My Reflections.

Hi everybody! I’m teacher Henry.

                I would like you to create one more post for our Blogging Experience. For this post I want you to be reflective, which means that I want you to think and meditate before writing anything, and then freely, write what you thought or concluded about your meditations and/or reflections.

                This is the task: you are going to participate in a fair at school. For this fair you were told to produce bread, cheese and “chicha”. Reflect about the process you went through while you were producing these items and then write a paragraph of no less than 60 words with the conclusions of your reflections. In this paragraph you can explain in very few words how to produce any of the products (or all of them) that you are working with in the fair, or you can explain what your experience was while working with items, the problems and solutions you encountered through this process, you could even say how was your experience working with your classmates.

                Please attach to this post a picture of yourself while you are going through the process that you are describing.

Deadline for this post: 04/12/2011.

Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 9: Projects put into practice!

          We are up in week 9, time flies when we’re having fun!

          This Webskills course has been such an interesting and fulfilling experience for me as a teacher, I have to admit though that I need some time to assimilate and put into extensive practice all of the things I have learnt up to now…!

          This 8^th week has been quite interesting, and it also has put me into rush times. I finally sat down in front of the computer to finish the ends and odds of my project. I am working with this, in my opinion, great tool that is called JING.

http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

          This is the site I used to download the program on which I am basing my project. This program is called JING, and it helps users demonstrate through real use the way something works in a computer. Once the user is ready, once the program has been downloaded into the computer and once the user knows what is going to be said (recommended), the program is launched and what happens next is great. My students are having the www as their principal source of work. They have to select a web site they find interesting and explore it extensively, then they have to explain other users how the site works and all the things it offers. The students have to create an oral explanation and then record their JING where they’ll be listened while seen working with the site.

          I also had some activities with the class blog with my students and the results I have seen from them have been great. They are very creative students and proactive when working on some project or something technology oriented. Our blog class is (one for each section):

http://getoutoftheclassroomwithteacherhenry.blogspot.com/

http://moveintotechnologywithteacherhenry.blogspot.com/

          This week was also a moment for peer evaluation, which is a very difficult thing to do. After reading and studying a peer’s work, to give an evaluation or a comment about it is not easy, I hope I did that right. All of these things have I have done in a moment that coincides with the end of the first school term, which made it all a bit more challenging.  

          What is teaching but our lives in a constant movement and changing?

          I hope I have done everything right. Any comment would be kindly appreciated!

Kind regards,

Teacher Henry from Venezuela.

Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 8:

New tools... Great tools!!!

Wow! This week has been very complex in many ways! For the students, I think it could be said that it was a bit difficult for all of the information handled in this week.

The main tool learned by us, the webskills participants, during this week is: ANVILL. Every teacher that has the chance to use a computer in class should know what ANVILL is. During this week and the past week, I have been thinking about the possible problem arising and the solution for those things.  For these particular problems, I have very particular solutions, for example, to work with a laptop has helped me a lot when I don’t have to rely on a computer electricity to finish my tasks or anything. I also bought a device for internet mobile and that is helping with the connectivity problems and access to it!     

Teachers, who have still not done it, try ANVILL! It is a great tool for the many types of students a teacher could have.

https://anvill.uoregon.edu/anvill2/

http://ylclab.uoregon.edu/groups/anvillhelp/wiki/fb6ef/Core_Tools.html

I even opened an account. I is not difficult at all, I just think that like in my personal case, teachers have to practice a lot with it before we try it with students.

Thanks a lot! Comment with feedback!

Teacher Henry from Venezuela.

Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 7: Tools can come from everywhere… Our work as teachers is to use them right!

            Another week gone, leaving a “pile” (and I mean it in the best of the ways!) of knowledge in our hands!

            This week has been a quiet one, in terms of our work in the course, nevertheless, the things I have been thinking from the readings and the future tasks have been, I think, more extensive than the prior weeks’!!!

            The first thing I have to say is that I definitely think that any tool can be an amazing one if the teacher knows how to use it! Let’s take, for example, YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/

            YouTube is an amazing tool to be used in the classroom provided that the teacher uses it in the best of the ways. For the class that I designed in the “one-computer classroom activity” was based on videos taken from YouTube, while I was planning the class and trying to find the videos for it, I came across many things that could not be used at all in a classroom, but then I saw many other great videos that exactly suited needs. I found myself having fun with this planning, and it was nice to design such a class where my students could express all their opinions in a topic that is in a way new and very appealing for them.

            Another very interesting thing for me this week was the creation of the groups for the final project of the course. It was very nice to have somebody that does not know you, showing interest on working with you. Of course, I was very happy to work with anybody from the course, since all of the course participants have shown this great deal of creativity, professionalism, and nice point of views on any of the weekly tasks. After reading the many comments on the “find a partner” forum, it was nice to find a partner to work with. Ghada is the person I going to work with during these final days of the course, and I feel pleased to be working with her since I have read the many interesting posts she has left on Nicenet, and I have had the chance to read her reflective posts on her blog!  Thanks Ghada for being so kind and inviting me to work with you!

            Finally, towards the end of this seventh week, I have been thinking about the topics for the final project that I have to present. It’s been very interesting thing to be planning such thing after the nice experience I have had during this “webskills” course. Also the upcoming peer review sounds like an excellent experience to learn many new things! I can’t wait to be in the moment when I am going to evaluate and be evaluated!

            I think most of us have had similar experiences during this past seventh week that has come to an end. Let’s share comments, so I can confirm my thoughts!

Thanks for having the time to read!

Teacher Henry from Venezuela.

Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 6:

INTERACTIVITY

Old word… New meaning..!

            What a wonderful week this has been!  Many interesting things have I learned during this past week! The readings have been countless and so have been the tips I have acquired to improve my classroom activities!

            This word has been sounding so much in my head, and its meaning has been the center of my attention since the very beginning of this great “webskills” experience! Did I know the word? Yes – I must say! Did I know its meaning and how extensive and helpful it could be? No – I must admit! My students and I have had such a great experience during this past week, and it has been definitely because of the big deal of information that I have received in my course so far… and my students have totally noticed it!

            I have had a great experience in my working place, it has been definitely a great opportunity for me to grow as a person and a professional, in here I have had the chance to meet and receive help form many very professional, creative and intelligent people working in the educational field. I had to say all this because now that I am doing this course, I feel that I am being able to put in practice and pass very interesting knowledge to others – co-workers, students and the people involved in my teaching process.

            “Begin to Implement the Change”… that’s what I was said to do this week, and it has been definitely that a beginning of a very productive and enriching change! I have taken my lessons and classes to another higher and very nice level. I feel that my classes are now a lot more student-centered, and that is as positive as creative the mind of any of my students can be! They have been working with a different attitude, having in mind the fun English activities, the online homework of teacher Henry, the nice and up-to-date English class, or even the topic they want to rise in one of the English classes that are now a lot more focused in their own performance than in any other thing!

            I started using these PowerPoint activities that were the center of discussions during this whole past week, and I saw the faces of very interested students that at the end of the class wanted more and more and more! For example, after being so serious at the beginning of a class when we were discussing Mark Twain, we turned everything to its fun and didactic side! I used this interactive PPT show with my students, it was created to make them have fun with the knowledge they acquired in class and also for them to be evaluated on that same knowledge. Now, after that activity, whenever I tell them about a reading or anything that is going to end up with a similar activity, they want to extensively learn about it because they know they will end up using that knowledge in a very interesting and entertaining way.

            By the way things are going on up to now, I can see that the path towards the end of the Webskills course is already tailored, and the specifications for it are definitely the results I am having in the classroom with my students.

            To end up my reflections on this week, I would like to tell my course-mates that it has been such a great experience to keep track of all the wonderful work they have been doing and be active audience of all the great performance they have had in terms of the very useful ideas they have come up with.

            Some of the ideas that I have had myself have also come from some very nice readings I have done, for example:

http://www.thiagi.com/interactive-lectures.html

http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgPO-agnnMk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRqVIGYnFzE&feature=related

http://tep.uoregon.edu/resources/largeclasses/usingtechnology.html

http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/largeclasses.html

http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/interactive/howto.html

            I hope you, classmates, have the chance to check all this (if you, by any chance, haven’t done it yet!) and give me some feedback, which is definitely going to be much appreciated!

See you in class!

Teacher Henry from Venezuela!