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Note that the posts you find herein need edition. They are not finalized. They do still need some correction. I am more concered with doing the tasks for the moment being. These should be finalized soon. Thank you for understanding.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Wrap up of the course

“Building Teaching Skills through The Interactive Web” has reached its end. Before summarizing the course activities, I would like first of all to thank Prof. Deborah Healy for the great job, effort, help and patience. She has showed a great sense of professionalism in her work. I have learned a lot from her. I would also like to thank Jeff Magoto and Sueanne Parker who joined us somewhere in the course and assisted us successfully with so much appreciated guidance and help. Thank you also to the University of Oregon, namely the American English Institute. Many thanks to RELO Morocco which offered the opportunity and grated the scholarship to me. Thank you also to all the participants. I really enjoyed working with you. I have learned too much from you. You have been working with a very high level of professionalism, respect, collaboration and commitment. Thank you to those people who we don’t know, but they have contributed to make this course to success.

I personally don’t think there is a thing in the whole course which is not relevant or interesting. I have learned a lot.

The most important thing in the course is that it has managed to make a balance between theory and practice. We’ve been interesting reading materials refreshing our minds about teaching issues and discovering other interesting ones. I assume that the course could be divided into four parts in general. The theoretical part which has been concerned with teaching and educational issues such as learning objectives, teaching the four language skills, technology in language teaching, project-based learning, learning styles… The second part of the course is practical. Every week, we have been assigned hand-on tasks each of which focuses on a particular technological and educational issue. The third part of the course is the project. Every participant has to set a project for him/her. We have been led smoothly to realization of our projects. Some of us have already tried their projects with their students and others have prepared them for the near future as they are not currently teaching. Every participant has to write a report about the project. One of the good points here is peer observation. We have been set in groups for the sake of revising each other’s projects. Peer-to-peer learning is the fourth part of the course. I highly appreciate it because it was extremely advantageous. Throughout the whole course, all the participants have to participate in discussions, share ideas and expose issues both in discussion threads in Nicenet and in our personal blogs. Reading others’ comments and posts maximizes learning from each other. That’s an excellent sample of peer-to-peer learning that we can integrate in our classes.

The course was a total success for me because it has not only been an opportunity for learning, but also for social networking and learning about other nations and cultures and the status in education around the world. All in all, the course has inspired me and made me a new motivated teacher equipped with high competencies that would me my teaching more effective and make me like my job more.

Yours,

Hamid

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