Brilliant Greenpeace video on Chernobyl

Week 3: April 19 - 25

Every week during our course is so productive and creative. The third week for me was a week of making my blog better! I've learned, at least, how to create additional pages at my blog (I've created three - About me, Course and Participants). Also I wanted to know how many people visit my blog and where are they from, so again, I've learned how to set the flag-counter and did it. And the last, I found how to make the time-line of the duration of our course. So, I can say about myself - not bad, continue to learn.
Besides, this week I have known about so useful site for bookmarking www.delicious.com. I began to bookmark as much sites as possible, but after reading Susana's blog from Portugal, I understood that I have to pay more attention to the tags of different sites. Tags should be very detailed and specific.
The next task for us was to tell about some sites which help us and our students to develop listening and speaking skills. It takes almost whole week to look through different useful sites, every day I found better and better pages, but ... my favourite became Randall's listening Lab, which provide every visitors with the best orginized listening tasks for any level of English or any topic .



And the third task of the third week was exploring the articles about CALL. At the beginning, I even didn't know what is it CALL, and I had to look for information at wikipedia. Also I've found some funny video about it at www.youtube.com. There are a lot of different movies about using technologies at school.
After that I read two articles which Deborah asked us to read. Yeah, this week we read a lot, I even printed articles and worked with them at school between the lessons, also I copied posts of our participants at nicenet and read them with textmarker in the hand. And only after that I wrote my second message to forum with explanation how technology could be helpful in improving students aural/oral skills.

Delicious bookmark

It is totally true, that every time after re-instalation of the computer system you always lost your favourite bookmarks. Thanks to this course and Deborah, of course, we've known about www.delicious.com - the best bookmark site ever.

Now about my experience at this bookmark site:

Something was wrong with my computer, actually with Internet, so the most difficult for me was to create yahoo account; three times I filled the ID card.

Then the tool bar of delicious.com was proposed me to install and, of course, I agreed. It’s really comfortable to have bookmark tool just in Mozilla Firefox.

And finally, I began to search some interesting sites connected with ESL, such as our task for this week is to find two or more sites for using in the class.

I was looking for bookmarks which have the biggest number of people, who saved this site at their own delicious page.

So, welcome to my page http://delicious.com/shruslana !

Top ten tips for using technology in the classroom

New week - new tasks

Well, the third week is in the middle, I have already done three tasks and enjoy reading blogs of our participants. It is the biggest benefit of this course - communication with teachers all over the world.
During this week we have to:
- create the Delicious page
- write about two skill-building websites, which help to develop the aural/oral skills
- read some articles about CALL (computer assisted language learning) and explain how technology could be helpful in improving students' listening, speaking or prononciation skills
- write the reflection at our blogs
- write comments at others blogs.

And now about each of the tasks...

Education Today and Tomorrow

C.A.L.L Computer assisted LAnguage Learning (xman Edit)

Week 2: April 12-18

Wow! What a week! The first week was really easy for me, but the second one….

At the beginning of the week I could understand only one task – to write the reflection at my personal blog and post some comment

s on another person’s blog. Well it was easy. Actually it has already become the habit to post something new on my blog. This week I copied two Power Point presentations from http://www

.slideshare.net/ about writing the learning objectives and educational values in a digital age. Also I posted the description of my classroom and added some pictures. In future, I want to create some movie-maker film or Picasa-album about my class.

The second task was to describe

a class which I currently teach and think it could benefit from a technology change. I choose my 9^th grade, because they are the eldest of my students and they are preparing to exam of general English in two months. So, I think using technologies in this class will

be useful, especially using blogs (I want to make them to post the spea

king and writing tasks from the exam cards). I have already sent some messages to my students about their favorite films through network www.vkontakte.ru (it is something like Facebook, but on

ly for Russian-speaking people).

The third task was a little bit confusing for me. The worst thing in teaching for me is writing the

learners objectives for the lesson or unit or even thesemester. And Deborah asked us to write the learning objectives according to new ABCD model. I have never heard about it and tried to avoid this task till Thursday.But the devil is not so dark as it is drown (Ukrainian proverb)… After

reading some articles and messages of our participants I understood everything very clearly, Nadinna

was really right, when she wrote about it on herblog.

So, after two hours working in the WEB I wrote four excellent

(to my opinion) learning objectives for my topic in the 7^th form abou

t “Shops and shopping”

And the last, the fourth task is to write two posts about web searching. I’ve posted only one message about searching engines YET. In fact, I just wrote about different advantages of GOOGLE, and was looking for some other search engine.

That’s all for now…See you later…

Educational values in a digital age

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Educational values in a digital age

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

My classroom

My classroom is on the third floor of our school. It is quite large. There are two windows, which make class really light. I've decorated windows with big flags from England, Scotland, Poland and the USA. (It is my new hobby to collect big flags of different countries, because I am the organizer of the school European club, and we use them for learning European geography) .
Walls in my class are blue and we have drown the maps of United Kingdom and the USA on the walls. We have a lot of flowers in the class. The chalkboard is brown and I have some other board for different posters or other advertisements.
There are four bookcases in my class and all of them are full of books, newspapers, folders with papers, flash-cards, toys for learning communication and other materials.
From home I brought my own computer, printer and tape-recorder. And I can not even imagine my lesson without these device. I have a big collection of CDs and cassettes for listening and a lot of educational movies.
This year we decided to stand our 14 desks into three rows. But last year they were standing as a circus.

Writing specific instructional/learning objectives

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Writing specific instructional/learning objectives

View more presentations from Ashley Tan.

Week1: 5-11 April

Hello, all!
Do you remember your first feelings after the receiving of the Deborah’s letter about the beginning of the course? I was really happy!!!
I tried to do my best during the introduction week-
• I filled out the course survey on SurveyMonkey
• I posted my message to the forum about good discussion
• I compared two rubrics for good discussion and chose the best variant – the first
• Also I’ve created my own blog http://shruslana.blogspot.com , actually I’ve made new design to my old blog, which was made during my study at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
• I wrote the introduction at nicenet.com. It was interesting to read messages of the other participants, to compare their life stories with mine and was wondering about the varieties of the participants’ countries. For better memorizing I’ve created the Google map, where all the countries were marked. And it was a nice idea; Deborah also created the similar map. One of the tasks for introduction was to write the favorite quote or saying about teaching and technologies. All quotes were so interesting, that I’ve copied them and posted at my blog. But my favorite was Deborah’s quote from Ray Clifford:” Computers will not replace teachers, but teachers who know how to use computers will eventually replace those who do not”. I used it even for comment on Prem Phyak’s post at his blog . By the way, why did I choose his blog to write the comment (we have to write at least one comment a week for other blogs)? His thoughts about technologies were quite unusual for me – he doubted who has to use computers – teachers or technicians. I searched plenty sites about his country Nepal and felt in love in his mountainous country.
• We had to read some articles about blogging and write our thoughts about using blogs for learning and teaching English. Looking through some sites, I found a blog of Larry Ferlazzo, where he posted different tasks for his students, like creating flash-movie. So I tried to make a movie about blogging and post it on my blog.

Well, I believe that my knowledge of using technologies will increase in future and I ‘ll find really nice friends all over the world.

President of Poland Killed in Plane Crash in Russia

A plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and many of the country’s top leaders crashed as it landed in a heavy fog on Saturday morning, killing everyone on board. The leaders were arriving in Russia to commemorate a World War II anniversary.
Read more....

Moje współczucia wszystkim braciom Polakom w związku z wielką tragedią narodu polskiego. Wasz ból również czujemy.

My sympathy to all fellow Poles in connection with the great tragedy of the Polish nation. We feel your pain.

Gender in blogging

After reading of the article, which was posted by Susana Oliveira, I was surprise about “gender discrimination” of the bloggers – 67% male (two-third!!!) and 33% female. So, what does it mean? Do our men have more free time for blogging, or they are more creative and smarter than women??? Or it is an issue about women’s role in society (teaching)? If you have any ideas about men’s and women’s participation in blogging, please share your opinion!!! What about our students, does interest to blogging depend on sex?
By the way, here you can find “similar” article with “different” comments about gender in blogging http://elliottback.com/wp/gender-in-blogging-counting-the-men-and-the-women/ . In fact topic of gender in blogging quite popular in google.com.

Movie about blogging for ELT

Today I've tried something new for me in WEB. I was reading sites, which were recommended us by Deborah, and found Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day. He wrote about “fixed-fights” - a small competitions among his students. One of the task was to create movie about something interesting. You have to watch these student's works.

I've created a small video about blogging. "BLOGGING FOR ESL"
Hope you'll like it! It is my first flash-movie!

Our favourite quotes

· One of my favorite quotes goes back to the early 1980s, from Ray Clifford: Computers will not replace teachers, but teachers who know how to use computers will eventually replace those who do not.

Deborah Healey, USA

· I love the saying: No dream is too big for the one who dares to follow it.
No star is set too high for the one who dares to reach for it

Mary Grace Magcanam.

· My favorite quote is "If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others. " Tryon Edward.

Mohamed Hasan, Bahrain

· My favourite quote "Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road" by Stewart Brand.

Prem Phyak, Nepal

· My favourite quote comes from ancient Vedic scriptures. It teaches that, "A true leader is not one who has the most followers, but one who creates the most leaders."

Nalini Reddy, SA

· One of my favorite quotations belongs to Bill Gates and it says that "technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids work together and motivating them, the teacher is most important".

Nadina Nicolici - Romania

· There is an old saying from Confucian, a Chinese greatest educator, "A friend coming from far away areas is my pleasure".

Shujuan Wang, China

· I couldn`t agree more with John Dewey when he says "If we teach today as we taught yesterday we rob our children of tomorrow"

· Alvin Toffler said "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn."

Susana Oliveira, Portugal

· I also wrote one living philosophy for my career "Sharing is one of the best ways to find yourself." And I think that computer could be a best friend who always facilitates my teaching at all time.

Khang, Vietnam

· A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done.
Andrew Grove

· Lovely!...whoever says teaching using technology is a waste of time and not worth it should read this quote at least once! Anything is possible!

Evelín Ojeda Naveda (Eve), Venezuela.

· My favorite quote is something I heard at a workshop;"A teacher should be like a living stream."

Juliet Eiseb, Namibia

· My motto is "Children are not the pot to be filled with some knowledge, they are torch and we have to light up it"

Ruslana Shamanska, Ukraine

· Here is a quote I like, "There can be infinite uses of the computer and of new age technology, but if the teachers themselves are not able to bring it into the classroom and make it work, then it fails"
Nancy Kassebaum, U.S. Senator

Maha Almasri, Syria

· I don't have a special proverb, but I'd like to share the following idea: making students learn is like giving medicine to a little kid. If he doesn't like the medicine, we can make him take it by mixing it in yogurt or milk..

Hamid Mernaoui , Morocco

· Well my favorite quote is "Modern technology cannot be an effective component of our educational institutions if the teachers do not have the proper skills to use it". Samar Fatany, a Saudi radio journalist.

Hala Fawzi, Sudan