Week 4 Reflection: Amazing, Endless, Compelling, and Liberating Webskills

Amazing, Endless, Compelling, and Liberating Webskills!

You offer me amazing opportunities, endless possibilities and liberating perspectives. You give multi-dimensional tasks, multi-cultural collaborations, multi-faceted personalities, multi-magnitude of learning experiences. What more can I ask from you Webskills???

Webskills offers a world of endless possibilities. The week is compelling and liberating. It gives me confidence and plethora of ideas as a teacher, as a student, as a learner, and as a human being.

It compels us to be more attentive and focused in what we are doing. We are compelled to stick to the topic and to go direct to the point. We are all compelled to stand and to deliver straightforward problems and solutions. If our journey is a story we are now facing the conflict and the denouement.

It liberates in the sense that we have to really squeeze our brains and guts to come up with possibilities. The week answers my other questions on the many ways to integrate technology in the classroom setting.  The readings are meaningful and substantial. The cited references are equally useful in preparation for our reports come March.

I encountered the words omnishambles, wordle, mixbook, viewbix, vialogues, mindomo and a lot more.

From the articles given, I like these sites/topics in particular: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Belisle-Email.html     http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Belisle-Email/ ; http://iteslj.org/Articles/Kelly-MakePage/   gives a detailed account of the how to make a web page for teachers;

http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Muehleisen-Projects.html  using the internet in English classes.

http://www.microsoft.com/Education/en-us/teachers/plans/Pages/index.aspx ; http://www.imdb.com/     the internet movie database; http://www.bham.wednet.edu/bio/biomaker.htm

http://www.englishclub.com/esl-articles/200204.htm  listening: a good way to learn English

http://www.learnenglish.de/ImproveEnglish/improvelisteningpage.htm  how to improve your listening skills.

http://esl.about.com/od/englishlistening/a/listen_tips.htm ---listening tips.
http://www.microsoft.com/Education/en-us/teachers/plans/Pages/index.aspx 

From breakingnewsenglish.com I tried these lessons in my classes: Finland has the best world education system; Omnishambles is word of the year; Internet access is a human right. The lessons there are complete; you just have to really choose what is practical for your classes. The only thing I don’t like is the pop up, the ads, they are annoying. I also like Lauri’s ESL café, it is simple and direct.

My most interesting find this week is from the Baltimore County Public Schools Office of Instructional Technology. Aside from reading the sample lesson plans I read almost all its links. I really like the web 2.0 tools and the 21^st century skill building techniques and methodologies in teaching. Integration of reading, writing, speaking, listening and language is in their standards as well as higher-order thinking skills. Critical thinking, communication, collaboration ad information literacy are obviously embedded. Surely, I will use all of them in my teaching and training of trainers’ activities (one at a time). Thank you for guiding us through this Donna.

http://issuu.com/ugaetc/docs/thirty_eight_interesting_ways_to_use_wordle_i/1----

http://www.web2teachingtools.com/wordle.html----

http://www.web2teachingtools.com/support-files/Online_Tools_Supporting_CCSS_ELA2.pdf

http://www.web2teachingtools.com/vialogues.html

To sum it up- “Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, but nobody else has thought.” Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

And I swear to- “Not go where the path leads, but go where there is no path and leave a trail for everyone to follow.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

More importantly, Webskills you’re love is indeed amazing, endless, compelling and liberating!!!!

Light and love to all!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax5cNlutAys  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8