Week 3

REFLECTION ON WEEK 3

 

It is unbelievable that Week 3 is coming to an end. Time flies so fast! 

I enjoyed signing up for Delicious. Delicious.com is a site to store useful links. I’ve never heard about this site before. Using Delicious.com helps us to store links in an organized way. The links can be tagged using keywords. Some of the features are almost similar to Twitter, where we can follow others and vice versa while some are similar to Instagram where details on how many links, followers and subscription as well as how many people we are following are shown. Therefore, we can also share the links when we visit other’s pages. I managed to save some useful links which I use regularly to prepare my lessons. 

The reading materials assigned for this week is worthwhile. The focus for this week is Aural/Oral Skills. I read two articles;  Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials by Lindsay Miller and The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills by Julia Gong. Both the articles talked on the importance of listening and speaking skills in one’s life. As I have mentioned in Nicenet, I never quite focused on listening skills and whenever I did listening activities, I used prepared listening texts. Through Lindsay’s article, I’ve learned how to incorporate listening activities and authentic materials in preparing students for real-world context. Julia’s article discussed on the use of computers in learning and more focus was given on speaking skills. 

 

Among the websites listed, I like Esl-lab. Randall’s lab is very organized and easy to be used.  The advantage of using this online-lab is that Pre-, While and Post-Listening lessons are prepared. Teachers need not to crack their heads to think of pre- and post-listening activities. All we need to do is to click, listen and answer the questions. It’s as easy as ABC!

             Reading some of the sample project report gave me a better picture of the final project. Some of the reports were very good; well-planned and carried out. I hope to produce a good report like the ones that I've read. Overall, this week’s tasks gave good coverage on aural/oral skills. Now, I have additional tools to use in my teaching.

        Week 2 has come to an end and I must say that the tasks assigned were pretty challenging. We were given 3 main tasks; Discussion on Web Searching, Writing Objectives using the ABCD Model and Project Task 1.

         We were asked to review and analyze search engines. I was very much surprised that there are so many search engines. All these while, I only used and was dependable on Google, Yahoo, You Tube and Ask.com. I never knew the existence of the many other search engines. Thanks to  this course. I even went back to school and shared this information with my students and colleagues. They were surprised too. I prefer some of the search engines. They will be useful for me to work on my thesis. Besides, some of them will be very useful for my students. The best thing at Noodletools is that they search engines are categorized, making it easier for us to choose which one we would want to use.

         
     Secondly, we were asked to write objectives using the ABCD Model. I write objectives in my record book daily before I start teaching. But, I didn't knew that the objectives I write uses the ABCD model. My school Principal and Senior Assistants always remind the teachers to write clear and measurable objectives. Hence, it was a little easier to complete this task. I also downloaded and read some materials on other websites on the ABCD model, besides the one listed in the course website. Writing objectives are very important. Objectives are somewhat like a guidance for us in designing the lessons. At times, I do let my students know the objectives of my lessons; Why I conduct a particular activity and what I would want them to achieve. This idea was given to me by my lecturer when I was an undergraduate student. He said that it is indeed important for students to know the objective of the lessons. The ABCD model makes a good guideline to write out the objectives.

         Next, we were asked to describe our students and class setting for Project Task 1. I managed to complete this tasks as well and I hope that I will be able to carry out this project well. I discussed with my students and they were very excited about it. They wish to benefit from this project too. 

       The participants are very helpful towards each others. They are not selfish. It is just the second week of the course, but I am satisfied with this course as I have learned a lot.  

The Best Ways For Students (And Anyone Else!) To Create Online Content Easily, Quickly & Painlessly | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

The Best Ways For Students (And Anyone Else!) To Create Online Content Easily, Quickly & Painlessly | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Tasks for Week 1

Finally, I have completed my tasks for Week 1. I feel so happy that I was able to learn something new in the first week itself. At the same time, Nicenet is somewhat similar to the course management system that we use at my university. It's called Spectrum. We did almost the same tasks for one of the courses, where we had to introduce ourselves and to give comments on our coursemates' ideas. It feels good to have the opportunity to get to know all the other participants. They (including the Instructor) seem friendly. I'm eager to start Week 2.

I'm rewriting my reflection on Week 1. It's Sunday and I'm glad that I've managed to complete my assignment without any difficulties. Thank you to Sean for sending e-mails to ensure that we have done all the tasks given. I kept checking my e-mail everyday just in case I missed out something. I hope to learn more in Week 2. Thank you.

Week 1: Getting started

Hello everyone! Happy New Year.Let me introduce myself here. I'm Annusha Munirathinam, 28 years old, from Malaysia. I'm currently teaching at Mount Austin National Secondary School in southern Malaysia. Throughout my 3 years of teaching experience, I have taught all levels of students. At the same time, I am also pursuing my Master's degree at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur.

 This is my first time on blog and I'm already excited to begin this course. Creating a blog was quite difficult at the beginning but it was fun. Having the experience of using Facebook, I managed to design my page with many different templates and layouts before finalizing on how it should look. 

Using blog is emerging as one of the coolest teaching tool in Malaysia. With the advancement in technology and social networks, I'm sure students will love this idea too. I'm looking forward to use blog as a teaching tool for my students. 

I hope to enhance my teaching skills through this course. I'm looking forward to learn many new things which I'm not familiar with before this.