The Good in GOODbye

No matter how we’d yearn so that this experience will continue forever, the class will still come to its end. Forever is impossible and what will remain are just the archives (if we start compiling before it is terminated). Coming into this course with little knowledge on what to expect, I was excited as it was my first online learning class and I was ready to learn from our instructors. The challenges given moulded me to be more competent in technological aspects that were available but was never discovered. The nearest source would start by the search engines – shortcuts to PPT and even the bookmark system of Delicious. Deep down apart from the feature learnt, what taught me the most was the determination for everyone to learn by sharing and constantly reminding one another of the medium available online so that everyone can gain the advantage.

Selecting one interesting task was difficult for me as all were valuable (that’s the reason why all are bookmarked : ) ) The first few weeks of the task learnt about the ABCD objectives of English lessons. It kept us on track to the reason why we teach English in the first place. Gradually, the task progressed and placed us in gear as it opened our eyes to various sites for all the skills (Reading, Writing, Grammar, Listening, Speaking) to learn English language online. The tips on PPT and PBL projects including Webquests in order to integrate technology in class further challenged our creativity to use the softwares for our benefit in teaching. Then, towards the end of the course it was more focused on understanding our 'customers' -the students by learning about student centered learning, learner autonomy and their learning preferences. The flow of the course was well planned with the all the vital aspects in teaching and learning.

I will try to popularize blogging to my students and turn it into a learning habit among the masses and I’m also up to try the various lesson plans online and everything that has been taught. Not to forget ANVILL, webquest and other softwares that were introduced, it’ll take place depending on time. This is not the end, this is not the beginning either so we live by processing all the good things in different ways. Be good and goodness will come to you. The sole advice that I can give to future students is to be positive and have fun all the way.

Lastly to all my friends, although we are miles apart and we hardly know one another, our discipline and passion towards teaching has brought us together and I’m glad to be part of the clique and hope to share more with all of you in the future. Not to forget our dear instructors Jodi and Sherie for their hardwork in making this course interesting and your patience in dealing with us as students. You have inspired us a lot through this course and we’ll try to keep inspiring others.

Every single one of you have been so sweet.

This is definitely a bittersweet goodbye from me.

With love, 

Nur.

Goodbye for now. 

The biggest accomplishment

Picture via

So far meeting the deadline and being able to complete the report was yet the biggest accomplishment to date. Alas, everything on the report writing checklist was ticked and I felt ready enough to submit the project. There’s always a question that goes through my mind to whether it is perfect enough.



I focused a lot on the project as compared to the other tasks and now I’m going to continue reading other articles about learning styles and preferences. I just did the learning style quiz that was linked in Week 9’s list  http://www.open2.net/survey/learningstyles/ and Walla I’m a kinesthetic student. Now I know for a reason why I get bored easily during long lectures during my studies and why I am eager to finish class activities as kinesthetic students love movements and hands on task.

Will catch up with you guys later,
Nur  

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

This week was one of the intense working week where both at work and for this online course I had to meet so many deadlines. Juggling between these two important tasks at times drains me out but for the sake of learning and personal development I took each lesson one step at a time.

 

Picture via

Thanks to Jeff Magoto (our guest moderator for this week) for the creative idea of starting ANVILL and informing us on how to-s and the successes usage of ANVILL as a tool for teaching language. Reading Jeff’s CV as being the director of the language centre in University of Oregon and other contributions he had made in the teaching line amazes me on what a teacher can do. It is personally an inspiration to me.

From his valuable knowledge we were also taught on how to use the Livechat, Quizzes and survey and the voiceboard plus other recording tools. The highlight of the lesson was the participation in a webinar which was informative and fun especially when interaction session started and there were echos. The webinar gave 3 things at one which tests learners multitasking skills to focus on the voiceboard, reply to chats and listen to questions from other people. It was fun and I would love to have one for my class next semester as I feel that students love online interaction as they are conscious about their speech and appearance plus they wont be bored doing one task at a time as the webinar gives allows you to chat, listen to the lecture and view other participants too. It matches well with its objective which is to focus on speaking and interaction. Thumbs up from me!

The next input was creating exercises or tools to facilitate teaching. There were many available tools for teaching and for development of class materials (that’s one of my favourite things to do before starting a class). I’ve used a few resources that were available on the list and I was familiar with moodle so I turned into making activities in class. The  wordsearch and crossword puzzle site definitely made my life easier by computerizing the words that I wanted only without having to provide the miscellaneous alphabets for the word search. I would bookmark all the other helpful resourceful tools that can be used in class for future references.

The peer review editing helped a lot though it gave me a big impact as I was told that the method did not correlate with the initial problem. I was a bit dumbstruck as I found it was acceptable it if it came in the discussion on nicenet during the week when we discussed the issue. Although method has been carried out I would modify that to become one of the limitations. The peer review did help a lot in terms of having another critical eye, many thanks to Hind and Yuliya for being there to guide me, although it’s painful at times you’ve got to hurt yourself to become better.

There are times where you fall behind because of the time crunch and times where you could perform well because you had time to analyze and review, I believe at moments like this where there’s immense pressure, I am hard on myself and emotions can sometimes kick in and interfere.

xx

Nur

I'm off to do some shopping for therapy. :) 

Picture via

One Computer Classroom

Picture via

Similar to 1 Malaysia slogan of bringing in together different races in Malaysia, 1 computer classroom shares the same foundation too which is cooperation amongst students. Although it is likely to reflect on the sufficiency of budget for computers for schools, the 1 computer classroom will foster students to learn to learn in groups that will indirectly foster communication which is a healthy way to start of language learning.

As stated in the articles provided; teachers can use the computer as an administration tool, a flipchart or multimedia board and even softwares to be used for displaying texts/animation for the sake of presenting the information to the audience. There are numerous ways to functionally use a single computer in class and teachers should take the effort to be creative and implement the usage of using technology in class eventhough it might take more than the usual effort. If there are many things we can do with the computer, we can even do more with the availability of the Internet as students can surf to various language learning websites and watch videos pertaining to language learning (information will be endless once we’re connected on the www). In the midst of using the computer in classroom learning, we seldom forget to appreciate the small things such as the availability of a conducive classroom, power electricity, curtains which will help block in the lights, speakers and the most important item for display which is the LCD projector.

Lastly, lab ideas also triggered me to form a self access language lab in my department for the students to use in their free time (not classroom hours). I do think that a lab assistant or a part time instructor is needed to monitor the flow of the lab and also so that the students use it wisely. What I have in mind is to build a module of lesson plans using a maximum of 5 computers in the self access lab and once it is compiled, the students can go to the lab, choose a lesson of their preference and perform the activities on the own and report the results / display the project outcome to their class teacher. This is to ensure that students entering the self access lab will use it to its utmost potential and gain language learning benefits.  

Have a great weekend!

Nur

Starting The Project

This is my checklist for this week which I have managed to complete

1. Identify a class for this project
2. Assign them in groups. (3 students in 1 group). Since the girls out number the boys there will be 2 girls and 1 boy in each group.
3. I have given the students a guideline on how to set up their own blog. Groups/ any members of the group who already have an existing blog can continue to use their own blog for this project if they wish to do so.
4. Their first task is to write an argumentative essay in groups by Wednesday (22nd Feb) and publish it in their blog.
5. Students can work on their blog out of classroom time. 

That's all that I've done this week. I hope to see how they correct other group's essays next week.
xx
Nur

## I don't know what's wrong with my blogger site as there are problems in displaying the comments section. It will never display the comment sheet as it's on reload all the time. :((

From Zero Point to PowerPoint

I teach a small tutorial class of 25-30 students and there are no LCD projectors provided in these tutorial rooms. Because of the situation I hardly use any powerpoint presentations in class, I only use the powerpoint when I have to present information in meetings or for seminars.

Picture via

Looking at the notes and samples on how to create games and interactive so I am keen to start forming some games  for my students to try by using powerpoint slides. With the use of powerpoint I think that there are several aspects that should be taken in consideration

1.      ensure that the activity is preplanned carefully

2.      the set up of the slides must meet the objectives of the lesson

3.      the activities should be suitable for the students age & the number of students in the class (to grab attention)

4.      teachers should have an open and creative thinking to exploit powerpoint as a tutorial tool, exploration tool, application tool and communication tool too.

Among the advantages of using powerpoints are:

1.      teachers can widen the concept of learning

2.      teachers have the advantage to provide a learning situation that intrigues their creativity and interaction

3.      the usage of powerpoint can serve for different kinds of students with different learning styles.

I’m also trying to read more on how games like Jeopardy by using the powerpoint can relate to Skinner’s Operant Conditional Learning where it stressed on enforcement and extrinsic motivation where reward/praise is given systematically based on a correct answer and the process of answering the question is repeatable.

There is also a small relation to the process of retrieval of information which includes the input
(accepting input), storage and output and its correlation with students learning based on this model below

It is just a small idea and I’m still trying to link it together, it might be something or nothing at all.

Xx

Nur

(trying to think) 

Read about What Zero point is in Malaysia..

PBL Plus Tech

At par with the vast development of Internet, traditional classroom teaching and learning can be replaced with project based tasks. Highlights of PBL is the K-W-L chart (Tannenbaum, 1996) for a reflection of what I Know, What I want to know and What I’ve learned.

The strengths of PBL us based on the fact that it focuses on student’s individual growth instead of comparing them and evaluate students’ strengths on what they know rather than their weaknesses (Huerta-Macias, 1995 as cited in Tannenbaum, 1996).

This reveals that we are allowing students to shine based on their own ability and develop the motivation to work on the qualities to help them improve in the language proficiency through a progression of a timeframe.

In PBL, the teacher acts as a mentor and a facilitator in PBL instead of becoming a reference source. Thus the basic steps of KWL need to be reviewed and repeated for a number of times to enable teachers to reach the objective of learning. So the teacher needs to list and have checklists on what the students know, list out possibilities of solutions for students problems and what activities or actions relate to solve the problem and whether it can be implement within the timeframe of learning period.

In the end, both teachers and students need to put in the extra mile in teaching and learning to foster critical thinking for a PBL activity to become successful.

Teachers must be able to monitor progress, place a yardstick to how it can be conducted and evaluate performance of students’ work, without keeping pace of the project and having a checklist PBL will burden teachers to mark at the end of the course and evaluation  at that specific time only would defeat the purpose of progressive learning in PBL. So be more proactive in teaching for the wholesome benefit of the students. I hope we wont be needing  this. :) 

W-e-a-k 4

Picture via 

Week 4 started miserably for me as I was surprised of the grades that I received for Week 3. Feeling a bit disappointed, I found out that the problem was due to the misinterpretation on which task we had to focus on for the first half of the week. It caused a tremendous defect and I hope that things can be clearer in the future to avoid unwanted incidences similar to what I faced in week 3. I also believe that good connection with fellow online classmates via e-mail can help us especially in reminding us about the tasks at hand.

 

Although I was emotionally weak for 2 days after the results was announced I managed to recuperate and set myself up positively. I constantly had to remind myself of the objective of joining this course and that the grades were just grades.

 

So, what was valuable in week 4 is the variation of ESL websites that we can select specifically for reading and writing. I linked a few on my delicious page so I can refer back to them. I also found that my delicious page is getting so disorganized to I am going to do a bit of housekeeping by the end of this week by using the stacks.

 

The project Task which was directed by Jodi helped me to observe my class and find a problem that my students faced. Aside from that, the process analyzing taught me to spend some time to review the choices I have made so that I can determine the further steps to be implemented in the study and have a clear outline on the objective of the study.

So, all is well

Nur

Deliciously Delicous !

The first thing that crossed my mind when I saw we had to use delicious was this

Picture via

Delicious is a café in Malaysia well known for its desserts especially ‘The Pavlova’. As I clicked the link on this course’s webpage I was directed to a new site specifically about bookmarking (at that time I had food in my mind! Pfft). The newly found delicious bookmarking service eases the norm of bookmarking before which was only saved on a specific computer that we tend to use. Before this I only bookmark things in my computer at the office but when I borrowed my brother’s laptop I would only save the links in my email’s notepad. Now voila, bookmarking will be an easy task on any computer! A big hand to the inventors for such a genius idea.  Do visit mine at delicious/missafz .


Moving on to the oral/audio skill building website, it was a never ending search that reflects that there are so many websites that we can use to adapt for our class. The 3 issues that I had after reading the articles provided were
1. A dilemma for some teachers might be a) whether they want to modify the lesson to a communicative approach lesson and try fun listening activities or b) stick to the routine of chalk and talk (teacher centered) and follow strictly to the syllabus laid out.  
[This falls back to sufficient facilities and creativity of the teacher] Sometimes, if the teacher is not creative listening activities alone can be a boredom for teachers as it requires students feedback on the issue discussed.
2. How far will language practitioners use these sites in their class to promote listening /speaking activities? 
If a teacher is not used to student centered approach/ have students with minimal knowledge of the subject question and answer session after listening can be less interactive due to the lack of response. 
3. Should we wait for all teachers and schools to use CALL or further advance the technology to feed advanced computer/Internet learning users due to the different level of computer literacy/access?

Pennington (1995) as cited in Busa’s article mentioned that speech analysis technology is highly motivating, even learners who had formerly shown no inclination to work on their

pronunciation will often willingly spend time working alone or with a trainer using this computer-based form of input and practice.

1. students must be taught on how to work/study independently using a computer
2. school or parents should invest to upgrade the use of technology in classrooms i.e computers, CDs
3. Website developers should also keep up to the requirements of advanced learners

At the end of the day, no matter how much we are exposed to these resources it depends highly on the teacher to use his/her effort and creativity to integrate listening/speaking activities in class, to evaluate the feasibility of using technology in class and enforcing the activities for students.

*This week was very tiring for me as I’m feeling a bit under the weather. Once the medication kicks in it makes me drowsy instantly . I spent most of the hours sleeping which was a waste of time especially upon knowing I haven’t done much for this week. Here’s for the hope of recovering and for good health for everyone!

Cheers. 


Signing off with another dessert from delicious  cafe. Yums!!

Google no more, say hello to other search engines!

Picture via

Searching on the Internet can be a difficult task for some especially when we can’t find what we hope to get. This must be a common phenomena for teachers around the world where we frequently need to work on projects for students and vary the types of exercises depending on our student’s needs. Realizing the source of availability the search engine iSEEK comes in handy where there are various lessons to choose from for lessons focusing on different styles specifically on Education.

Websearching before this used to be based on the most popular engines that I know such as Yahoo and Google [Read Search Engine Ranking]. As I widen my virtual circle of friends I found out BBC and IDEA search engines that I frequently use to gain videos and written materials for class. A few days ago, upon clicking the sites given by the instructors, to my surprise thanks to the Noodletools there were plenty more of search engines the web had to offer.

While trying the various search engines and reading the articles for Week 2, these are a few things that I’ve learnt:


 1. Be ready with several alternative search terms before searching.  Sometimes when searching we could not find the exact word that we are looking for. So before typing in the query we need think about the topic to ensure that the closest synonym /exact word in typed in the search box so that the results can be promising.

[Teachers need to teach students synonyms, group/families of words to widen their vocabulary when searching for information]


2.Usage of Boolean “” + - OR. To provide us with specific results pertaining our query which will indirectly save our time to go through the entries.

     [Teachers should introduce Boolean operators to beginners so that they practice quick searching techniques online]


3. Compare the list of entries.  When the entries are given, users must be able to choose a reliable fact which they can trust as a source for the information required as the sources from the Internet might be inaccurate/altered with.

[Teachers can teach the students on how to evaluate a text and measure reliability of data via comparison and differentiation of various search results

Aside from the list of search engines provided, I am eager to find out more search engines for shortvideos or listening exercises which can be downloaded. As teachers we often look for ideas to teach and lesson plans that we can adapt and adopt to what our class needs so I hope to find one so that I can play movies and videos in class easily to cater for auditory and visual learners.   

I also learnt about the ABCD Objectives for our lessons and by having that keeps us on track of the degree and the measurement procedures can be observed by the teacher. Both teachers and students can be aware of what they are learning about via this ABCD objectives.  The Bloom Taxanomy of measuring students and the text on Taxanomy for Technology shows that if we are trying to apply technology in learning both students and teachers must be able to understand about technology. “The teacher must stay abreast of the continual growth in emerging technologies and how these technologies will influence the classroom”.  So they must be on the same page and understand their objectives and what is at stake when learning.

[Here’s a site that I refer to for learning objectives: Learning Outcomes ]

I also tried to update some settings of my blog, read and commented some of my friend’s blog too for this week.  Unfortunately, ass I visited several pages I couldn’t link to 2 blogs maybe due to their privacy settings. : ( 

That’s all for Week 2, I’ll strive to contribute more in future discussions.

~Life and time are the world’s best teachers. Life teaches us to make good use of time and time teaches us the value of life.~

Bye,
Nur

Two.Zero.One.Two

 

Picture via

Happy new year to new friends!

I hope it's not too late to wish you guys a blessed year of 2012!

I think this year is heading to a good start especially with this course rolling in. There are so many things that I need to add on my checklist and let's pray that all the things that I've planned can be accomplished soon. Personally, Week One of this course gave twitches here and there for me especially to adapt and reschedule my timetable for work and also for this online course. As this is also my first time in distance learning course, I am trying very hard to cope and catch up on tasks and readings. 

Since I am an anal kind of person I had to form a checklist and compile all the tasks on paper and tick each one upon completion. My approach for the first few tasks was to do one task a  day. I guess the approach might be a bit too slow resulting me to lag a lot for this last task to complete a blog post. Sigh..I'm sure after I publish this entry I can sleep soundly tonight as my mission for this week has been completed!

I have learnt a few things upon completion of Week 1. Firstly I learnt that we can use Google Docs to create our own online survey which is amazing for me to do a small scale research online instead of handing or posting the questionnaires to our subjects individually which is time consuming. I recalled a time during my studies where I had to gather 100 subjects and the distribution and collection of the questionnaire became the most painful period indeed (apart from analysis) since we had to wait and use our energy and money. The second medium which was introduced to me is Nicenet which had cool navigation too. I hope to master how to use it first before introducing it to my students. We are currently using something similar to moodle called MyLine to learn English online that serves as a platform for students to share information regarding the subject during the semester. Students are automatically registered for the programme but to avail not all of them are active to use the medium for their studies. 

Iguess that's a little bit of a review that I have for this week. For a start of a new beginning this year I hope I can be able to appreciate everything in life whether it's big or small, be wiser in decision making and become a better person each day. So, cheers to sharing knowledge! With that I would like to welcome everyone to this blog and let's hope both you and me will learn something from it. 

Peace.

*Nur

Hello world!

Hi there
Let's start the day with a small cup of love!

picture via