentation on EDEX2012) .This is an annual event organized by the Royal College union(my own school) It is a fantastic source of information on career guidance .Certainly it was an event they all had participated earlier and they wanted to know the details once again.It was a collection of chances they can have after the advanced level Examination.Students were particularly interested in knowing about scholarships by foreign universities.I told them about the discussion forum . Here Courtney , my dear lecturer ,suggested me to use nicenet as a tool.Here I was confronted with some practical problems and I couldn't meet the needs of the students.Ultimately I created another Blog and asked them to write on it about their aspirations of their future career.(based on the information they got from the multimedia presentation)thirty students posted their the reflections on the Blog.on the relevant page and commented on their ideas.The students who commented on the Blog were taken for the project ,though the multimedia presentation was shown to about 75 students.Next I created a power point presentation on summarizing and showed to those 30 students .and instructed them to write a summary on the relevant page of the Class Blog. (They were taken to the Interactive White Boardroom.)They all have done it and I commented on it.I thought of giving them some more texts to be summarized.Meanwhile they would be instructed to create their on blog.sfor future activities.Definitely with loads of difficulties I was able to accomplish my tasks .Hope Courtney would apologize to me for not informing the details beforehand.
I learned a lot through my experiences.!Thank You Courtney and all friends.
Warm regards,
Disna
Monday, November 5, 2012
Dear Courtney and all,
When things happen in the way we want, we feel happy.I did all the assignments in time.As usual, I learned many things in the 5th week. Creating the rubrics as guided by the Rubystar is the discovery of the week.I learned the Project Based Learning,and Alternative Assessment in depth..To be frank,I had an idea of Project Based Learning earlier.But this time I learned all the aspects of it.I was attracted by the Alternative Assessment too. Communicative Competence is very popular in Sri Lanka and teachers strive hard to get good results.I love all the aspects of it. Sri Lankans never give up things until the expected aims and objectives are achieved.All these things were possible to me because of Courtney and my dear course mates.Thank all of you.
May all of you be blessed by nature !
Bestwishes,
Disna
When things happen in the way we want, we feel happy.I did all the assignments in time.As usual, I learned many things in the 5th week. Creating the rubrics as guided by the Rubystar is the discovery of the week.I learned the Project Based Learning,and Alternative Assessment in depth..To be frank,I had an idea of Project Based Learning earlier.But this time I learned all the aspects of it.I was attracted by the Alternative Assessment too. Communicative Competence is very popular in Sri Lanka and teachers strive hard to get good results.I love all the aspects of it. Sri Lankans never give up things until the expected aims and objectives are achieved.All these things were possible to me because of Courtney and my dear course mates.Thank all of you.
May all of you be blessed by nature !
Bestwishes,
Disna
Monday, October 29, 2012
Hi everyone,
I have come to the end of another marvelous week.Every week, at the beginning I can't start due to lot of responsibilities and commitments in life.But I know I should play my part here, for my own professional development and the betterment of the students and in more general terms to the whole society.However hard thing sare,I'm ready to face the challanges in life .
First let me write down the tasks I have accomplished in this week.
1.Reading and writing skill building.
2.Technogy enhanced lesson plan
3.Some issues/problems of the students whom I intend to do my project.
4.Comment the work of a colleague in the work.
To do the assignment on reading and skill building ,I used following resources.
The article on using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction
by Jarek Krajka.
I explored the sites of
http://www.brekingnews.com
http://fog.ccs.edu/~fried
http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html
This time I ,not only did the assignment very well,but also joined the Discussion Thread. There, I thanked Jasmina who has mentioed a website named "coolstool"Indeed it's a marvelous site ,which offers web tools.
My second achievement was writing a technology enhanced lesson plan .I decided to include a lesson plan from my pet area,that is writing.Here I was influnced by Courtney and Evelyn. As Evelyn I too,permitted my students to use the class Blogger to write their biographical essay and the Delicious page to add their links.When I was able to to upload my file in a Google document, I felt proud of myself.
Next,it was the turn to write some issues/problems of the set of students whom I intend to do my project.There,I mentioned that they are a set of students who do not care about grammar rules when expressing themselves.Moreover,I didn't forget to mention their enthusiasm to learn through technology enhanced lessons.
Finally, I commented on Rustam's blog who accomplished all tasks very successfully.
1.
I have come to the end of another marvelous week.Every week, at the beginning I can't start due to lot of responsibilities and commitments in life.But I know I should play my part here, for my own professional development and the betterment of the students and in more general terms to the whole society.However hard thing sare,I'm ready to face the challanges in life .
First let me write down the tasks I have accomplished in this week.
1.Reading and writing skill building.
2.Technogy enhanced lesson plan
3.Some issues/problems of the students whom I intend to do my project.
4.Comment the work of a colleague in the work.
To do the assignment on reading and skill building ,I used following resources.
The article on using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction
by Jarek Krajka.
I explored the sites of
http://www.brekingnews.com
http://fog.ccs.edu/~fried
http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html
This time I ,not only did the assignment very well,but also joined the Discussion Thread. There, I thanked Jasmina who has mentioed a website named "coolstool"Indeed it's a marvelous site ,which offers web tools.
My second achievement was writing a technology enhanced lesson plan .I decided to include a lesson plan from my pet area,that is writing.Here I was influnced by Courtney and Evelyn. As Evelyn I too,permitted my students to use the class Blogger to write their biographical essay and the Delicious page to add their links.When I was able to to upload my file in a Google document, I felt proud of myself.
Next,it was the turn to write some issues/problems of the set of students whom I intend to do my project.There,I mentioned that they are a set of students who do not care about grammar rules when expressing themselves.Moreover,I didn't forget to mention their enthusiasm to learn through technology enhanced lessons.
Finally, I commented on Rustam's blog who accomplished all tasks very successfully.
1.
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