Week 10

It is sad to say it is my last post in this blog. Sure, I will continue using my 2nd blog I opened for my class work. I guess I will keep this one as a reminder of the wonderful 10 weeks that I enjoyed so much. Honestly, there were times when I felt so pushed with assignments that I wished the course were over even though I knew deep inside I will miss those days. And now the end has come and as I predicted I feel very sad. 

I feel very honored to have been selected to take the online course. It is a unique opportunity for teachers to update their teaching kindly granted by Oregon University. Some of the participants might have already been fortunate to study in the US, but for the others the course was like a door into the US educational system which everyone enjoyed tremendously.

Like everyone in my group I learned a lot of teaching tools that I am going to try and use with my students. At least now I have a wide choice of resources to choose from. As I posted in the discussion I didn't consider myself a "technically challenged" person when we started the course and yet there were many things I didn't know, like "Nicenet", "Delicious", "WebQuest", "Rubrics", "Wallwisher", "Bookmarking" and "ABCD objective". Most of all I was fascinated by "Rubrics" which gives a clear picture of the required  skills from the students to get a certain grade.

The course was evern more amazing than I expected. My wish for future particinats is to take it seriously and wholeheartedly because it is a wonderful way to update yourself professionally and use modern technology in the teaching practice.

I will miss you all!

Week 9

Well, the amazing course is coming to the end. It is kind of sad because I have been used to meeting my collegues every day, read their views on this or that topic. Every week was a new dicovery and I have learnt so much.  The time has come to use all the knowledge we have gained thoughtout these weeks and not to waste it. I will miss everyone and everything. If I had a chance I would gladly participate in one more course provided by Oregon university.

In week 9 I took the course evaluation and tried to answer as honestly as possible. Hope, my contribution will help the research.

As for the week's assignment we had  readings and the discussion about learning style and technology tools for multiple intelligences. I guess Gardner made a big discovery by introducing his theory since people started to realize that each person is different and requires a different approach. It is especially important for educators since their role is to teach going to the goal through different ways.

I also had to read through my Final Project and make some changes as Nazeer and Robert put in their comments. When we read the project samples of the previous participants I was quite sure I won't be able to do as much as they did, but through the right guidance and help of my collegues and I managed to create my own project.

Week 8

The first 3 days were the most tiresome out of all the weeks. The draft of the project took a lot of my time and since we had deadline till Wednesday I had to spend late evenings to finish it. Luckily, we had  enough time to read the partner's report and prepare the check list by the end of the week. I read Nazeer's report, found it interesting and  in my opinion it fits all the requirements.

We also had to create a class site and I made a wallwisher, created an online class in the nicenet and put my class blog. I started to use my blog, leave assignments there and I check students' understanding in the classroom. Some of the students leave their comments, too. I feel my students are not yet used to writing comments, I guess it is another kind of rule they still should get used to. They listen to the activity, question each other about the pieces to clarify the understanding but they still feel that leaving comments is not so much necessary.

I appreciate new tools and resources that this week provided us with. I always save them in my delicious page. There is a lot I can share with my collegues. I can say that not only my school collegues but also teachers from other schools benefit from my course.  I am happy to learn new ideas and I am happy to share    new resources with my friends.