MY REFLECTION ON WEEK 3

MY REFLECTION ON WEEK 3

  Dear Instructor and Participants,

  Like the two other weeks we’ve already gone through, I must say that Week 3 was a studious week because it enabled me to learn lots of new things that will undeniably boost my teaching methods.

  As far as aural/oral skill-building is concerned, I would like to say that I didn’t have much information about Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) – But after I have gone through the writings of Julia Gong related to “The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills”, I became aware of the advantages and disadvantages of CALL in the development of Speaking Skills.

  In addition to that, the article entitled “Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials” by Lindsay Miller helped me to understand the importance of authentic materials in learning in that computers, accompanying software packages and networks proved themselves to be very useful in assisting language learning.

The discussion with the other colleagues on Nicenet enabled me to discover many websites which are very good for practising listening and pronunciation tasks.

   As for Social Bookmarking, to be honest, I really appreciated Delicious.com I didn’t find creating my Delicious page difficult. However, when it came to bookmark data, I felt a little bit lost. But with the assistance of Brigitte Falkner, I succeeded in making it. I like Delicious.com because lots of interesting information is available there, and these pieces of information are well organized by the means of “tags” so that looking for a particular item is not difficult at all.

  In this Webskills course, since one of our main objectives is to design a final project, I have to say that I liked the final project samples provided by Robert. In the light of some of them I had the opportunity to read, I got a more or less clear idea of what is expected from me in terms of the final project.

  To conclude, I wish to thank our Instructor and all the participants for their interesting contributions that make the group really lively.

Best Regards,

Dagnogo

MY REFLECTION ON WEEK 2

   Dear Instructor and Colleagues,

   Before sharing my comments on Week 2 with you, please, allow me to pay tribute to our Instructor – Robert Elliot – and all the members of the group for their sincere collaboration and the wonderful job done.

   Firstly, I think that it was a very rewarding week. In fact, I have appreciated the different activities we have been doing since the beginning of this week. Firstly, I liked the tips for Better Web Searching. Thanks to the pieces of information I got in web search, I became more familiar with useful words such as “query”, “search engine”, “portal”, etc. In the past, I used to do almost all my research with Google and Wikipedia.

   In addition to that, writing clear objectives is something essential in teaching. That’s why I really appreciated the ABCD method because I find it practical.

   Secondly, I can say the interaction with the other participants on Nicenet were fruitful because it permitted me to discover lots of sites and search engines that can be of help to me in case I want to diversify my teaching activities owing to the new websites and search engines I discovered. The implementation of the ABCD method on Nicenet was also a good thing because it clearly shows that the training we are having is not theoretical only, but practical too.

   As far as the reflective blog is concerned, I find it very interesting because it permits us to keep track of what we do at every stage of the training. I’m also very excited because I have heard of blogs, but I didn’t have the opportunity to create one. From now on, a blog will be part of my habits.

   Finally, as regarding the Final Project – Step 1, it allowed me to know a little bit more about of each member’s learners and the educational system of some participants’ countries.

Best Regards,

Dagnogo