Week 3 - Engage, Empower and Activate

It has been a mind-meltingly awesome week and its theme has been: clarity is more important than complexity. I have been exposed to very interesting readings on activating students' pronunciation, speaking and listening skills and I have taken valuable notes. I have also discovered Delicious,  a social bookmarking website that saves, and organizes links on the web. I have also become more and more familiar to what is expected of me as far as the final project is concerned.

On my way to developing a good final course project, these days, I have also dicovered a very useful cloud based LMS, called Canvas, that I warmly recommend for you to check up!

The cherry on top has been the fact that, this weekend, I have been given an imense opportunity to meet 4 amaizing teacher trainers at a 2 day conference in Bucharest, Suzzane Antonaros, Lilika Couri, both from Greece, and Andy Cowle and Olly Twist from U.K. The topic of the conference was very generous, Creativity in the English Classroom.

Week 2 - "Education is inoculation against disruption."

                                         - Robin Sharma, writer, motivational speaker, leadership expert and Canadian lawyer

This week had a brilliant start for me, although the current course development has been pretty intense and demanding, with a hands-on approach on  lengthy materials that required careful filtering.  It all began with a wonderful sense of achievement  that I must confess I experienced after having published my first ever blog post. Due to getting tons of constructive feedback from both course colleagues and our online instructor, Mrs. Donna Shaw,  I magically and rigorously boiled down this week's resources to three equally divided reading sessions. I  went through the immense search engine lists, all arranged according to precise educational research interests and I restricted myself  to searching for inquiry based learning using military webques. From this moment onward, it definitely becomes easier for me to choose the most appropriate search engine for the teaching resources I develop my courses on.

Method

Getting deeper into this week's second major topic, the design of coherent and concise behavioral objectives based on Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy, I need to highlight the fact that instrumenting pedagogical concepts is a key aspect of the teacher trainings that we, as language teachers,  benefit from in Romania. 
The carrier path in my country requires on-the-job teachers to achieve three professional levels or didactic degrees in teaching, i.e. the definitive degree, the didactic degree II and the didactic degree I. The higher the professional degree, the higher the esteem and formal recognition within the Romanian education system. After having passed the didactic degree II with  maximum score, I am now off to achieving the highest one in August 2017. Therefore, continuing professional development asks for constant updates on the latest methodological trends.

Puzzle 

Please see the following activity as fun way of briefly reviewing this week's resources. I hope the word hints are clear enough for you to quickly sort out the puzzle I created especially for you on a great, easy to use online resource. Enjoy it!

Across

3. Under what circumstances or context will the learning occur?

7. Objectives pertaining to attitudes, appreciations, values and emotions.

8. Who are your learners?

Down

1. Student performance evaluation.

2. What do you expect learners to be able to do?

3. Objectives related to information or knowledge.

4. Objectives that require basic motor skills and/or physical movement such as construct, kick or ski.

5. Method of classification on differing levels of higher order thinking

6. How much will be accomplished?

Week 1 - Reflection -teacher-tutor-moderator-edublogger

Thanks to Donna, here I am at the start of the 10 Week Blogging Challenge,  an ongoing journey which will hopefully never end. The words that best describe this first week are enthusiasm and inspiration. It has been  a feast of priceless information and ideas on using blogs in the classroom. 

By strictly following the course instructions, I have realized that setting up and using a blog is something pretty easy to do; there is no specialist technical knowledge required. Due to this week's mandatory reading, the course's Blogger Instructions as well as to a very useful supplementary tutorial and a specialized SETA (South Eastern Europe Teachers' Association) discussion forum I have been introduced to the rare-air discipline of owning a professional blog.

For those of us attending The Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web, 

who haven't become tech savvy teachers yet, it may be a time consuming activity but it is also extremely rewarding. According to Steve Wheeler's opinion, in one of his blog articles, there are at least seven benefits of teachers' blogging: reflection, crystallized thinking, the possibility to attract new audiences, to create personal momentum, to give positive feedback, to become more and more creative,  and to raise the game.

In my case, being newly introduced to the art of blogging, it has meant the similar feeling a painter experiences when faced to a properly prepared canvas, some very good quality oil paint, stiff brushes, a palette with a thumb hole, a standing easel, and sketching supplies to plan the painting, everything in a safe, dust free place.  In a few words, these days I have been introduced my most eagerly awaited answers to the 5 Ws of writing online for educational purposes.

A valuable idea that I have kept for myself this week is that the major advantage of using blogs in  class is the fact that they provide the learners with realia tools that can help them practise their written English. The online environment encourages them to visualize, reflect and debate on every day issues.

One of the many reasons I have applied for and I am extremely grateful for having been accepted to the Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web is the long felt need of belonging to a professional E-teacher community. It is very encouraging for me to be part of such a wonderful like-minded group. I couldn't help noticing that my group-mates' blogs flood with lasting inspiration. For all of us interested in CPD (Continuing Professional Development), I share a link to the conference I have been watching online this weekend; it is called 2015 MANCHESTER ONLINE - Annual International IATEFL Conference & Exhibition.

Instead of a final thought, please reflect on the following message, the last slide of a presentation at the IATEFL Conference today:

Ok, that it for this post! I wish you all to KEEP CALM and BLOG!

Rolanda OSMAN