Week 8, 1 December 2013

Another week passing by: still so much to be explored and tried out with students in the class. This week was really interesting after having a chance to look at some sites with practical tools and exercises to take and use in the classroom. To be honest, this week gives an insight of what technology really is. After learning about the Nicenet, Blogger, google sites or powerpoint presentations, I can simply state that technology should be used in the classroom and it is really easy and convenient to integrate technology in to classroom. All the information we got either from our teacher or all learners involved in this course is really useful.

This week we were assigned to use different tools and implement them in the classroom. All of them for free and simple to use, though at first I had a completely different point of view.

The suggested sources I checked are:

1)      I also had a Chance to use WebPosterWizard, which I may use in my projects –http://poster.4teachers.org/worksheet/view.php?id=169516.

2)      SMILE – another interesting site to visit – gives a choice of web-based activity generators. The application I’ve checked is WORKSHEETS, unfortunately it takes time to learn how to use them. But definitely I will try to use it.

3)       http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html – very simple and easy to use, every topic or grammar can be checked here; suitable for different students’ levels.

http://www.mywordsearchmaker.com/play/2013-11-30-QCP9GP.html

1)      http://bogglesworldesl.com/ - a great source of various activities: crosswords and word searches, flash cards, verbs, songs. Besides, one can chose from lesson plans and work sheets. Great for lower levels of students.

This week I do plan to create a class site using Nicenet and a class blog. The technology changes I am going to introduce are connected with writing thus I think that these two tools would be the most appropriate for them. I will start using them next semester, in February, so still I have some time to test and chose the best applications, sites and online exercises that would work with my students. Besides, they still can benefit a lot from other sites to practice the general knowledge of English, like to have some practice in nouns, verbs or adjectives.

After sending the draft of the project report, still a lot to be done in my case. It is not easy to come back to your duties after almost a 3-week absence. But I will try to do my best and catch up with the other course friends. I am working now on the final version of my  Project Plan report, and the timeline is not finished yet.