REFLECTION TEN WEEK

THANKS TO EVERYBODY 

I wish the course would prolong and go for more weeks. I wish Donna would be always and every time there to guide us, share more, and motivate us; and I wish such a academic companies would contribute yet further to unleash our potentiality and make us realize that we got to share and apply our innovative methods and technology to our students. But the reality is Friday would be the last day of our 10 week long journey, still the possibility of immense possibilities are shining at forth, that would lead us further to integrate technology assisted class.

When I navigate back to first and second week, I should admit that, I was in utter confusion and dilemma; I even didn’t have sound ideas regarding proper use of Blogs. So creating and posting my own opinions and ideas in blogs for the first time was really really awesome! From the second week itself we were supposed to post some of the problems that we are encountering in our class room and think about  their possible solutions.   By the end of fourth week I was quite excited thinking about the possibility of creating a web-discussion forum like nicenet, which I create later on. So every e-resource whether we talk about Delicious page, Project Based Learning, Webquest, Interactive powerpoint, Wallwisher, creating class wiki or the concept of ANVILL seem equally helpful and resourceful. I do believe that these are some of the approaches using which we can ensure learner’s autonomy; and make our classes more interactive and participatory.  Despite the usefulness of all these approaches, I feel, it would be better, had we given more time on the practical approaches of PROJECT-BASED LEARNING. I would love to precede my academic pursuit and study on the different facets of PROJECT-BASED LEARNING even in future.

 May be one year down the line or some years down the line I will be using more such resources to make my classes the real and live class. I am fully optimistic that the development of our own classwiki or classblog and similar other ways of board-discussion will lead the class to a new level and  a new height. I am so excited to work further and make it all fruitful. Believe me, every year by the end of session I used to be so anxious thinking that how boring days I will have next year. This year I have just excitements and planning....

I am so delighted that I have got lot of new and innovative ideas through this program. I wish I could have got basic ideas about the use of online resource before I started this program. For example had I got ideas about creating my own blog or ideas about some useful web-sites, it would be even more useful. Nonetheless I feel that it's a beginning; I may go tottering in between but I am pretty sure that eventually the journey would be exciting, interesting and adventurous. Thanks to Donna, Oregon and my class mates for making me realize it. 

TECHNOLOGY AND THE CLASS

                                         REFLECTION ON WEEK-NINE

We are just a week away for our final week of the course. I wish the course had gone longer. Anyway I applaud them whoever say “every great thing comes in small package.” Otherwise why I am feeling as I got more and profound than a long yearly academic course? OR why I feel as my classes these days have been more effective and participatory than before?

As a teacher we have been approaching our students in multiple ways. Some of these approaches were coincidentally innovative, but in most of the cases teaching methodologies are predominantly monolithic and traditional. Books are the ultimate resource, you can’t turn anywhere around, was the notion. Saying it we can’t overlook the importance of textbook in our spatial-temporal location. Even in the highly digital world, the fun and scope of the book can’t be minimized. But when we ponder on the issue of teaching and learning, gigantic but mostly unexplored, still incredible potentiality of technology is distinct. That is the ultimate resolution of this course.

Talking about nine week; we had a huge task to be completed i.e. project report. Our initial concept on project and its gradual development up to eight week has been systematically catapulted in the report. My project report basically intends to enhance writing competency of the students through blogs, email and wallwisher. Initial feedback of the students is pretty encouraging. Students are posting their post and comment in a regular basis. This is how I am communicating the importance of learner’s autonomy to my students. Proper communication and establishment of Learner’s autonomy indeed is inevitable to increase the motivation of students.

At the same time, it’s high time we got to foster Gardner’s idea of multiple intelligence. According to Gardner learning is both a social and psychological process. If so learning and understanding of the ideas are determined by several such factors, and intelligence which is customarily measured in a one dimensional measuring rod can't avoid the ultimate flaws inherent with in it. To borrow Garder's idea each individual has nine intelligence  If so our "universal standard of intelligence" can't be compatible to foster these "intelligences", and to better harbor and recognize these intelligences we need to incorporate technology. So to ignite the multiple intelligences of our students we need to incorporate technology in our class. Thanks to Oregan and thanks to our course instructor Donna for making us realize it.

REFLECTION ON EIGHT WEEK

ISN’T IT THE TIME FOR CLASS?

By the end of this week I have got some pragmatic answers regarding effective use of online resource primarily, to enhance students’ motivation and make the classes more participatory. That must the reason why, from the very beginning  I was  wondering when we will have our own class wiki, nicenet, class blog and other online resource to make these classes a real learning Laboratory, and we got these task this week.  So fun and excitement instilled my effort, when I started creating my own class wiki this week. I am pretty sure that it can be really helpful for all of us to regulate and harmonize our overall academic activities and bridge the chasm between teacher and students. This week we are supposed to create either classwiki, nicenet or class blog, I am thrilled to go clas wiki because already I had created nicenet, and feel confidence regarding class blog that I am also working with.

This week, I had seen a very exciting participation of my students in wallwisher, and it has been really popular among them. Wallwisher has been a fantastic tool also for me for facilitating the class discussion. When we have class discussion theses days, instead of writing some major arguments in the whiteboard, we, then and there, post it in the padlet.com as a result students can see it instantly through the help of overhead projector and contribute more on discussion. At first, it has been a complete new idea for them, second as they find the ownership of their ideas students seem encouraged to participate in the discussion, and third they feel important to deliver good ideas as it’s visible to everybody. As a result class participation has been tremendously increased. Still a possible drawback of padlet is anybody can delete or damage other’s ideas so we need to be cautious about it.

To be very honest the preparation and submission of the first draft of the final project this week by Wednesday was a very challenging job for me. A very hectic schedule of this week has halted me to get focused and work on preparing the final draft. Eventually, working relentlessly on day and night I submitted it on time, albeit I still feel some ideas and plants to be improvised.

All in all, days are turning really exciting, fruitful and resourceful these days. Whenever I am out of the class or some minutes before the class time, I frequently ask this question myself these days:

ISN’T IT THE TIME FOR CLASS?