End of a Chapter- Week-9

Life is a journey. Once we step our foot, there definitely comes a destination. Our journey of nine weeks stops here. But do surely have other destinations. We learned together, we discussed together, we grew together, shared our ideas and opinions, shared our classroom environments, culture and many more. Overall. we got to know each other and found many new academic friends. Though the journey of this WebSkill ends here, I am sure, our friendship and bond don't end rather become stronger.

This Week-9 came with a great lesson of multiple intelligence beside the submission of the final report and other regular tasks. They really became fruitful and has become guidelines for the coming teaching career. During the course, we learnt so many language based technological innovations for effective teaching. I am now committed to implement those technology tools in my classroom best of my skill and capacity.

Finally, I would like to take the privilege to thank my mentor and my colleagues. I would like to propose you all to be united on Facebook if possible. We can create a group for webskill participants and have lively chats and discussions about our teaching career and classroom practices along with our day to day talks. my Facebook id is  https://www.facebook.com/thapaliyagakul. I hope to see you all in the coming days somewhere in the journey of life because the earth is round and science and technology has made it a small global village. Till then Good
Luck for your career ! Good Bye!!!

Almost There! - Week 8

This week I came to realize that working through the project was not so easy but somehow I managed to do it. I got the draft of the final report uploaded and got it reviewed from my peer. I, too, gave feedback to my friend's report. I also created a Nicenet Discussion Board for my students which I will use in the next classes. The WebSkill Course has taught me a lot. I was ignorant about the technology but coming to this point I feel like I have learnt a lot having access to the vast online resources. Let's see what happens by the next week.

Changing Adversity into Opportunity Week-7

Every weeks of Webskills has appeared as packages of unique presents. This week, I learned how to handle the class with one computer to the best. Creating stations and assigning multiple tasks to the multiple groups could be effective way of using single computer for the maximum benefits. The idea of posting a schedule, drawing Popsicle sticks and establishing color-coded groups are also wonderful ways of managing classes where only one computer is available.

In the next article, 'Tech Alternatives for the one-computer classrooms' gave an important insight into the many other alternative ways of teaching. Similarly, Mobile Apps for language learning, Twenty Ideas for Using Mobile Phones in Language Classroom gave us many creative ideas how the materials available to us can be used for language promotion and enhancement.

Next, American English Mobile App. is an excellent resource center for both students and teachers which has thousands of E-books, hundreds of audio books, music, dictionary, language games and many more. Teachers can use them in need.

Moreover, I learned to create my own Padlet and post on it. Similarly, I found Oumar Togola from Mali as my final project partner with whom I will be sharing my project draft, get suggestion and based on it, I can prepare my final report.

Now, I feel like I am blessed.
Cheers!

Interactive Teaching, Interactive PowerPoint and Implementing Technology- Web skill Week-6

No mater how often we write, discuss, talk, share and argue about effective teaching, without real action all these go in vain. This week 6 again came to me as a very new since it made me prepare some slides of interactive PowerPoint which I had never practiced before. The techniques for interactive classes like Think-Pair-Share, Quick Write, Concept Tests, etc. turned to be very helpful and effective.

Working out through the final project is still on. This week I have created a separate blog for my students aiming to improve their writing skills where I will be posting some questions or topics for which they will be sharing their opinions, ideas and knowledge on the blog. Some of them have created gmail account too. Hope it turns to be fruitful.

PS. It's my proposal to all my colleagues; How about getting linked through social media and creating a group on messenger for long lasting intimacy??

Half-way crosses... Still Accelerating! Reflection on Week-5

Time Flies!
It feels as if we have started the web skill course last week but in fact, we are already at the end of WEEK 5!

One of the most amazing achievements in this week for me is creating a rubric for assessing paragraph writing which I am going to implement in my next class. It's totally a very new thing for me but upon creating it, I am pretty much sure that it will maximize the benefits in accessing students more practically and reliably.

Another useful thing is reading Project Based Learning (PBL). It gave a deeper understanding on how to conduct a good project, how can it be made more natural and the best.

Finally, Web Quest appeared to be an amazing online resource but creating it became quite challenging for me.Although,I have already started creating it, I am not sure of the successful creation. Yet, I have not given up!

Cheers!

The Journey Continues WEEK-4

                               

Every day is unique and comes with bunches of unfolded mysteries and miracles but the only thing is we have to unfold it. Week four is almost over and the excitement is still beyond limit.  as part of reading this week, Process Writing and the Internet filled me with a lot of information how some social sites and blogs can be useful for teaching writing to the students. Moreover, the link that led to the internet based children's literature ignited new and creative ideas to empower children's English proficiency level. The five finger method to select the books according to the level of the students is very noble for me. Thanks to Larry J. Mikulecky!

This week too, I added some useful bookmarks on Delicious page and the power of saving links on Delicious came to prove while I was making a technology enhanced lesson plan. Access to the E-library of American English, exploring various ESL/EFL sites has broadened my realm of teaching downsizing the limitations. The other new thing that I learned this week is making technology enhanced lesson plans which has motivated me to incorporate the technology in the classroom more.

This week I have stated the most prevalent problem in my classroom teaching which I would like to address with the help of the technology tools. Let's see how far I can go. Learning is an everlasting process. So, I am on the journey and the journey is on ................

 I wish you all a great time ahead!

Gakul

Kathmandu, Nepal

Growing up together with Web skill - Week-3

Wonderful Experience!
It has almost been three full weeks since I joined Webskills course of Oregon University.Come to this day, I, who didn't really know much about operating technologies much, now have slowly crawled along the course.

This week, I felt as if we have a heavy duty but then I feel the most of the courses follow simple to complex tasks and somehow managed to complete the task. Despite the work load we are provided with amazing resources this week from where we can elicit the information we require for effective teaching. Setting up Delicious account, on the other hand, came to me as a new experience where we can save the web links we like and we feel useful.

Moreover, speaking lesson plans from One Stop English, ESL Galaxy and ESL About provided tremendous resources for us and other websites for English teachers under Web Explore turned to be very beneficial.
Reading sample report from the previous scholars of the Webskills course helped us to form some insights for writing new reports for us.

I am sure, this course accompanying friends across the globe is an amazing platform and experience for us.
                   
                                          Have a great time ahead!

Week-2 Reflection of Web Skill Course

It's been almost two weeks since I joined the course. I feel that I am excelling my knowledge about using online tools, web links and other technology tools in the classroom to make the teaching and learning more productive and effective. In the second week , firstly, I learnt the ABCD model of setting behavioral objectives that contain an audience, behavior, condition, and degree all in the same objective. Secondly, I got to know that there are not only single search engine to elicit information for our purpose, but a numerous search engines depending on the field, subject, purpose and so forth. Moreover, I learnt  many search engines and details of those sites from Bradly's list of search engines.

'Digital Bloom's Taxonomy' served an excellent resource to rate objectives under cognitive domain, affective domain and  psycho motor domain. Not only this, reading the post and comments from fellow friends also helped dramatically to boost up the ideas and enrich knowledge. We described classroom setting to apply a technology tool to solve an existing classroom problem which is a new experience to me.


I hope, by the end of the course, I will enhance my knowledge and fine tune my expertise for effective teaching even better.

Week 1 Reflection

I'm happy to welcome you all on my first academic blog although it's my second blog. I will be publishing educational issues on this blog which,in my view,will be useful to all the academicians in general and specifically to ESL/EFL teachers.
Thank you!