Monday 9 January 2012

Creating my first reflective blog

This was something new for me because it had not been used in my school before. To cross my heart, I have to  admit that I was excited , confused and impatient about creating my first blog, but I want to thank  our course  instructor,  Janine Sepulveda, who encouraged me to go further and not to worry.
By creating my first blog, I learnt  that this way of learning  and teaching is a great way to develop and improve learning and teaching skills, too. It was interesting to read all available material at the site(http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Campbell-Weblogs.html,http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/blogging-elt) where I found out the importance of the blog and how blogging can be helpful  both for students and teachers.  I do want to emphasise that the most interesting part for me  is that students can have the audience. Students' friends from other schools and other countries, even their parents can read their written assignments.  So, teachers are not the only ones who do it.
I have figured out how the technology is an important part of learning where students can interact with each other and where they can learn and explore.
I think this is going to be a great way of gaining new skills of teaching. My plan is to introduce this way of teaching in my school even to my colleagues who are not teachers of English.
As one puts it that the process of learning  does not require only learning and applying but also forgetting and remembering again, the blog and blogging will be very useful for students to revise everything they missed. I hope that my students will be able to learn more about English language by using this new way of learning but not only from their books and that they will be more interested in learning English.
Students will be also able to give comments and to share the material (grammar exercises, learning English through games, writing exercises, songs) which they can find on this page with other students, too.
In my opinion, the atmosphere of learning will be also improved. The blog will be also useful for my colleagues who also teach English in different environments. I am also excited about sharing different experiences with my colleagues who are also involved in this course and I hope that I will pick up a lot from these experiences which I will be able to use in my class.
In my second thought, it is important to introduce a new way of teaching through the web in order to  encourage and to stimulate my students to achieve better and more satisfactory objectives.

8 comments:

  1. Hi Rade
    I am glad to be the first who comment on your first blog post :)
    i have read your week 1 reflection blog and its inspiring me to say that we are in the age of technology and all our student now are speaking "technology Language" so we as teachers and educator must learn this language to be able to communicate effectively with our students.

    Best regards,
    Nasser
    http://webskills4teachers.blogspot.com/

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    1. Hello Nassar,
      Thank you for your comment.
      I know that our students speak the 'technology language' and I know that we, as educators, have to understand this language in order to facilitate the process of learning and to make it more interesting and more effective. All my students do not have regular access to the internet and the classrooms are not equipped neither with computers not with the internet.

      Everything the best.

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  2. Hello Rade,
    I absolutely agree that technology and webtools will help us grow as professionals and it will build a collaborative learning environment for teachers, students and the whole educational community.
    Regards
    Nando

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    1. Hi Fernando,
      Thanks for your comment.
      In my opinion, it is so important to introduce a new way of teaching and learning in order to make it more interesting for students.

      Best regards...

      Delete
  3. Hi Rade, I completely agree with you that one advantage a blog has to offer over other types of writing tasks is that our students have a real audience; therefore, communication becomes authentic and meaningful. This is so much more motivating than an assignment where the teacher is the sole audience member!

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    1. Hello Janine,
      Thank you for your comment. I also agree with you that the communication is so important and that this is so motivating because students can feel free to express their ides.

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  4. Hello Rade :
    It is good to meet you. A blogg can be a very effective tool as it has been pointed out before.I am sure that students who still do not use it will start doing it and will pass this knowledge to their peers. They may become enthusiastic about the fact of teaching this wonderful skill to others and learning from the teacher and from each other as well.

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    1. Hello Denise,
      It is also nice to meet you,too. I also hope that my students will be enthusiastic about using this very fascinating tool for improving their skills of learning and interacting between themselves.

      Everything the best...

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