Week 1: My blogging experience.
The tools, countless, diverse, very useful! The aim, only one: taking education to the next level!!!
Hello every one! Welcome to this educational blog, created to be part of a growing community which is working in pro of the expansion of the use of technology in the teaching-learning process.
First of all, I am honored to be part of this on-line course! I hope I can improve the strategies I use and the skills I have to teach my EFL students, using technology as a friendly tool in this teaching-learning process.
This reflective blog is intended to be the weekly report of this journey I am taking through the 10-week “Building Teacher Skills through the Interactive Web” program. This is the very first week and I feel a bit overwhelmed and intimidated as I see many things I would like to take advantage of and I hope I can manage it all! (I guess this could be my first reflective thought!)
I have used this technology tool in the classroom with a group of students and it was an amazing experience:
· I had the opportunity to share with my students in another context different to the one of the classroom.
· My students felt part of something that was very educational and also very nice to work with, on-line activities.
· We all, my students and I, expanded and enriched our personal beliefs! We found ourselves creating these educationally oriented essays and writings with so much passion, that we had the chance to show what was in our minds and also read what was in others.
Well, I feel part of all of that again, but this time I am in the student’s side, and I love having that point of view now.
I guess so many people feel intimidated or somehow afraid of using something that they do not know and see for the first time, blogs for example, that they leave it aside and maybe never try it, but as writer and philosopher Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “knowledge is the antidote to fear”, so the best option is to try!
Some teachers are only a few clicks away from this great tool that the internet offers to anybody wanting to establish a different link with others, letting those others learn, clear doubts, or simply have fun or relax!
I hope this reflective blog can be somehow helpful for somebody, as I hope it will be for me in organizing my ideas through this “webskills” course.
Feel free to leave comments and become a follower of this blog and share your ideas and opinions!
Regards,
Teacher Henry from Venezuela.