Week Ten: Wrap-up

Week Ten: Wrap-up

This week marks the last moments in our course and I cannot believe how the time has flown by so fast. I remember like it was yesterday when we were assigned to write our first reflections about the course. I was very enthusiastic about everything in this class and by the time I started   believing that it was not going like any ordinary class I had before.  In this course, I have learned a lot of beautiful things.  I still can’t forget how happy I was when I managed to successfully complete many assignments including the  creation of my own reflective blog,  Delicious page, technology-enhanced lesson plan, my own WebQuests, Interactive Power Point slides, online survey, to name but a few. Another great achievement of this course was the class project which all the participants were supposed to submit by the end of week nine as the fruit of this interesting class. The course also has provided access to a selection of unique online resources.  In many cases, we were recommended to explore in depth various online teaching materials most of which were very interesting and seemed to be carefully chosen. I am sure; participants would not be able to find these valuable tools if they searched them by their own. Although much of the workload was sometime intense, it was motivating and manageable which helped me keep enjoying the course. The course also has offered me an only one of its kind opportunity to meet with colleagues from different parts of our lovely earth, I consider them now as members of my big family. . Let’s not forget Jodie and Sherie, the most wonderful, helpful, lovely, and enthusiastic professor I've ever had. Overall, this was a great course and I feel lucky to have taken it.

Week Nine: Very Busy Week

Week Nine: Very Busy Week

Another week has passed and it was one the busiest weeks I had ever had this year and I don’t know how I could have managed to balance between the assignments of our course and other commitments.  This week,  I was recommended by the administration of my school to take responsibility of managing a three-day cultural event which was held at our school on March 08th through 10th. The Festival provided a great opportunity for both teachers and students to revive old traditions and customs that highlight local cultures and their historical roots. Although it was a hard responsibility but an exceptional and interesting experience. Through all this hard time, I have managed to read some articles about learning styles and pop in NiceNet to post my contribution. I have to express my gratitude this week to my nice project partners Ruki and Nihmat for their insightful remarks and great efforts to have  my project draft reviewed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUvtd9Ao5OA&feature=share

A three-day cultural event was held by Sakia Al-Hamra high school on March 08th through 10th under the theme of “Students' Creations in the Service of Human Values”. The Festival offered a rich program of seminars, exhibitions and musical and cultural events. The purpose of this event is to promote a greater understanding of the value of local traditions and customs and construct an atmosphere of cooperation and competition among students

Week Eight: Very Rewarding Week

Week Eight: Very Rewarding Week

I can say that this week is one the most rewarding weeks in this interesting course. We have been exposed to a lot of online materials and we were assigned to choose some those tools and DISCOVER them in depth. We were supposed to build a course site or create some exercises.  Some of the online resources that I found useful for  were toolsforeducators.com and eolf.univ-fcomte.fr   which include various interesting teaching tools such as crossword puzzles, matching exercises  ,bingo games, flash cards and multiple choice activities. I really liked all the tools but I couldn’t work on them all because of time constrains. This week, we were expected to post our project drafts on the wiki class, conduct a peer review of and to exchange ideas about them. Next, we all of us are supposed to submit the final drafts as a fruit of this fun and interesting course

Week eight: Very Rewarding Week

Week Seven : Countdown Begins

Week Seven : Countdown Begins

Another week is about to close. It seems we are moving very quickly towards the end of this interesting course.  For me, the countdown has already started when we were asked to work on the project drafts.  This fact made me somehow feel discontented because I am no longer going to meet with those nice friends whom I, even we meet only online;   consider now as a part of family.
This week was also a rewarding week. We were given the chance to read some articles about the topic of learner autonomy which should be encouraged in our classes. I believe that teachers should ready to accept their new role in classrooms as  facilitators of the learning process. We were also assigned to read another article which  was about the one-computer classroom and design a lesson for a one-computer classroom.  And finally, we were asked to find a project partner to work with on exchanging the project first drafts. For some colleagues, it was a very hard job to start negotiating the matter and sign up for a partner. I am lucky I didn’t struggle too much to stumble on my project partner. I have to thank nice friend, Nihmat, whom I greatly appreciate her kindness.

Week Six : Week of Great Discoveries

Week Six : Week of Great Discoveries 

Too many things I have learned this week! I can call it the week of great discoveries . First of all, I have ever thought that I can  do a lot of great  things with PowerPoint software, that’s also what my friends used to think of me since I used to help them  design their lessons using this outstanding  software . This week, I was convinced that knowledge is a yawning ocean without borders. I still remember when Jodi told me that I would learn more things about the use of PowerPoint and I was wondering what those things would be. Now, it comes time when I have learned that I am still not only PowerPoint but also technology illiterate. When we were assigned to make an interactive PowerPoint, I was so enthusiastic to learn more and I didn’t limit myself to the reading materials that were suggested by the course but they were an excellent start for further research. This week, I learned too many great things thanks to Jodi, Sherie and colleagues’ guidance. I have also managed to create a sample WebQuest. It seemed to be a challenging task in the beginning but when I made an attempt, I enjoyed the game and was able to complete it successfully though too late. I know that both the PowerPoint and my WebQuest projects are modest attempts but I do believe that they can be an encouraging attempt for further great teaching projects. Thank  you all best friends for this new nice experience.

Week Five: A hard Week

Week Five: A hard Week 

Really it was one of the toughest weeks so far for me, not because we were assigned to do a lot of things but the reason was that I had very little time to do that. This week, I was invited to attend MATE & IATEFL Marrakech 1st ICT Conference from 08-11 February, 2012, jointly organised by IATEFL (http://ltsig.org.uk/) MATE (http://mate.ma/) and British Council, the conference was a great opportunity to meet with teachers and educational experts from different countries and to share experiences on how technology be used for the benefit of English language learning.

Since I was aware of time constraints, I struggled to partially do some necessary assignments early this week.  I wrote about rubrics, project-based learning (PBL) which was a must to be done in the half of the week but I managed complete the Rubrics task about which I get warm words of encouragement from Jodi. During the second half of the week, I managed to trek in the conference commitments and complete the task of Project Task – Solutions. However, later, I found no way to finish the remaining tasks of the course as I like it as it should be.

I came home today afternoon. I feel very exhausted because I spent the whole night driving home--Marrakech is about 1000 km far. Nevertheless, I made up my mind not to sleep until I jot down my blog reflections.

I am hoping to have the least losses!

Week Four: Interesting Week

 Week Four: Interesting Week

Another week ends today.  At this moment, I am on holiday for a week. I took the opportunity to visit my family who are going to celebrate Eid al-Mawlid an-Nabawī. This event commemorates the birthday of Muhammad, the founder of Islam.  Mawlid means birthday of a holy figure and al-Nabi means prophet. For me, it is an opportunity to meet with my family members; mother brothers and sisters whom I rarely see during the whole year because they live in another city far from the place where I work.

This week we were introduced to new interesting learning materials aiming at developing the reading and writing skills through the use of computer. When I was reviewing some of the suggested websites, I stumbled upon manythings.com which both I and my little lovely niece found very amusing.  I could make use of a lot of interesting things for my elementary students as extracurricular activities. We were also assigned to design a preliminary technology-enhanced lesson plan using a recommended template and explain how it is similar or different from the usual lesson plans we use in our classes.  This was really an interesting experience through which I could have an earlier idea about the final project needs. 

I am having fun with my family as well as my weekly tasks. Next week, I will attend MATE & IATEFL Marrakech 1st International ICT Conference from 8 to 12 Feb, 2012. I am thinking about how I can mange my time and balance the fulltime conference and the course assignments :-( hope me good luck :-)

Week Three: Another week …(an)other fun!

Week Three: Another week …(an)other fun!

Another week is about to “fade away”. I wouldn’t say it has flown by because time does not fly when you are doing things you love. This week, I had a lot of things to do besides this course;   my career, family and my PhD commitments; nevertheless, I couldn’t help checking my email inbox regularly looking for probable messages from Jody.  I also did my best to trace every single word or a comment posted by my colleagues on Nicenet or on  my blog too.  From time to time, I travelled through my friends ‘blogs seeking for some inspiring reflections.. I could say that I have found out a lot of beautiful things on their blogs. What I like best is when friends talk about their daily concerns, feelings, and aspirations and how life is going over there..where they live !  Difference means a lot to me!  Living  a new interesting experience . 

This week we were provided also with more useful resources. I read an article entitled , “Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials” by Lindsay Miller, which I found very useful in the sense that it considers how teachers can help learners of English language develop effective listening skills. I also found the article about The Employment of CALL in Teaching Foreign Language very informative, the article   gives emphasis to the application of CALL environment which is greatly recommended to develop foreign language speaking skills.

Another thing which I found highly pleasing and “delicious” is the website delicious.com. In the past, I was at ease using Firefox bookmarks or bloc-notes to save my favourite links. All these links were unintentionally lost when I recently tried to format my PC. Not only does delicious.com give me the chance to store bookmarks but also share and discover new ones.

 Overall, it was another wonderful week.  We have experienced a new feeling! Much work but too much fun! J.  Thank you Jodi, thank you sharie , thank you all colleagues.

Week Two: Reflections on the ABCD Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches

 Reflections on  ABCD Model and Effective Web Search

Week Two was a challenging week in the real sense of the word. I can  call it the week of  “ Hard Work ”. We were assigned to do a whole week tasks.   Go over various search engines and analyze them along the lines of their use in our own classes. Though the assignment was somewhat demanding, I benefited a lot from it. I have been familiar with Google search Engine and I have never thought of another alternative. Google was ever  the best and unique search engine for me. However, when was offered the chance to check Noodletools, the outcome was surprising. I came across very beneficial academic and social sites such as http://tenbyten.org/10x10.html . One of our colleagues Abdulsalam Al-Mukardi,, suggested using an important search engine from the list: http://education.iseek.com/iseek/home.page which I found wonderful and relevant for both teachers and students.

 We were also given the opportunity to have an idea about ABCD model for behavioral objectives.  We were asked, after reading some suggested references about ABCD style, to share a behavioural objective for a class we teach, using ABCD model, and discuss them on Nicenet forum.  I managed to provide mine and was so happy when I received encouraging comments from my colleagues.   

All things considered,  I can now enjoy searching my topics using other useful and interesting engines rather than Goggle. I can also, as I think, make use of the ABCD model to  set clear objective to outline what my lessons intend to accomplish. 

Thank you Jodi and sherie for giving us the chance to live through this exceptional experience

Week One: Reflections on My Blog

Reflections on My Blog

Despite some little challenging obstacles and time constraints, I finally managed to create my own blog....! I would like to thank our trainers whose instructions and advice were very helpful in finishing the task successfully.  The task wouldn’t be trouble-free without their guide.  Really the experience of creating a personal blog was a wonderful and enjoyable one and I pretty much like it. Again, I should be grateful for Jodi and Sherie for being tolerant and helpful all the time and for their innovative way of teaching and interacting with us.

Week One: School trip to the countryside.

With a group of my students during a weekend school trip to rural part of Smara city:

Last weekend, I accompanied my students on a trip to the countryside. Students had the wonderful experience of really getting to know each other far beyond the routines of the classroom.

Week One: Let's Start with Sidi

Sidi Sidi Mohamed ( friends call me Sidi) has been teaching English language at a public high school for the past 11 years. The age of his students range from 14 – 21 years old, and on average there are 46 students in his class. Sidi is an active founding member of Smara Association of teachers of English (SATE); NGO working for the benefit of teachers of English and the improvement of the teaching of English locally and nationally. Sidi is a doctoral candidate in Med V University in Rabat, Morocco. Sidi’s hobbies include surfing the Net. His major goal for participating in The University of Oregon Online Course: Building “Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web” is to gain more knowledge on how to make use of fitting technology to improve the learning milieu through discussion and interaction with other interested fellows of the program and impart the experience to his students in his classroom and his workmates as well. 

Favorite saying so far : Every single stitch will make a big difference!