Week 3 : A BIG PICTURE of my Final Project

  This week, I am very pleased and happy. Thanks to the gifts from alumni of Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web, I could imagine the big picture of how my final project will look like. When I first take this course, I was afraid of failure. As you know, changes always come as a shock no matter how hard we prepare ourselves. When I read several articles from the graduates of this program, I could learn how sincere and thourough they have on their language teaching. I could picuture how they conducted 10-week program with the genuine effort. I used to complain my educational settings : techonological support in the school falters, students resist, or students performance suffers, etc. But I realized that the other teachers before me had the same obstacles and challenges in their settings. Reading more than 12 articles, I could rejuvanate myself with the fresh ideas and I tried to find the things that I could make best of what I have. Here is my general ideas on what I will conduct with my students for coming 7 weeks.

 1) Involve all students in learning
   -Students might find the joy of learning by actively engaging themselves in learning.

 2) Lesson teacher's role
   - Teacher is just a guide or facillitator of students' self-learning strategies.
   -  What Leo Buscaglia, a late educator said in his book " Living, Loving and Learning",
      "Teacher is a bridge. After students pass the river, he/she will  be gracefully collapsed."
      I believe in his saying and keep my professional integity in check and help out students
       as invisible forces.

 3) Improve learners' belief in capacity
    - Students can learn better if they feel they could. Is it a famously uttered  "Pygmalion
       Effect"? I will put in pracice those ideas in my classroom.
    - To do this, students will prepare a project based on the Korean culture. They are   
       already fully familiar with Korean cultures. So if I conduct the English classes with
       these contents, students are easy to succeed in making a substantial outcome in 
       language learning.

4) Offer opportunites to gain experience with language
    - With the various steps involved, students can be serious with the reserach, but also
      can be fun with English.
    - As a teacher, try to find as verstile as possible in preparing themselves in a different
      learning atmosphere.

5) Foster positive attitudes
    - Making mistakes in writing and speaking is too natural to even English native
      speakers. I foster the atmosphere of "It's OK to make a mistake", a very welcoming
      and open field for them.
   
6) Encourage good study habits & Share them with the classmates
   - Keep students' good habits ongoing and flowing
   - Creating an sense of community and having students recognize cooperative learning
      by sharing those good idea with the class

I hope that I could embody the rough ideas into the plausible and resilient lesson plans and course designs.

Week 2: Toward the Search Engines

I was thrilled once again when I found the webpages called http://www.noodletools.com thinking my collegues. It is more like my dream site. Whenever I took the training courses, I happened to know very  wonderful webistes which benefit my teaching skills in every way. But after that, I tried to look around for some time, but my good old websites fade away. Now, I feel confident that I could try to consult data from many of different search engines. But finding a right search engine took more time than searching for the specific information. I also did with this research process. So, I think I got another task after this. How can  I effectively manage the websites that I found interesting and keep them updated to myself and Korean and international teachers? One thing that I found is to create a website for both my colleagues in Korea and my Korean students. I also apply to how to give constructive comments and right feedback on the web. Web searching is not a thing, it's a somthing. But I surely believe that it's my food for thought and will be food for thought my korean Collegues as well.

Week 1: My journey has just begun

  Wow~! Now I made it! I believe that it's the perfect season to start off a fresh and new journey. In spring, all the refreshing smell of flowers are all around South Korea, especially cherry blossoms.
Whenever I set out my itinerary, I am exhilarated to imagine what will be ahead of me. It might be  breathtaking scenery or comfortable accommodation. But the end of journey, my memory dwells longer on warm-hearted local people or the troubled situation which looks ugly at the moment but turns out to be a super fantastic chance to go around the unexpected path. I believe that the same rule applies to this program.  
  Taking online courses and creating  blogs for educational purposes are not new to me. Luckily, I was able to take the Webinar Series with the notable and prominent professors and experienced teachers from every continent of the world. The progress of taking online course while discussing the designated topics with a whole variety of perspectives is greatly meaningful to me. Furthermore, I could learn how to use the blog "NING" for sharing all the ideas after real-time online learning. I love the idea of sharing ongoing discussions on the blog and also learned how valuable to get a constructive feedbacks of international teachers from the similar, if not same, situation. It was great helpful comments which can be easily adapted to my EFL situation. Thanks again to all the teachers from "Shaping the Way We Teach English."
  My opportunity never stopped there. I once again gain a great chance to learn how to teach online learning as a language teacher. At the time, thanks to the help of the department of Regional Affairs of American Embassy, I happened to have a wonderful lecture about "Online Learning" from Dr. Leslie Opp-Beckman in person and to know the blog "Delicious". This grabbed my attention and changed my mind-set. Sometimes, I had been frustrated that I was in EFL situation not ESL. My students are relatively limited to language learning and chance to practice a target language. I now have strong belief that I could bring a slight, though not huge changes in my classroom through this course. And I strongly believe in TEAM, Together Achieves More. I hope that every teacher who participates this program can make the difference in their classroom after 10 weeks.  I will be one of the stepping stone for experimenting myself to conduct the better online course in the spring of 2012 .