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