Week 3 Seasons of my learning

This week I feel I have settled in. The reflection on time management last week did really pay off. I don't have to race against clock this week. It's a relief!

The first task this week is reading resources on building Oral/Aural skill. The articles opened a new horizon for me. Earlier I was only thinking of installing Learning Management System (LMS) (such as Moodle) in my context. But the administration here didn't come up with necessary assistance and I was becoming disappointed. Now, I realize after reading the articles only a computer lab with internet facility may prove sufficient for improving Oral/Aural skill of students in interactive ways.

The Prat Lab (the link mentioned in one of the articles) is wonderful. My students can record, save, analyze stress pattern, and rectify their intonation while sitting in a lab. I would definitely try it.

The second task is Delicious (pun intended). A nice tool for storing and categorizing links. Specially for me, it is a life saver. I habitually open lots of windows in my browser lest I should forget and miss links necessary for my on going work. As a result, most of the time my laptop ceases to function. A minute's work takes sometime an hour. I feel like throwing my laptop away. Now I don't have to do so, I believe. I can save them, subject wise categorize them, and get to them whenever I like without keeping them open for hours.

Installing Delicious was easy but some tools I could not manage to use till now, say for example 'Tag' tab I couldn't find in my browser though several videos I browsed are showing it. I understand, I need more time with Delicious.

Last task is Project Review. I admit it has made me tense. The amount of work to complete a project I need to carry out, I feel,  is huge. Apart from thinking about possible technological tool(s) for my context, I have to make plans for integrating the tool(s), carry out survey to understand students' needs, response and achievement. And also I need to prepare rubrics for assessment.

Overall, I understand mountainous obstacles are waiting ahead, but I love challenges. I am sure I will be able to overcome it.

Week 2 Seasons of my learning

If the week 1 is hard, definitely week 2 is harder. And it is not the tasks for the week that posed difficulty before me. Rather, my inability to handle and manage pressure is solely responsible. I am writing it ,the clocks are ticking and the deadline for the weekly tasks is terrifyingly approaching near. The whole thing taught me an important lesson. I should make a routine with a deadline  for each tasks and follow that strictly. I would do that as I don't want to undergo the same mental anxiety I am feeling now.

Even, my delayed involvement in nicenet discussion board cost me a lot. I failed to follow and respond to imprtant discussions there on time.

The tasks for this week is both challenging and enjoyable!

Websearching task opened for me a new horizon beyond Google and Yahoo. The NoodleTools is definitely recommendable. However, they are so many, sometimes I feel lost there and some suggested sites I could not use either. I feel I need some scaffolding from someone expert. Or may be the more I use them the more I will become comfortable.

The next task is writing an objective with ABCD style. A stands for audience, B for behaviour, C for condition, and D for degree. When I started browsing for appropiate samples of this style, I found plenty. Initially, the objectives starting with 'Given' looked to me clumsy. Gradually I felt that No, its Ok. I think writing such simple objectives with ABCD style could make teaching more effective. I feel it more as in our context we don't do that often.

The project task was initially puzzling for me. I didn't understand at the start what things I need to do during this step. Sean helped me in this regard and finally I understood. Even, I took a survey to know my students well. I think it will help me to take appropiate measures for technology inspired change I am planning to introduce in my context.

Overall this week is challenging but indeed fun!

Week 1: Seasons of my learning

Wow! Finally my words are on line. It is an amazingly mixed feeling. A sense of achievement, no doubt, makes my heart swell but at the same time I can’t but feel the cold shiver running through my vein as soon as I start thinking of critics- experts, novice, known and unknown- judging my write-ups here. The transformation, from being an assessor of students as a teacher to being assessed as a participant, is going to take some time to be acclimatised. 

 I am a near fresher in blogging, maybe that’s why I am feeling the tense more than usual. I opened a blog in 2010 with no posting and with a simple Voki video. I created it (Voki) but surprisingly within the span of more than 3 years I found that the Voki avatar has changed its gender. I can surely remember it was male but now it displays a female avatar. Funny! And the sound is not coming either. I tried but failed to fix it. Now, I have created another one for this blog and tried to place it in the sidebar but in vain. I am still working on it Hopefully soon I will be able to do it.

 The task of creating a blog seemed initially easier to me. But the moment I started working on it I realised how wrong I was. Believe me, I felt like I was climbing a mountain. 

As a start, I went through resources on how blogs are developed, what purpose they serve, how many types there are and also browsed different blogs to see how they look, how informations are organised etc. The resources never end! Since I am a novice, I read extensively. At certain point, quite naturally, I became tired. I felt I was becoming like that person who has a PhD in swimming but does not know how to swim. So I quit and decided to make my hand dirty in developing blogs and playing with it.

 What could be an apt title for my blog? I thought over and again. Out of so many alternatives, I went with 'Eftu's Reflective Blog'. Surprisingly so many blogs are there with similar titles. Perhaps great men think alike. Later, I decided not to be great and coined Schön’s (1983) terminology ‘reflection-in-action’ for my blog title.

Google is a saviour! Whenever I was stuck (and I was stuck more often than not) to upload an image, to change the font, to add a link, to change the background I simply googled and tried to follow the instructions found. Sometimes I succeeded and sometimes failed.

Overall, it was hard but fun!

Reference:
Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco, CA., Jossey-Bass