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

Week 3 Reflection: Perfectly Engaged

Perfectly engaged

I was totally appalled while going about the week’s assignment. Bewildered, I was crazily and deliriously creating my delicious site unknowing which button to press and which key to click. I felt like a little baby crying for help and nobody’s there to help me.  

Education is the progressive discovery of our own ignorance, Will Durant said it. However,Will Rogers retorted, “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” And I said, "Only you can make you feel better."

Webskills, you are directing me to really fall in love with you and to get me completely engaged. Week 1 was exciting and adventurous, “knowing me knowing you”, and blogging. Week 2 was amazing and fabulous, “going here and there”, and remembering.

The lessons I learned aside from the websearching and everything related that webskills have for the first two weeks, are the following:

1. Read the instructions very carefully, thoroughly and comprehensively before you do anything.

2. Use simple words and go direct to the point with style (smile)

3. Use empathy and telepathy in writing your tasks, blogs and comments.

4. Commit to webskills and have fun.

I may be delirious at delicious, but the week was delightfully and completely engaging.

Week 3- I am perfectly engaged, there’s no more turning back. I am now facing a vast ocean of ideas and mountainous search tools. I am drowning and falling hastily, but I am now standing still in awe and amazement on top of it, I suppose. To be totally engage I have to know you, to understand you, to perceive you and to love you. I love you webskills and I love you more creators and mentors of webskills.

In retrospect, third week had these thoughts in me:

Delicious.com is a must to all professionals whether you teach English or Math. I recommend this to all reading enthusiasts.

However, too much is very much. We see a lot of links, discover a lot to learn, gain so much knowledge and perspectives. We have so many things to do and too little time to do them. And in my case Flu is romancing me right at this very moment. I realized that I should go easy and stay moderate. This too much has taught me to be more organized, deliberate, and focused. The human brain is the most complex thing in existence (so far). It can make 100 trillion calculations per second and can receive only quadrillion of instruction per second.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_instructions_per_second_are_processed_by_a_human_brain

Project task 2 is beginning to lead us to where we are going and what we are supposed to be doing. All the given resources will be our gaining grounds.  It makes us perspicacious, retrospective and introspective. “What may be suitable for you may not be suitable for me.” I opt for what is practical and realistic.  

We learned about CALL Computer Assisted Language Learning and Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training CAPT. How new is new this new perspective in teaching pronunciation? 10 years, 5 years ago; to what extent did it succeed?

Some intriguing lines that bring me into retrospection and introspection are the following:

“A word of caution on new technological ad­vances is in order. Even though new technological advances offer exciting per­spectives for second-language pronunciation teaching, people are still the best teachers, evaluators and correctors of learners’ performances in L2. P.173. I am proud to say that my first English teacher was my father who taught me to memorize three to 5 words from the Longman Unabridged dictionary that he gave me when I was 8 years old and put me on the table to recite what I learned just after dinner daily until I finished college. And I was my daughter's first English teacher too.

The attainment of intelligible pronunciation is considered essential for the learner to increase self-confidence and promote social interactions outside the classroom (Morley, 1991; Cunningham Florez, 1998). This holds true, Pronunciation accu­racy may also help improve a person’s social acceptance, since a foreign accent may be socially stigmatized and contribute to negative stereotyping of some second-language learners, and thus result in social or professional discrimina­tion (Munro, forthcoming; Derwing, Rossiter, and Munro, 2002). I don’t believe on this. Just as long as you can be understood, why should you be discriminated?

“Today, language teachers and researchers generally agree that the ultimate goal of pronunciation teaching should not be to eradicate a foreign accent, but rather to promote pro­nunciation which is reasonably intelligible, as intelligible pronunciation is con­sidered an essential component of communicative competence (Celce-Murcia, 1987; Anderson-Hsieh, 1989; Morley, 1991; Lambacher, 1996a, 1996b; Stibbard, 1996).” Definitely true! I just noticed that most of the studies are geared on the improvement of Intelligent Quotient (IQ) when what matters most in life is Emotional Quotient EQ.

I reiterate what I wrote in the discussion board, that for me, the purpose of learning a language is to learn how to communicate comprehensively, effectively and understandably. Communication is an art of understanding and being understood. To be understood, you have to be understandable; to be understanding, you have to understand.

Furthermore, I am particularly stunned knowing that there is not much study on listening, when listening for me is a very important aspect of learning. According to Philologist/Statistician Paul T. Rank, “Listening occupies an average of about 27% of the average waking day. Listening is used more than talking, three times as much as reading and four times as much as writing.

Gentlemen, note this, “An average man speaks twenty-five thousand words a day and the average woman speaks thirty thousand.”  

“An average person spends at least one-fifth of his life talking. Ordinarily, in a single day, enough words are spoken to fill a fifty-page book. Over the span of one year, the average person’s words would fill 132 books, each containing at least 400 pages.”

I don’t exactly know if this is correct that the mind can process six thousand (6,000 )thoughts per minute. The links and the reading relative to it give us a spinning headache. Honestly, I thought it is just enough for the week and the links for the meantime. Anyway, Donna taught us the how to, the where to and the what, and everyone else have given their share, we can always go back and spend time reading them.

Another significant thing I gained from the past three weeks with webskills is connecting and interacting with people who do not only give you knowledge and new perspectives in life, but sharing their humanity as well. It’s like knowing who is who and what is what. With all the knowledge and materialism we gain from this world, the formation of character and integrity is still the most important. 

I seal my engagement with balance, focus, and moderation in every course that we make, in every step we take whatsoever….I swear to love you forever webskills!

http://www.persuasive.net/personality-types-analytical

http://www.personalityquiz.net/- Thanks to Livia for posting this at delicious. I took the test and enjoyed it. 
blogmagazine.org

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

Week 1 Reflection: Ecstatic

When you know that you do not know, and that you have to know and do what you must know, how do you think it feels? And when you start knowing what you need to know and doing it. You simply feel ecstatic.

It was an overwhelming week. I live a life of "Thanksliving", so please allow me to let go of an overflowing gratitude. I am indebted to the generosity of the Philippine US Embassy people for my nomination in the E-Teachers scholarship and to the UO-AEI lovely people for my acceptance in the program. For our first teacher in the Webskills course, Dr. Donna Shaw for her conscientiousness and dedication to guide us, direct us, and help us through this first week of our three-month course. Webskills course is indeed well thought about, carefully designed and professionally handled by experts in the field. Thank you very much!

Admittedly, I am new to nicenet, blogspot, wiki, delicious and all the other links given to us. I have used webs.com where I tried creating my website in 2008, facebook where i communicate with my circle of friends and where I also communicate with my students, yahoo mail, yahoo messenger and skype up to this time. What our teacher shared with us, truly enriched me personally and professionally.

Webskills course does not only make us think openly, profoundly, and collaboratively. It offers a variety of interactive activities and it set more worlds for you to see as a professional and as a human being. Yes, we are just facing a laptop while safely nestled in a comfortable place, but we are not "boxed" we are actually outside of the box and on top of that box seeing the world as it is while communicating and interacting with our fellow professionals and other human beings.

What we have is a combination of technology and human interaction. Thanks to Steve Jobs, he is right when he said, " Technology is nothing, what is important is that you have faith in people, that they are basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them." Certainly we are, our mentors, and we as participants as well, and our students and colleagues eventually.

A former teacher said that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be discovered. I thought that she might have thought of it from the words of Soren Keirkegaard, " Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." 

In retrospect, being in the E-teacher course is an absolutely interesting and exciting life that awaits all of us participants, and a reality that will open up new horizons. Thank you for my being in this journey. I welcome everyone involved in the E-teacher course in my life as a professional and as a human being. I am sending all of you gratitude and goodwill. 

UO webskills

I am learning to blog. I am actually a very private person, as much as possible I limit my exposure in the net. But my class with UO-AEI gives me the guts to do what I have to do and what I am doing at this very moment.