Week 3 Oral/Aural Skills and Delicious

Week 3 is the week when I feel myself is under great pressure. I think the biggest problem for me is time. Three articles to read, three different types of lesson plans to look through, and more websites to explore. I need to finish all these things before midweek as I have a reply to post. It is a challenge for me. I have to stay up and burn the midnight oil to get my assignments done. When I am ready to post my message, I find many of my classmates have already been there. I am really amazed at how my classmates could manage in such a short time. Meanwhile, I feel a little bit intimidated by them. However, as the old saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining, there is one thing that cheers me up. That is when I checked last week’s discussion thread and found that some of my classmates responded to my posts. This sure has added a bit of confidence and it feels pretty good when someone say “hi, I have the same experience with you”.

Besides these emotional ups and downs, I do learn things in this week. The articles I read not only gave me some new information but also a lot to think about. For example, Maria Grazia Busa’s New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation has enlightened me with the many possible methods for teaching pronunciation with the help of technology. Lindsay Miller’s Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials has virtually set me thinking about what is the best way to help my students practice their listening skill. Am I doing the correct thing all the time? Do I need any changes? Where should I get started? It is these thinking that pushes me forward in the course of exploration for better strategies of teaching.   

Week 2 ABCD Objectives and Web Searching

It seems that a post on my blog will be a wrap for this week. Let’s see what I have done in the past week.

First, I read the reading materials given on ABCD Objective writing and wrote one objective in ABCD style. Learning how to write an objective is actually very helpful because I can use this style to make clearer and more operable objectives for my students.

Second, I visited NoodleTools and explored some of the search engines recommended by the site. I am sure these search engines and portals are very useful in our academic research as well as in our teaching, but the problem is there are too many for us to explore. At the very beginning I was really overwhelmed by the quantity of the sites and did not know which one to begin with. Now I understand it this way: I was given one week to explore these sites in this course, but as long as I get to know about this tool, I have endless time to learn and apply. I will continue to try these new sites and find the ones that work for me and my students as well.

Third, I described my class which I would choose for my final project in Nicenet. Before doing that I read about the overall course project and tried to figure out a bigger blueprint. I am really anxious to find out what technologies we are talking about and how can my students benefit from them. 

Week 1 -- Bumpy yet Exciting

Finally I am here!
Just like the first week of a new semester, what can I say, well, I have been to the wrong classrooms twice in my first week in September! The first week of the online "Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web" course is bumpy yet exciting for me.
I call it "bumpy" because I have suffered a major setback in the first week as I could not access the course google websites after the course has already officially begun, which made me very worried. It took me more than three days to fix the problem.Thank goodness with the help of Sean and my sponsor, I finally got over it and here I am!
I have read the posts from my class members on Nicenet, and also the blogs published by former participants of the course. I have to say I totally feel their passion and enthusiasm for the course and for the profession, which makes me very excited and encouraged. Also, I am eager to know more about the new stuff like Delicious, WebQuest ect. mentioned in the blogs. I am really looking forward to learning from the course, from all of my classmates!