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 :-)