Technology, Large classes, and Interactive powerpoint presentation- Week 6

This is was a very fruitful week. We get to read, learn, and discuss more about technology, large classes, and interactive powerpoint presentation. 

Technology and Interactive powerpoint:

It is really amazing how much the technology offers us and how much it provides us with new ideas for our classrooms, yet it may be overwhelming sometimes if not used carefully. 

I think that one of the necessary skills a 21st century teacher should have is to be a skilled technology user. There is a strong link between professional development methods and the use of technology. This is because –nowadays- a lot of professional development courses, blogs, videos, discussions, and even seminars are available and conducted online. Professional development can be achieved in the virtual world of the Internet if teachers are willing and seeking to develop their skills.

Moreover, one of the current trends in education is “learning in a Digital Age,” where the worldwide technological advancements in the 21st century are influencing both learning and teaching (Curtis & Pettigrew, 2010): the ICT revolution is now referred to a “revolution in learning” (Hernes, 2002). This paper reviews prior studies and researches on the effectiveness of blog use in educational contexts. 

Furthermore, students constantly interact with technologies such as ipods, mobile phones, the internet and social networking tools outside the classroom and have an expectation that these technologies will also support their learning in the classroom, and influence their engagement and learning outcomes.

It was also a very exciting experience to learn more about designing an interactive powerpoint presentation. I am familiar with it, but within this week I came to understand more about it. Other than powerpoint presentations, we designed some of our lessons using the SMART BOARD applications, which I think is much more interactive than the powerpoint presentations. 

Talking about large classes, they can presents many obstacles for learning, but as I mentioned in our discussion, there is always a bright side for everything. Large classes mean high energy. Students may be noisy, but they are also fun and exciting. Second, when you teach a large class, it will go by quickly, you will rarely catch yourself looking at the clock, and you will regularly find yourself with extra activities that you did not complete that you can save and use in your next class. Third, there will always be someone who is willing to answer questions even if they are just guessing. There is more and more advantage of teaching large classes. 

I really enjoyed this week :)

WebSkills Online Course- 3rd Week

Good evening from Bahrain

Unfortunately, I missed the week 2 due to some Internet issue, but here I am again at the end of week 3 "The Delicious Week" , which has been an interesting week. It is still hard for me to manage my time for this week.

Anyway, I am calling this post “Delicious Week” because we were introduced to Delicious.  It's a web, where you can save all the interesting links that you find on the Internet and get access to them where ever you are and when ever you want. You can also share the links you save with others. When I read the task and click on the link, I found that I am already a user at Delicious, but probably never used it, or maybe forgot about it. I think now, and whenever I come across good websites, I will save them on my Delicious page https://delicious.com/fatemaalbaqqali

Moreover, we had 2 discussions this week about Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials and The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills. I read two of the articles suggested. They were focusing on Listening, Speaking and Pronunciation. The topics were very familiar to me as I am still a college student and these topics are highlighted in my courses, but reading more about them encourages me to learn more about using technology and authentic materials in a language classroom, which sometimes become very difficult and challenging. I will talk about it on my next entry. I will probably apply many of the things I have learned from this week and share them with my colleagues.

Along with that, we got the chance to read different project report designed by different participants who took the WebSkills course, which gave me a better idea on how the final project we are designing by the end of this course will look like.

I am very excited for the coming weeks. Can’t wait. 

WebSkills Online Course- 1st Week

Good evening from Bahrain

This is my first post in my Create The Future .. Teach

It was a quite busy week. I have just finished my college and started an online course, which I am very excited about. It was more of introducing ourselves and meeting with other colleagues, getting introduce to the course,  and I am blogging here because it is part of my assignments for this course. I think it is going to be a very interesting course.