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 .
Hello Michelle,
ReplyDeleteLife is full of surprises, unexpected things happen all the time, life is and must be an unexpected undertaking, otherwise it would be so dull. I agree with you in that we are going to learn from each other a lot.
Please, let me share with you a piece of writing about blogs as follows: I would love to sense the pulse of the degree of implementation that you are actually doing. Specifically the way you are using not only blogs but other web tools as well. In my opinion, blogs are 'work spaces' on which other web tools can be adapted. Blogging should not be seen as the final goal but as the beginningof the stepladder, setting the ground for cooperation, participation and mutual learning, whereby other web tools could be used, specifically web 2.0 tools. We have seen already, that we can network our blogs by using Blogger’s gadgets. Just click on your Layout, then on Add Gadget and you will be amazed at how many options you can get for your blog. Needless to say those gadgets are cosmetic elements to liven up the dynamics of a blog whereas Web 2.0 tools involve the operation of software to achieve certain tasks. For example, a talking tool like Voki (avatar maker) can be posted on a blog. I am pretty sure we are going to cover these tools in the near future.
Best wishes to you during the next 10 weeks.
You are the very first person I meet from such a distant place (for me) like South Korea.
Thanks a lot to your comments^^* I am a bit astray here but I believe that I could be btter at it. You are also the fist teacher from Venezuela. My sister once went there to see her friends.
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ReplyDeleteHi Michelle, I enjoyed reading your comments. I want to encourage you to have confidence that successful language learning can happen in an EFL setting. Often EFL teachers think that teaching ESL is dreamy, but the truth is we face many of the same challenges: not enough time to prepare, not enough time to teach what needs to be learned, low motivation, limited materials, large classes, etc. All the fantastic English teachers in this course are proof that we can successfully learn foreign languages.
ReplyDeleteIt's really great to see such dedication to helping students succeed!
Janine