Building bridges

Dear all,

This week quite a few of my own myths regarding technology were challenged. The first one of them is that we should not consider ourselves hopelessly less competent in any way than our students. In our forum discussion the empowering notion came up of the teachers still having the key to developing our students' literacy and intellectual skills. And I think there is nothing bad about learning from our students in the process.

There may be such a thing as digital natives and digital immigrants, as M. Prensky defined it, but there are different shades of grey in between. I invite you to look at the extended version of the initial conceptualization and see where you stand. I like to think of myself as a bridge, an image that for me is both flattering and realistic. It is by no means an easy position, as combining the best of both worlds requires a lot of hard work, bold guessing, questioning the obvious and many puzzled looks and raised eyebrows on both shores.

Another set of assumptions that I had been nourishing is that, even at the undergraduate level, students need to be guided and told what to do, shown where to look. Having reviewed just a small portion of skills websites provided by our class this week, I came to realize that a lot of them (especially the drills) can be nicely organized as a self-access module within the course for students' individual work. To have to analyze a few web sources in terms of level, age and application was another carefully chose task Sandra and Deborah invited us to do, as they pushed us from merely liking/disliking the website towards evaluating it, imagining how it would work in a concrete class. Another step forward toward the insight needed for picking what is most appropriate at any given moment, if appropriate at all, and feeling more free to combine different sources to support various skills.

The two articles we extensively discussed in forum further consolidated my previous belief into the need for careful planning (L. Miller) and the changing nature of technological trends (D. Hoopingarner). It is the bigger picture that can be extremely useful when making choices how to use the technology, as whether to use it or not does not seem to be an issue any longer. Having Sueanne on board was particularly beneficial in developing this critical outlook and creating an awareness we are not alone in experiencing problems using technology. And they say it if can go wrong, it will go wrong. We have to be aware of that, and never fully rely on technology only, as Ahmed Khattab points out. That means backing up students' work, for instance. I appreciate Ahmed's comment on handwriting – the forgotten skill. With all the downloadable and printable options and digital assistants, one does not feel the need to write anything down. Yet, so many of my own brilliant ideas were generated in the process of trying to jot something down on paper. Isn't the same thing happening to reading as well, a skill cherished in the B.G. (Before Google) era, with all due respect to the digital archives the Web is providing.

Congratulations to all of us, we have been working so hard and learning so much. Thank you for your honesty and appreciation, Gaby, thank you for sharing your feelings of ‘excitement, challenges, hope, aspiration, despondence, inspiration and motivation’, Md. Mahamud Hasan. I will keep it in mind next time I feel overwhelmed.

Best regards,

Andreja


P.S. See how you feel about the abundance of issues this video and its title raises!

Week 3 My delicious experience

Dear all,

As anticipated, this has been another eventful week. Last week we expanded our navigation skills. But what will one do with all the wonderful websites you manage to find? I used to store them in my Bookmarks bar or even save the whole page as a Web source (which is still advisable in case of, for instance articles in weekly magazines that after some time need subscription to be accessed). After installing Delicious, seeing that my bookmarks could be accessed from all the computers I use (and I use two of them interchangeably and intensely) filled me with joy. So, I have moved on in the sense of storage and retrieval of the stuff I find interesting, relevant and worth returning to.

Best of all, it is traceable by clicking on tags. Now, perhaps tagging was and is the most interesting part, as deciding on the tag is a bit of a creative process. It would be very frustrating if I could only use one tag per link, as I prefer multiple tags – they give me a better idea of the content of the bookmarked site. In future I will try to develop a convenient habit of adding more Notes, as this is another way to instantly get a better view of the document without opening it.

My impressions so far have been related to bookmarking. My following sentences are dedicated to the social aspect of social bookmarking, in other words, to my dear colleagues who have contributed their treasuries of websites to the delicious database. To see the variety of sources and key words that has arisen in such a short time was a revelation – it is hard to say whether language skill websites or teacher development resources proved to be more inspirational for inclusion into the bookmark database, but I cannot but mention Jonathan's links posted in Nicenet, which have been acknowledged by many of my colleagues. In addition, I was particularly curious about the way my colleagues dealt with tagging, coming up with different variations on the theme. And in a way, if I may say so, I have been trying to imagine the person, the teacher, my course mate, behind each collection of bookmarks, completely regardless of the quantity provided. I am reading how my colleagues feel about htis week's effort notonly through their words, but also images - Nina used a box of chocolates, for instance.

This is definitely something that could be used with students – at least having them access a delicious page I would create as the read-only version, containing tagged websites they would have to choose materials from for their reading, presentations and writing activities. That would keep them from using Google only, which is what they do when asked to find their own sources, and still keep them busy searching within a more concentrated list of resources, perhaps creating some kind of hotlists, as an additional activity. Another option is to have students identify a couple of bookmarked sources expressing differing points of view on the same subject and then use those arguments in a debate. I believe this is similar to what Jonathan means by 'online syllabi' to be used more autonomously by students. For instance, the issue of social networking could be discussed from several perspectives – its technical aspects, the convenience and benefits as opposed to its potential downsides. The different sources could further be compared in terms of style or even genre.

All of it starting from delicious.

I wish us all many good searches.

Best regards,

Andreja

Week 2 Looking back at Objectives

Dear all,

The week behind has been marked by a lot of looking and thinking ahead. Insights into defining objectives and goals, the difference between them, the need for objectives, their usefulness for teachers and students alike as well as the concrete model have been provided by the readings but also processed and rendered through the eyes and experience of each of my colleagues, our mentors and myself.

It was amazing to see how the objectives would develop under the guidelines provided by fellow teachers. I have to admit, though, that posting some feedback on my dear colleagues’ class objectives made me a bit uncomfortable, as I was not sure whether my remarks were right. Still, if we are going to expect our students to comment on each other’s work, we have to try it out ourselves, provided we give a few arguments, so it is all a part of our learning process here.


I am thinking about including a short introductory list of objectives for each unit I do with students, not only including the part ‘What you will do in this unit’ but also ‘What you are expected to achieve’. It will make students more involved and oriented and thus make assessment easier.

Of course, having the objectives and not having the technological means is not a pleasant feeling for dedicated teachers that we all are. Regarding the ICT equipment and competence level, I would like to tell my dear colleague Md. Mahamud Hasan that I have seen that sometimes having all the infrastructure in the world does not guarantee success and does not make life and/or learning better for students it its own right. The starting point is and will be the vision of the person using the technology. And do not think that you are lagging behind in any way – different people will know different things and have different resources at disposal.

Still, it is always better to focus on one’s own progress than see how far ahead - just relatively speaking - others may seem to be. It is the difference that you will achieve between your initial input and the final output that will make you feel proud. And, trust me, these are the words from a person who has experienced the same amount of sweat (if not tears) since starting this wonderful journey as the rest of you may have. The person is me, of course.

I am looking forward to another eventful week on the course!

Andreja

Less is more

Hello, everyone!

I was relieved to see that for some of you trying out a new method of searching the Web also produced mixed feelings of initial confusion and uncertainty followed by a sense of achievement.

Sandra's three questions in the assignment for this week made me redefine my idea of searching the Web as another activity where the outcome will depend not only on the way we do it, but also on the goal we set. And in that respect, the headline at the top of suggested NoodleTools page makes if very clear what we should keep in mind: trying to 'combine the best search' with our 'information need' that we have to define first. Otherwise the Web will be a place we very easily get carried away with too many things in too many places. The abundance is impressive, but it is ‘narrowing down’ that actually matters. In other words, Web searching by using less tiresome random scrolling and, instead, more clicking on different filtering options and search criteria.

In future I am definitely going to include this topic while discussing the World Wide Web with my students, as I know that to most of them, comptuer savvy as they are, Google is the most obvious choice. (They will occasionally combine it with Google Scholar, if specifically asked to do so.) Besides, I particularly liked the Magnifiying Glass quiz that Deborah created on the Technology Tip of the Month page, as it helped me visualize the difference that a Web search strategy can make! Using Boolean operators would be much easier for my students to grasp, as they are skilled at writing spreadsheet formulae and doing programming. Still, I am convinced that even I could learn to use some of them. Having a collection of search engines other than Google will prove invaluable for finding resources to be used in our courses, both for myself and the students.

Of course, it is very easy to get set in one’s own ways and hard to give up old habits. I am only beginning to develop my browsing strategies, and trying out new methods also implies learning how not to continue with our present Web search habits which, satisfactory as they may be, definitely need some improving.

The fact that I did manage to find what I had set out to find in the first place was a boost to my self-efficacy and information literacy perception.

I hope you have experienced the same rewarding feeling and appreciate the improved (if not an entirely new) competency we have acquired.

Best regards,

Andreja

Week 1 Impressions

Hello everyone!

It has been an eventful week. I am not entirely new to using technology in the classroom but this is the first time I am engaged in the hands-on experience on my own. Now that the first week is over, I have to admit that I have been thinking really hard about the topic and felt encouraged to do so by all the ideas flooding in from my colleagues, prompted by the readings and surfing, arising from the richness of our professional experience.

The initiative to summarize and visualize, through collaborative mind maps, the suggestions on our weekly topics, brought up by Nina and Amjad is excellent, as managing and channeling information is one of the critical skills and has its practical benefits. I also like having a course wiki, where the interesting links and documents referred to in our discussion posts will be collected, as one of the features of our course. This is likely to become another treasure box, along with our blogs, as I expect that little by little a repository of interesting and useful links may be created.

Among a myriad of uses that have been proposed for blogs in EFL, I believe that with my students using a blog would work most effectively as a place they could integrate their work done in different tools (from word processors to multimedia) for others to see and assess or simply comment on. Seeing that my colleagues also need to handle large groups of students only made me more determined to try conduct blog-mediated activities in teams, rather than individually. Whatever we do, having an open technological mind and everything, the question should primarily be What are we trying to achieve? and only then How are we going to do it? I hope to get more insight into that in the upcoming week dealing with the issue of objectives. Asking our students what they think about it may be an important step in making our blog, or any other tool we use, even more productive.

As to my colleagues, it is evident that, with the kind help of our tutors, a 'list of participants' has been shaping into a vibrant group, with ties and sharing as the underlying principle. A true academic network, whose members have already proved to be curious, hard-working, responsive and generous.(What can compare to the feeling you get upon reading a positive comment to your post?) It is a kind of cooperation we would like out students to engage in through ICT, with manifold benefits. It is a reminder that our students also need clear instruction and encouragement from us as teachers - everything we have been getting plentifully in this course so far.

Another important thing is that starting to be trained on how to best use functionalities of all the tools Sandra and Deborah have encouraged us to use so far (blog, discussion board, wiki) plus the tools proposed by others (Amjad, thank you again!) will all be useful in formulating our future projects.

The bottom line has to be about how well have we/I been doing? As a benchmark and a reminder that our teaching practices are a work in progress, I warmly invite you to briefly visit the following blog (please go to the post dated December 14).

For me, it is a starter for the new week on the E-course.

Best wishes,

Andreja

Week 1 Reflections on blogging

Hello my dear colleagues!

I would like to make this post a record of how I went about creating a blog in our first week. have to admit that what made setting it up a bit difficult for me was thinking ahead too much – already trying to imagine what my first post would be about, what I may use it for in future, how I am going to change the template. Planning ahead, anticipating next steps, useful as it may be, has been keeping me from the here and now for awhile.

One of the lessons so far has been that whatever we do, we should try to do it one step at a time. Like adding small improvements to the design, making my blog a cozier place for myself and its followers. This is what I would like to do. Or, even more importantly, learning how to manage your time around the tasks that we are assigned.

Personally, I like to make sense of the world through analogies. They somehow enable me to deal with novel situations, facing the uncertainty of the unknown by relying on the familiar. At this early stage, blogging is like muscle strain, like opening a book with so many new pages to read, reading and being read at the same time, like learning a new language and having to communicate in it immediately.

I hope that with time there will be fewer sore muscles, the mixed feelings of excitement, pride and frustration gradually giving way to the CanDo feeling. But it is to be (l)earned yet. I hope I will be proud to look at this first post in a few weeks when I get more experience and confidence.

I also look forward to reading my colleagues’ blogs and discussion posts, sharing comments, pieces of mind, academic expertise, professional views – via blog, wiki and elsewhere. This is the experience ahead to look forward to.

And one should be honest to oneself – we are making progress.

I invite you to visit this blog in future. Thanks for caring and sharing.

Andreja