Reflecting on Week 2

Dear All,

It has been a tough week! Oxford Teachers' Academy course, Quality Assurance Association and end of term exams made the perfect mixture to one of the hardest weeks of the year so far. Besides having a teacher training course from OTA, my school was on QAA schedule and I had numerous duties to do. I could not have time to be online as usual. Thanks goodness that is over now.

Reflecting on Week 2, I really love the discussion on the web searching tools. NoodleTools website offers a variety of search engines that are tailored to both of the teacher's and the learner's needs. For the first time, I experienced trying specific search engines other than the general Google. I know now why as my colleague Farah said "we were wasting long hours in vain" searching tens if not hundreds of Google pages. I believe it is because Google all the websites cached with no real specification to the target term(s). From now on, I will always try specialised searchers to save time and effort. I want to an expert in web searching, nothing less.

As a matter of fact, the Audience Behaviour Condition Degree of mastery approach is another excellent topic we have had for this week. Writing your lesson objectives in a clear organised precise way help you and your students to play your roles as best as possible. Personally, I believe and an ABCD objective sums up all the process and is very helpful to measuring the learner's achievement. Though it needs studying and habit formation to maximise it benefits, it worths all the efforts to be contributed. I would like to thank all the colleagues for their posts and comments on this week's topics. I learned a lot from you!

Best wishes,
Amjad

Links:
NoodleTools
http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html

Minds Collaboration

Dear Colleagues,

Most of us, if not all, are familiar with mind maps. I remember my first-time spider web map that I used for a college composition course. I must admit using this approach has made writing essays easier for me. Therefore, I've been using mind maps for almost everything ever since. As matter of fact, I've been using it for planning, organising, and even meditating. Based on my experience, I believe mind mapping approach is a powerful tool to diagram what you've learned about a specific item and spot the missing gaps precisely. Thus, you know exactly what you have and what you don't.

I've been searching for a web tool to draw mind maps. To my surprise, I found lots of websites offering web-based mind mapping. Some are free and some are not. Therefore, I made a shortlist of and begun trying them one by one checking their features and potentials. Luckily, I found a really wonderful full cream mind mapper. It's Mind42. Does the name imply anything to you?

As a matter of fact, it inspired me to the idea of collaboration of many minds to create one map. In our situation, I suggest that everyone of us should make a mind map of his/her own diagramming own unique experiences, ideas, and findings on each week's task as well as discussion topic. Let's share our mind maps at our blog, as a start. I believe it will add a lot to each blog. Moreover, imagine that we can also collaborate on producing one map together! We can share one or more mind maps through Mind42 and add our fingerprints to them. I'm doubtless that the collaboration of the beautiful minds of such distinguished professionals like you will ultimately produce a rich and unique content.
What do you think?

If you do or don't agree, I'd love to read your highly valued comments.

My best wishes,

Amjad

Links:

Mind42

http://www.mind42.com/

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map

NovaMind.com

http://www.novamind.com/mind-mapping/mind-mapping-for-students.php

Creative Web Tools

Dear Colleagues,

I've been thinking over the past my next days what am I going to wirte in my next post? After restless search for long black hours skimming and reading tens of webpages I found true treasure. Now I know what I'm going to write about, I'd love to share with you three mines of gold. They'll make us wealthy and rich in blogging.
Have you ever thought about your students' technical and computer/internet-related needs? Do you feel bitter over the difficulty to get the help of IT Lab guys in your institue to help the students who lack basics of computer literacy? Do you wish to train your students how to use your blog?

You needn't be worried any more! You don't need a super power but only Screencast-O-Matic. It is an easy web tool that enables you of creating video tutorials. You can record your screen and upload the video for free hosting all from your browser with no need to install any software. Fantastic and Free!
Another wonderful web tool is VoiceThread. If you'd like your students to do speaking activities, one amazing thing is to talk about their favourite subject using your target grammatical item. For example, they can work indivudlaly or in groups on projects about holiday photos, new movies' trailers, or chosen articles from newspapers. It is simple and takes only a minute to get used to it.
The last web tool for today is the KidsSpace story builder. It ca be used to create or improvise a story using the website library of images, scenes, and characters. The website is very user-friendly. It takes you right to the author seat and what you've got to do is to pick your favourite characters/setting and let go your imgination. I believe, using it with young leaners will encourage them to express their own feeling, ideas and emotions. Creativity. therefore, is reinforced. I wish you will like these three web tools and use them in your ELT and blogging.

What do you think?
What uses/employments have come to your mind so far?

My best wishes,
Amjad

URL:
Screencast-O-Matic
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/
VoiceThread
http://voicethread.com/#home
KidsSpace
http://kidsspace.torontopubliclibrary.ca/story.html

Links found in:
Daniela Munca ESL Class Blog
http://dvmunca.blogspot.com/

Academic Blogging Experience

Welcome to my blog!

It is an honour to have you, dear colleagues, here reading my first post. Though I am not entirely new to blogging, this is my first time to write about my own experiences, especially academic or e-learning related ones. It is such a wonderful thing to have my own ideas, thoughts and opinions up for the world. Getting feedback from readers is another fantastic feature that makes me feel better about my posts. From now on, I will be posting regularly, hopefully on daily basis.

The beauty of blogging is the "Contribution" of your most successful experiences. That means you are no longer a consumer, but rather an active professional. I highly value your responses as I believe your feedback and comments are essential for the success of my blog. Please feel free to do so and contact me if you like anything on my blog that you wish to have on yours. It is my pleasure to teach you how to do that.

Accept my best wishes,

Amjad