WIKIS

When I want to read or write I simply  use my blog to which I have a direct access through my Igoogle page. When I need to listen to obtain the needed information  I go to Itunes  and listen to podcast episodes or just double click on Audacity to create my own podcast episode and make others listen to me. And at last when I want collective discussions or forums with virtual presence of my peers I use Wiki, one of the 20 tidbits that Liza Dabs offers as a teacher supporter.http://www.edutopia.org/blog/20-tips-new-teachers-lisa-dabbs?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29

Is it me to write this paragraph? If I read it last year I would evaluate it as a paragraph full of incomprehensible   terminological  phrases. At least I would only understand them by their definitions. Fortunately I have managed not only to include these terms into my vocabulary but also to use those web tools and I think that  they are excellent means to provide students with. I am getting more and more flatteners  on my way to realize that the world is really flat. Everything changes so fast that I don’t even believe how fast I can acquire certain skills. It’s me-a thirty-year-old woman with two children. And I am sure that young learners develop much faster.  I would offer future teachers get together and collect teacher ideas in Wiki. And I agree with Kevin Carney that teaching “shouldn’t be alone on an island”.  http://www.edutopia.org/stw-differentiated-instruction-budget-resource-collaboration-video?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29

Teachers should help each other so that they could help to each other’s students. As a class of future teachers we also  start using wiki and store there our valuable judgements. Go to  this link  http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2008/05/using-wikis-for-teacher-development.html you will find two videos instructing you how to embed video into wiki pages, how to use hyperlinks to link together text and pages across the wiki.

Always share your thoughts with your peers in  

Podcasts

Before podcasts

After podcasts

PODCASTS

New technologies lead us to great developments and make our academic life extend the borders of boredom and official style. If blogging has come to replace book reading and essay writing then podcasting is here to provide us with various listening materials giving a great chance to speak and share our thoughts.

I was first introduced to podcasts during our English for Language teachers course. The opportunity to listen to  podcast episodes for different purposes and of various areas seemed to me fascinating. I felt that I was gaining a lot more new information with podcasts than if I were without them. I really agree with Professor Daniel Foster “to weed out class papers in favor of podcasts” because they are more practical and closer to real-life situations.

And this year our New technologies in TEFL course offered us to become  podcast creators. I was shocked. I didn’t expect such a great shift in my life. Previously I was in the opinion that people who created podcasts were real professionals but it turned to be an easy task: I only followed some instructions, downloaded Audacity and……

Podcast creation is very useful as it develops creative skills, contributes to mastering the whole material to be able to express your thoughts. Background music creates harmony and makes you feel relaxed.

I’m impressed and as a future TEFL professional I’ll use this tool to have student-creators. I liked the suggested activities when the students create recipes in dyads, exchange their recipes, critique and put their critiques into podcasts. Here the learners are not only creators but they also review their peers’ jobs.  

                                    

LEARNERS DO WONDERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      When I listened to Sugata’s speech my impression was that he was speaking about the remote village in Armenia which I happened to visit  this summer in Ijevan.

 It was really disappointing to hear that young generation  wants to move to Yerevan and  teachers there are also very ignorant towards their work because they know for sure that there is no future in that village.  Really when I walked through the village I was in the same opinion: no other work to do except for farming, no place to go except for fields, no motivation to learn and no tool to use. I was sure then that children there wouldn’t have the same amount of intelligence as children living in cities have. However, I was wrong in m judgments. As I had to stay there with my family for some days I took my laptop with me. The two children aged 8-10 had the luck to sit in front of my computer during  those days and as Sugata mentioned they acquired the necessary skills to use it very quickly. The desire to conduct the computer made them learn lots of English words by themselves. Here again I agree with Sugata that children are very self-organized, especially those who are more or less unprivileged.  When I was returning home they said they had two great wishes. First they wanted to have a laptop and then desired to know English well to use it. I doubt  if any child living in the city and obtaining a computer could digest so much information for such a short time.

And the same refers to blogging. There is no point in saying that it’s impossible or just quite difficult to use blogs in language teaching. If given the tool, if given the opportunity our learners can really do a lot. And I quite agree with a “snob blogger” Will Richardson that “through blogs more learning happens” and that “students become network creators”.

I will do my best to become a teacher-blogger, making blogs a part of my practice because blogging is what we need for technology access. With blogging I will promote collaboration among my students, their parents and myself. I do agree with Will Richardson in that by blogging students do a metacognitive thinking and improve their reading and writing skills. I will mostly ask my students to read their peers’ blogs and those of famous bloggers.  By the way, RSS has made the reading process faster by means of which they can collect lots of blogs in one place and save time. Also I will ask the learners to synthesize their ideas and write their stream of thoughts in their blogs. It would also be great to motivate the students with positive feedback and high grades.