Week 2 Reflection: Growing and Changing

Week 2 Webskills Reflection

Growing and Changing

To grow is to change and to have changed better is to have grown much, and so I thought. But to grow is to think and to think better, in doing so we change a lot, and will change for the better. In changing better, we aim for the best, we get the best and we become our own bests.

We are Week 2 on Webskills, everyday is a smorgasbord of ideas, thoughts, and things to do. It reminds me of a Chinese Lauriat. (Fookien (Minnan) Lao-Diat or "Re-Nao" in Mandarin, special occasion or banquet among Chinese-Filipino community, consists of around 10 big dishes with different kinds of exotic food, from appetizer to shark's fin soup, to noodles and desserts. It usually lasts 2 to 3 hours. (wiki.answer.com). Sometimes it is even more than a dozen dishes served.

Anyway, ideas are foods that nourish and enrich our minds and spirits, and hone our personalities; these are what we get daily.  Donna gives us palatable dishes to partake every week that we all savor and tastes differently and digest individually. We all “gazed” at each other sharing our thoughts about what is served and comment on it.

The Introduction, the ground rules on discussion and blogs were all enticing and delicious. The Websearching  was massive and vast try, the more that you go about trying the search engines given, the more that you want to discover and to explore. It could not quench one’s insatiable thirst for knowledge and learning. Everyone has something to share about notably.

This is an experience of a lifetime. Imagine having these powerful minds and intriguing personalities blending in circles and communicating through a discussion board? Just like Pam I've been a teacher for more than 25 years and there is such a big difference between traditional and modern teaching. We are lucky to have been exposed to both.

Vinay’s research on what a search engine is shade light in everyone’s dilemma. " A search engine is a website, but a search engine would not normally provide answers straight away. You enter a search term and it brings up a number of pages which it thinks are applicable to your search terms. Search engines crawl through websites using computers to make an electronic copy of website (the cache). A website is something you know how to get on and where to go by typing the URL, but still need to find what you are looking for. (wiki.answers.com)

I like this link, just like the e-how.com, an online how-to guide with more than 1 million articles and 170,000 videos offering step-by-step instructions.

Google's online courses for power searching/advanced searching techniques-http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/course/aps, also from Vinay is worth considering. Ayman's suggestion of dogpile was quite intriguing too.

I like Sitaram's thought that the use of the internet has become commonplace for teachers and students to enhance their teaching and learning. No one can overlook the importance of internet for their personal or classroom use

I also noted Alescja's recommendation of uk.ask.com for any academic search related to education. Prakash was right in recommending Meriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus best in his list.

Who would forget Dev's, "Do I need powerful binoculars? Yes, I do. I am going to the jungle. There will be huge trees, singing streams and wild animals. If I want to see them clearly, I must have a pair of powerful binoculars."

Carlos, in a discussion with Livia and Dev asserted, "It's only after the results, you can say whether the time was invested or wasted."

Significant is Donna's indelible remark, "One thing I thought about is the fact that the Internet is a huge, huge collection of webpages, sites, and information. Not every engine will seek out the same information and return the results to you." She further noted, "One thing to keep in mind about Wikipedia is that its content is user supplied and unreliable. Wikipedia is a great start-especially if I need explanation of something."

These and many more thoughts from all others, please forgive me for not mentioning your names here. Certainly, all of you have unique ideas that tickle my mind no end. I feel so blessed being in this course and for becoming a part of such a wonderful community of learners and of learned. Thank you everyone for your candid remarks and warm thoughts, thank you all for your beings.

Moreover, the other learning tasks, like the ABCD method of writing objectives which I thought as a review of what we were taught about before we became teachers is for me a refresher. It keeps us grounded and focused. We have to know who we are, how we are, what we have, and what we are aiming for to get through what the E-teacher Webskills scholarship has for us.

Reflectively, I 'd like to end the week's work with a thought from one of my favorite writers Dr. Wayne Dyer, "When you can let go of your own thoughts about yourself and not think of yourself for a long period of time, that is, when you are free." Float and flow freely everyone! SRL