Week Eight

Dear All,

I got introduced to different sites and ideas this week.
From the first week of the course, I have been listening to my friends talking about HotPotatoes. It's only this week that I realised  how interesting that software is. I must have read about it earlier. It's interesting for me because I can design activities that work offline. It is only this week that I realised Nicenet is a free platform like Google docs. Sometimes we do not really read about the software and sites we use. From today I made one thing clear to myself that I will read about them before using them!
Peer reading the report of others is a wonderful activity. It is not that I can commend on others report, but it demanded me to look into my self.

Regards
Sujith

Week Seven

Hi Everybody,

I could introduce the WebQuest designed as part of the project only week. As I scribbled on the previous post, I had to teach the basics of using internet in the previous week. This WebQuest http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=171109) was the first one of that kind that my learners got introduced. I could arrange ten computers in the lab for this purpose. I must thank my colleagues at the school for helping me do this. The LAN was not working. We had to spend a lot of time fixing it. I had saved a word file with URL of the WebQuest on the desktop of every computers. The learner are asked to ‘ctrl+click’ the link and they went to the WebQuest.

The learners were heavily dependent upon me how to go about it. I watched them for five minutes to know whether they will do the work themselves. Most of them clicked on the picture where there is no hyperlink. I had to go from computer to computer to guide them. Finally I connected a LCD projector on a computer and explained the things they had to do.  This is the problem with first time users! They found the WebQuest interesting when they got the concept of the icons and what they mean. The reading materials on different sites that were linked posed a lot of challenge to my learners. Many of materials were not ‘digestible’ to them. I think I have to rework and customize the reading texts to make them comprehensible. The learners found tasks interesting as there is an option to check their answer. They were happy when they got immediate feedback from the computers. What I realised is the need of introducing more interesting activities and less theories and definitions!

Thank you

Best wishes

Sujith

Week Six

Dear friends,

This week discussed one of my favorite area, power points. Garr Reynold's 'Top Ten Slide Tips' were really interesting and informative. The reading material 'Presenting with Power Point' gave a lot many ideas left out by Garr. 'B for Black slide' and Ctrl+L for hiding cursor are  new and  very useful tips to me.  

The other interesting area that had a lot of discussion was 'managing large classes' by engaging learners. Learners are manageable when we deliver challenging activities where every learner has a role to play. Web-quests,  projects, interactive power points and the like will make the class interesting and engaging.

I found an interesting video on YouTube. Watch it and find what the learners demand from us!

Implementation of the change:

When I took the learners to the computer lab, I found none of the learners have previous experience in using computers for surfing the internet. My learners have got only one period (one hour) in a week to use computer lab. This week I had to introduce browser, how to type address in the address bar etc.. What I could do is getting the learners familiarized with the internet.  I thought I should not lead them to the business of webquest right away. What they did was, google the names of the town they live in, finding their school using google maps.  I hope I can introduce webquest next week.

Best wishes
Sujith

Week Five

Hello Everybody,

Yet another interesting and inspiring week.
The heat of the course has started.
This is the week Robert started to say (for the first time) in one of his discussion posts, 'We've only two weeks..!'
Suddenly I felt the beads of sweat on my forehead.
The humidity of being engaged in a work unfinished.

This week taught me a lot of things. The concept of PBL, WebQuest, Rubrics...
I realigned the concept of PBL, studied about Webquests and got introduced to Rubistar.
WebQuests: I am still exploring it more.

Though the week is almost over, I'm reminded of Robert Frost.

"Miles to go before I sleep...."

Best wishes
Sujith