Module 8: Office applications for whole-class teaching

The recent trend of pair-work and group-work activities has been so powerful that we sometimes seem to forget how valuable whole-class teaching is..... This module has made me aware of the different functions of each of the interaction patterns.

Whole-class teaching is very valuable as students are exposed to exactly the same input and feedback, contributes to collaborative class spirit, weak students learn from strong ones, and despite the recent trend of student-centered approaches, sometimes teacher-centered classes are necessary.

I really liked and I am going to use the 'weed read' activity in my thesis writing class as my students definitely make the mistake of using redundant words in their texts. For this, I am planning to use 'Word' and focus on the importance of lexico-grammar, as the extra words are mostly related to prepositions accompanying verbs. Again I am planning to use Word to focus on synonymy, which is very important for cohesion. I will use a text where the same word is repeated over and over again. Then I will get the whole class to discuss what the problem is and how the text can be improved. If the students don't come up with good synonyms, I will show them how to use the 'thesaurus' option in Word, attracting their attention to the fact that although two words may be synonyms in one context, they may not be so in another.

For coherence and unity, I will try PowerPoint. I will put one complete sentence on each slide, go on to the next slide and the next sentence and ask the students whether the next sentence follows the previous one logically and smoothly. I think PowerPoint will be good for this to construct the text bit by bit, sentence by sentence, and to get rid of the 'weeds', in this case sentences that do not unite with the whole text.

As I have not been teaching lower levels for a long time now, all I can come up with at the moment is 'writing', and the elements of good writing.

Module 7: Cyber well-being

This module gives very useful information about staying safe online, and cyber-bullying.

Two of the resources provided are appropriate for young kids, and the information is very well presented to suit that age group. I found the cartoon very effective, and the SMART (safe, meet not :)))), accept not :)). reliable not, tell an adult or carer) rules easy to remember, and worth remembering even by us, adults.

The video on cyber-bullying affected me a lot. I very strongly dislike bullying and bullies. I have always thought that real-world bullying is really bad. Most of the time, the person bullied in real life has got some kind of soft spot well identified by a bully, and life may become unbearable for the person bullied. What a shame!!!

This module has made me think that cyber-bullying is even worse, as the act of bullying can reach a wider audience through technology and make the victim's life more unbearable. Visuals, name calling and the like can affect a child or teenager so negatively that it can cause life-long damage to the victim.

Especially the parents have a huge responsibility here. By making sure that they are up-to-date with technology, and by educating themselves on the problems that can be encountered by children or teenagers in a certain age group, they can alleviate some problems faced by their children and support and guide them

Module 6: Copyright and copyright-friendly resources

Short and sweet module....

Unfortunately, I cannot say that our country is very successful in dealing with copyright issues. Most people are not aware of copyrights, and those who are do not really adhere to the rules. Photocopying is a craze, and pirate CDs, DVDs are everywhere.....

The most interesting 2 things I learned in this module are that you can only copy 5-10% or 1 chapter from a book, and another one is the copyright rules for music.....In order to be able to use music in your classroom, you need to get permission from the artists, recording label, lyricists, and composers.

When I finished my PhD thesis, I put it online immediately, and for the accompanying online thesis writing course, I got a Creative Commons license thanks to the guidance of our dear friend Steve.

"Creative Commons license is one of several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S. non-profit corporation founded in 2001" (http://en.wikipediajavascript:void(0).org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses).

Module 5: Searching

Unfortunately, I can only log onto this course at the weekends due to my thousands of responsibilities during the working week. I really feel upset and anxious about this when I see that my friends are ahead of me as some of them find time to log in during the week. Anyway.....

Yes, this was another useful module..... I became aware of and familiar with searching tips I was not aware of and was not using before..... Wildcards, using quotation marks for exact words and phrases, cutting down on redundancies, limiting your search to time periods, and many more.....

Also, I did not use any other search engines other than Google. I am sure I'll be using these 3 a lot (www.ask.com, www.dogpile.com, www.metacrawler.com) as two of them are meta-search engines that search multiple-search engines.

The most useful part have been evaluating the validity and reliability of websites while searching section. I will be using these 6 questions when I am searching for something and when my students are searching for something on the Internet:

1. Who has written the website?

2. Why has the author written this?

3. What is it about? Is it factual?

4. Where does the information come from? Do the links provided go out to other websites?

5. When was the site last updated?

6. How good is the information?

And I'll be reminding myself as well as my students and my friends that we should validate and check a website, and should not believe everything we see on the Internet, and ask some key questions before we decide that the website and the information is reliable.

Module 4: Integrating the Web

This module has been the most challenging so far as it required the most time and effort. However, I believe it has been the most thought-inspiring.

It is important to remember that integrating the web into the syllabus or into the lesson requires careful planning, and should not be done for the sake of it. Deciding what the web will serve in the lesson is the first step to take, and then the second step is in what stage of the lesson it will be used, how, etc. Letting the students browse the Internet to come up with a suitable site may be time-consuming. Therefore, if the aim of the lesson is not browsing the net, the teacher should make sure that the websites to be used are determined so that no time is wasted.

Websites may bring authenticity, variety, and fun into the lesson. They can be exploited for many different purposes with careful planning.

The website that our students use extensively in their everyday lives is undoubtedly Facebook. I have got colleagues who say they are using Facebook for educational purposes, yet if what they mean is connecting with students through Facebook and communicating with them, I do not believe that this can be considered 'educational'.

I am looking forward to finding out how Facebook can be used for genuine educational purposes on this course. ---- Hopefully :))))

Module 3: Evaluating and selecting websites

Sometimes, the knowledge that you take for granted suddenly becomes questionable for yourself. I thought that I knew a lot about websites, choosing the best website for my students. However, I found that I am learning much more than I thought I would on this course.

The five criteria, namely 1. Accuracy and acceptance 2.Authority and coverage 3.Audience and relevance 4. Educational focus and 5. Ease of use will help me a lot when I decide to use the web in class. Especially considering the educational focus, I realise, is something we need to be extremely careful about. Appealing to different learning styles, and to different senses, being linked to a reputable and accredited examination body are all important considerations. Moreover, we need to think about the purpose for using a website before we even start looking at different websites, and evaluating them keeping in mind our purpose and the 5 very important criteria introduced in this module.

In addition, the publisher of the website being reputable and trusted, ease of use, content being relevant, the references being reliable, the speed of downloading different pages will all play an important role in how I choose websites.

Modules 1 and 2

In spite of using Moodle, Youtube, TED talks, etc in my teaching for quite a bit of time, I feel that I will be benefiting from this course a lot. It is always very useful to refresh and polish knowledge on a topic, as it leads to a deeper and better understanding of it.

In 'Getting Started', I benefited the most from 'Netiquette', the rules for communicating in the virtual world..... I believe that learning these rules should be compulsory for everyone before they are allowed to enter the virtual world. Some emails are so out of focus that you read a long email and start wondering what the message was....Or sometimes the discourse, the tone is so inappropriate....

In the 'introduction to learning technologies' module, again I read about things many of which I already use.... Can we perceive doing a conference presentation without the aid of a powerpoint where you can use images, figures, symbols, and key words to make your message clear? On the other hand, I learned things I did not know about..... I think I'll be using Teachertube and Vimeo extensively; they are already added to my favourites on my laptop.

All in all, I am happy that I decided to be a participant on this course in spite of my very busy schedule, and very hectic lifestyle.