Week 3: Reflection on bookmarking and aural/oral skills

Warm greetings, this is week 3 already. It’s amazing how we get a chance to learn and re-learn about interactive tools that can be incorporated in the EFL class.

This week’s tasks were very easy for me, for I have used delicious before, I am familiar with the use of Blogger, and I had the privilege of reading an excellent action plan by a former participant of this course. Her report shares some similarities with my own teaching situation; besides, the participant comes from a Latin-American country, so I realize we have so many things in common, unfortunately, not the good ones. Limitations with technological connections, especially that. 

This week has been very challenging for me, my wireless Internet connection keeps breaking down, I have connection for only a few minutes, 5 or 8 minutes, it gets disconnected, and it takes me a couple of hours to get another 5 or 8-minute connection. It is really a nightmare.

I wish I could have a better connection, but I live in-between two cities, that is, in the borderline. So my community has no support from either major of the cities, and basic services such as electricity, water, phone connection, or internet connection, are not the best quality.

All in all, I keep learning and getting enthusiastic with ICTs, I’ll keep using and incorporating new tools in my class.

See you next week!

Week 2 - reflection

Here I am again, after a very interesting week.

Besides thinking about what group of students I should focus on for the Project, I also had a chance to explore several search engines, besides Google. There are so many options, pity I don't have a robust Internet connection.

I have also read quite a few of my classmates' blogs. They are so plenty of insights, and I have learned a lot.

In regards to the ABCD objective task, the truth is that where I teach (Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador) we use the same guidelines for writing classroom objectives, and they serve as the starting point for evaluations and assessment in general.

I look forward to reading my classmates' blogs and their comments.

Week 1: learnings and reflection

Creating a blog using blogspot has been a relatively easy task to complete, as I have used a gmail account for years. This means I didn't have to create an account, it was already available for me to use. I have created other blogs in the past, but I have rarely come back and update any entries, for several reasons, namely lack of time, topics being too specific or outdated now, among others.

This is actually the first time that I have consciously thought of creating a blog for educational purposes other than asking my students to read my posts and react to them. I think that using the blog for self-reflection and for organizing my thoughts on teaching implies an innovative way of taking advantage of technology.

In terms of my competencies using technology (technological skills per se) I feel I haven't learned anything new. However, and most importantly, I have learned how to look at blogs in a different way, with potential other uses in my EFL class.

This is it so far. Warm regards, Audy.