Final Reflection

The course of New Technologies in TEFl was one of the most overloaded courses for me. One huge technology was following the other without giving any time to breathe. When I imagine the amount of information that I managed to get during this time I feel confident. Truly speaking, I didn’t like to get information through readings. I mostly preferred the practical part of it, when we were applying the technologies in groups in class or individually  at home. Or at least I liked to watch tutorials due to which I could use the time more efficiently. Also, class discussions and blog posts contributed to the better understanding of the material because they served as a source of revision of the material and a means to reflect on the technologies trying to integrate them in the Armenian TEFL environment.

While having all the above mentioned sources of information at my disposal I managed to learn some specific skills such as: 

• making Igoogle my home page
• add and use RSS subscriptions
• linking  RSS to igoogle
• connecting twitter to the cellphone
• creating an audio episode and posting it to the class podcast by installing Audacity and Lame encode to save audio in mp3
• using Wiki
• creating a digital story(moviemaker, powerpoint)
• creating video footage 
• creating  an account in Second life and using it
• adding blocks in the Sandbox
• using animoto 
• creating games with special apps
• creating a Googledoc

Not all the above mentioned skills proved to be suitable to use in the Armenian TEFL environment or at least I wasn't eager to do it both as a student and as a teacher. First of them was second life

and another connecting cellphones to twitter. Anyway I don't exclude using them in future.

Also, I failed to create any game. It seemed rather difficult.

But on the other hand there were such skills that I have managed to apply successfully in my learning and teaching processes. As a student I use Igoogle as my homepage, I have lots of subscriptions to RSS, I have created digital stories and as a teacher I used animoto, powerpoint,  Google doc and many others. 
The course totally changed my profile. Before this course I tended to avoid typing but now  I started to avoid writing. No lesson is conducted without at least one technology now. And computer doesn't make me so tired as before. Before this course I was trying to keep computer away from my children considering it to be dangerous for their health but now I encourage them to use it to contribute to their creativity and desire to make explorations in this Flat World.  

Google Apps For Education and Cloud Technologies

       
                       

                                                               

Retrieved from:  https://www.google.am/#hl=en&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q=picture+of+Google+apps&oq=picture+of+Google+apps&gs_l=serp.3...205144.207421.0.208183.7.7.0.0.0.2.452.1644.3-2j2.4.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.r0_MmK2bnvo&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=a92c86d7c69537ee&bpcl=39650382&biw=1280&bih=665

The first thing I heard about Google apps was the note from our instuctor that it is not available personally but only students that use google apps as an institution can use some of the apps available in the video. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those students to be able to use all the google apps, but the ones that I can use provide great support and contribute to collaborative and meaningful learning.

One of the most interesting apps is google doc.
As presented in the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ksK2uzDW-4 it is a great tool for teachers to collect and revise data about students and contribute to collaborative learning. With the color coding it's clear who edited, what was deleted and also the teacher can look at the earlier version of the document.
Also, it's worth mentioning that our class uses google doc to collaborate. For example in the class of Second Language Acquisition we did our Evaluation Charts in Google doc. Even the recipe of the cheese cake was shared in this way.
I liked the way of creating survey questions and I wish I could create the survey questions of my Capstone Project in this way: one of the major things about this is that the data is seen in real time and another one is that google does some basic analysis for you.
Google sites is also a magic tool. I liked the idea of uploading my resume and spreading throughout the world(may be I can find a prospective job for me :)). But there is also an opportunity to allow it for a restricted number of people (Bernard, 2011).
Here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpnxyNm8x_0 you can watch a video tutorial about how to upload images to Google Picasa.
And now the  question is how google apps can be used on the campus???
In the article by Sarah Ring (2011) different google apps are suggested for different teaching purposes. One of them is google maps which can be used before a field trip. Through it students study the area and create their personalized maps. Using blogger permits to update and edit your posts from anywhere. I myself use blogger and know how effectively it works.
Google Teacher Academy apps would be preferable for those teachers who want to get the most out of tech tools. By the way, Google + could create discussion groups without having to worry about the followers that come up with Facebook or Twitter. Google Hangouts allows up to 10 people to video chat ith one another.This app is suitable for public gatherings (Watters, 2011). Retrieved from:http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/07/how-are-educators-using-google-plus-hangouts/
Now we know how google apps can be implemented in education. And the time has come to see
it in the lesson plans.
From the lesson plans suggested by our instructor to observe I chose the one entitled: The Place in Time with Google tools by Cheryl Davis 
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=16kkKBqOlLdBjLQoJ7eSq1jqia6XOQ5AeIkaUm2GqCa8 The Impact of Photography. One of the  instruments used in this lesson is google site where teacher creates a class Google Site and adds students as collaborators.In teams or individually, students create page in the class site and link to a historic photograph, research the history or context  in which the photograph was taken and provide information on the photograph. I think, this is a very meaningful  and productive lesson because it not only develops geographic literacy but introduces to the  history of  photography as well.

Another major tool is cloud computing. No servers and storage, no technical team, no upgrades, just open a browser, log in, customize the apps and start using it.
                                                                                       

 Picture retrieved from: https://www.google.am/#hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1280&bih=665&sclient=psy-ab&q=picture+of+cloud+computing&oq=picture+of+cloud+computing&gs_l=serp.3..0l2.187839.196681.0.198055.28.19.0.4.4.1.1393.5889.2-1j1j4j1j0j2.9.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.65I4461yinw&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=a92c86d7c69537ee&bpcl=39650382

 It is a software delivered over the internet to interact. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88ysB-EKA9U  There is no need to install the data in all the computers of the community. It allows the user to access a web browser regardless of place. 
However, too much personal information in the cloud is not recommended. It would be much better to be flexible and make the existing limitations a strength to use both. 
As a future EFL teacher I would strongly recommend using google apps as a tool through which various interesting activities could be done and cloud computing, which will allow to share any information via internet without having to install it in all the computers of that institution. Google apps make the lessons more interactive and cloud computing would help to save time and money.