Week 10 - the final week!!!!

So our final week has come! I still can't believe that there will be no more readings or interesting tasks to fulfil. But on the other hand I have a HUGE number of webpages with resources to check in store so my further exploration of the interactive web won't stop with the end of the course)))))

My students have already placed their powerpoint presentations with the complete project tasks on our classroom padlet http://ru.padlet.com/wall/shevchenkogymnasia and I am happy that the have chosen to make presentation instead of the regular written biography, it made their work more interesting, exciting and challenging. Nearly all of them tried to make interactive powerpoints with hyperlinks to websites, to other slides, with music and even video clips. Unfortunately, some of the presentations had so much technology in them that it proved to be a problem to download them to the padlet with all the effects!

I have so many plans for the future after completing this course and reading our discussions on the nicenet. I can't beleive how lucky I was to have such resourseful and smart coursemates as I borrowed a lot of ideas which I am going to use in my classroom. 

I am going to miss you all, guys, and I do hope we will keep in touch and cooperate in future!!!!

Week 9!!!

Wow, I can't believe we are nearly there!!! This week was difficult and easy at the same time. We didn't have as much reading as usual, but it was, nontheless, interesting and educational. I compared learning technologies I use in the classroom with other which exist and made some interesting conclusions. Besides, it was interesting to read the discussion and learn what techniques my colleagues from other countries use. As always, I borrowed a lot of wonderful ideas. Besides, I joined Eteacher site this week, and I hope to be able to learn more and more each week. 

Another thing I was busy with was the project. I had to revise the time limit as there were some factors which I coudn't predict or prevent. We had the flu quarantine and the kids had to stay at home. THough one of the ideas of the project was to develop autonomous learning skills, still some said that they were too ill or too busy to finish the task on time. But there is already one completed task on the class padlet and I am quite satisfied with the result. THe students presented the information she has researched in interactive PowerPoint presentation. So, I hope by monday I'll see the rest of the works. It was slower that I expected but it works, that's the main thing. Hope next project will be more successful and easier))))
So, let's wait for week 10 and see what it holds in store for us))))))

Week 8

The end of the course is coming closer and to some extent I feel sad that soon it will be over. But on the other hand, I am happy to have met so many interesting and inspiring teachers from all over the world. This week, just like all previous week, was full of exciting discoveries. I explored the whole new world of online tools for creating tests, quizes, exercises, word searches, webposters etc. I created my own padlet for our English class and my kids already started using it http://ru.padlet.com/wall/shevchenkogymnasia

Besides, this week I finally finished creating WebQuest with podcasts for my class project and published it on our class padlet. My students have already started doing it and I hope to see the results in a week. I found such sites as http://www.toolsforeducators.com/ and http://www.easytestmaker.com/ especially interesting as they provide the whole range of activities which you can create and use in your classroom both online and offline. 

I read the project draft by my partner Carlos and I liked the idea of using Google map in the class. I guess I will also try to do something similar when we learn about travelling around the world or cultures of other countries.So far, that's it for this week.