Webskills I learned through the 10 weeks in the E-Teacher Course..

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Last week in Webskills Course..

The final week, it is!

The main topic for this week was centering on the use of technology integration matrix. It is a very practical and clear way for integrating technology. It provides teachers with all what they need in order to follow a successful gradation of integrating technology.



Through these 10 weeks, I have built a great knowledge about technology integration in teaching.I really find my self incapable of counting the benefits that I gained through this course. It is really an opportunity that I can not afford. Being exposed to many topics regarding integrating technology in teaching, now by the end of this course, I feel like I am a new teacher that is growing once again. Reviving and renewing the teaching materials I would use in teaching, adding more teaching techniques to the ones I used before, discussing many issues of teaching with teachers from all over the world and knowing much more about my students and how to keep them on the right road, I am now definitely a new teacher with more modern and brighter insight.

This is the last week in our course, but This will not be the last post in this blog!

Learning Styles

Week 9

The course is now approaching to an end. Standing at the borders of week 9, I am now writing this report. Sailing across the see of this course,  I can clearly see a mountain of knowledge acquired behind and another new land on week 10 to be explored. 



This week, we had to submit the final draft of our project reports or project plans. The main topic discussed posited the students' learning styles and the way to address them through using technology.  

It was very important this week to know about students' learning styles from different angles. To consider different learning styles can guarantee an enormous success. In addition, encouraging the students to show their learning styles helps the teacher a lot in determining the materials used and how to teach them.

Days Until Final Projects Due!!

Week 8

 days Until Final Projects due!!!

 

That is really unbelievable. I can not imagine how fast this course is going, and I still doubt that week 8 is finished!!

This week was a little bit stressing. It included some important topics of discussions and tasks to be done. They are as follows:

1-    Participating in the discussion about exercise generators in at least two post on the class on Nice net.

2-    Create a template for a handout, exercise, or a class site.
3-    Provide a draft of the projects and share them with the partners in order to give each other feed back and evaluation.

4-    Reflect on this blog, as it is the habit.

This weeks' topic about exercise generators was really important mainly because it gave us knowledge about how to create websites, online exercises, puzzles, and wikis to be used in teaching. It reflects the way these elements contribute in encouraging learners' autonomy. The projects are now about to be ready. Every member in the course have now created a draft which is evaluated by his/her partner the previous week.

It is 5 days until final projects due!!!

This week is successfully achieved, after exposing us to new information about developing our teaching skills. The week inclded:

_ Reading about learners' autonomy and participate in the discussion of the same topic.
_ Posting and a link related to the Padlet account of the course, sharing it with the other participants.
_ Finding a partner for sharing and discussing the projects.
_ As usual, posting this reflection of the week to the Blog.


The most important thing that I acquired through this week is the way we can develop our students' learning through encouraging them to be autonomous. Motivating and giving students a hand in sharing their opinions about what they learn is so important for keeping them always alert for further learning.

Another new element that I knew in this week is how to use Padlets. It is the first time for me to know about Padlet. It is a very interesting website that will help me a lot in my project, mainly because of its advantage of being so simple and easy to be used.

This a very interesting video about the importance of learners' autonomy!!

Project task 5: Implementing Technology Tools in the Classes

In my project for this course,Through using technology tools, I am trying to solve some problems that I am going to face when teaching a course called “Developing Literary Criticism through Creative Writing” for the forth level in the University. The problems that I am trying to solve are:

1.       Rigid and annoying nature of the course

2.       Timing

3.       Lack of resources

As I am not teaching this course at the moment, I am going to reflect on the plan of the course and what I expect to happen through implementing technology.

First, for solving the problem of the rigid and annoying nature of the course, as I proposed before, I am planning to use web-quests as a media for using PBL Project based learning technique. As they are based on collaboration and team work in creating the projects, the students are going to find it much more fun and interesting tool for learning in this course.  For giving the students idea about the changes, I am going to follow the following steps:

1.       Introduce the outlines of the course in a PPT presentation.

2.       Ask the students if they have e-mails, familiar with using internet, blogs and social networks.

3.       Ask the students about their passion towards literature and creative writing.

4.       Give them my e-mail, so they send me a message giving their names, and providing a short description of how they are expecting the course to be.

5.       Once I get their e-mails I will send instructions about how they can create a Blog, as well as the link for the web-Quest.

6.       After reading the instructions, students are going to create their own Blogs, in order to post their assignments in their blogs.

7.       I can also create a group on face Book, as all the students have Facebook accounts and are familiar with using it. It will be the place where they can meet and discuss all that is related to the course. It will also be helping in solving the problem of timing, because most of the assignments have to be done in groups, and students do not always find a suitable time that is common between them as they do not have the same timetables.

In this first lecture, the students are going to be so excited about the course, first, because they admire the internet- and especially facebook. Secondly, teachers in the university do not always use these technological tools that seem interesting for the students. Most of them do not think of internet as a good medium for teaching they keep just attached to the grammar-based curricula that the students find boring. Another reason that will make the students so excited about the course is that they are going to be exposed to develop new technological skills as they are learning. Thus, the course will no longer be annoying for them as they feel that they are learning through entertainment.

There are some items that they are going to find new, like the idea of using Blogs and Web-quests. Students can help each others in creating blogs and using the Web-quest for their course. They can use the course’s page on face book in order to share advices and solutions. They can also contact me if they find any problems.