Week Four

Hi everyone,

This week was quite hectic and informative.

The week began with a visit to Eravikulam National Park, Munnar with a group of 35 students from our school. The camp was sponsored by the Forest Department, Government of Kerala.  Every year we take our learners to different forests in Kerala. These camps give us a lot of energy for the rest of the days in the year. These camps teaches the students and teachers the need of protecting the nature; its flora and fauna. 

If the effect of trekking was spiritual, the effect of doing assignments for the course is intellectual. I think I am exposed to greater plains in the teaching and learning of EFL. I could bookmark a lot of sites this week. I was closely following the sites recommended by my friends. Many of them are really inspiring. 

Writing a technology-enhanced lesson plan was the biggest challenge that I faced this week. I do not know whether what I attempted is right. The immediate response from Safa and from others made me revisit my lesson plan. Peer responses make the endeavour interesting. This is a very positive sign. The other interesting thing is 'narrowing down' the issue in the classroom. If somebody asks about the problems in our class, we will have a number of them. But, here the chiselling down of the issues to a very narrow area makes everyone a researcher. 

Thank you

Best Wishes

Sujith

About the place I visited:

Eravikulam National Park, Munnar harbours the largest surviving population of Nilgiri Tahr (Hemitragus Hylocrius). 

Nilgiri Tahr

It is also rich with exceptionally rare orchids. The spectacular mass flowering of the shrub Neelakurunji (Phlebophyllum kunthianum) takes place in this grasslands in cycles of the 12 years. The entire hills will be blanketed with the violet flowers. We could only see the plants now. It will bloom on 2018. 

 

      A blanket of  Neelakurinji Flowers

Neelakurinji plant

Week Three

Hi all,

A delicious week.
What I did first in this week was to register on Delicious. It's delicious indeed.
I was a bit worried about the final project. The worries like 'how to go about it', 'how to write it' etc..  lay back in my mind from the week one.  It was after reviewing others final project reports, I got a little confidence!  This week I got a lot of links to different interesting sites from my classmates. I must thank Robert for giving us exhaustive links to pronunciation.The video stimulations are really interesting.

Best wishes
Sujith

Week Two

Hi Everybody,

I think most of us learned a lot this week. When I read the Week 2 Discussion page, I realise that everyone shared this feeling. I remember my teacher at school once said 'Gravitation existed even before Newton discovered it. An apple fell on his head and made his life different'.  Assignments on Week 2 are apples to me. It made me realise the presence of numerous search engines and simpler way to write an ambiguous free objective. And moreover, the greatest thing that I consider is Week 2 made me THINK a lot about my learners; the way they live, the food they eat, the dress they wear, the way they talk, the resources they have, the dreams they see and the 'what' I do and the 'what' I should have done!

Let's hope one day we'll do the best in the world. And that 'one day' is quite near. I remember Gandhiji at this point of time; what he once said about development and our actions.

"Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if this step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him."

Week One

I made a blog earlier. It was out of curiosity about blogs. This blog is for a purpose. I think purpose makes things different. I did not find any difficulty in creating this blog. Since,  I have a google account, it was an easy task. The only difficulty was to get a blog address which I found interesting. It does not mean that I have got it well ! It is interesting to try combination of words for the address.

What makes me really happy is the 'e' platform which enables us to talk to each other which otherwise would not have been possible. When I read the names of my classmates who are from different corners of the world, I realise that the world is so small that I can hold it in my palm. I am a bit confused about the names. How to pronounce certain names is really a difficulty; for Eg. How is the name 'Csilla' pronounced? I found this transcription ʧilːɒ on the Wiktionary. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Csilla#Pronunciation.
Is that okay, Csilla? (I take Csilla's name because it is very short and I thought I could sort it out)

How about transcribing our names into IPA?
Mine will be something like this: /sud͡ʒiθ/