LEARNING REFLECTIVE LOG Nº 7

WEEK 7

      This week was very useful for me because we started the class with a Power Point Presentation that our instructor gave us, I was thinking that that presentation was not good. At the end of the presentation, the instructor explained us about the presentation she made, that presentation was not good because she wanted to explain us about the things that we do not have to do in a PPT.

     I learned by the errors that my professor made, for example i do not have to put so many information in each slide, i do not have to include unuseful images, I do not have to put so many effects. This kind of classes are perfect for us because when we are going to be English teachers, we will give some presentations using this kind of technology in class, and they have to look proffessional.

     Here you have so links to read and videos to watch of how to make good PPT:

http://www.trentu.ca/history/workbook/seminarpresentations.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOwQUd8qkMM&feature=related

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/10-tips-for-more-effective-powerpoint-presentations.html

LEARNING REFLECTIVE LOG Nº 6

WEEK 6

       This week was good because we listened to a seminary that out instructor and another professor of the English Program from the U.T.A. presented us. It was about The Effective Use of Technology in the EFL Classroom, they started presenting some dispositives where there was a clear explanation about important tools on the web that can be useful for our classes as teachers. First of all, we reviewed a web site that is http://teachers.net/lessonplans/subjects/reading/ where we have information or ideas to create a lesson plan. We logged in:

EDMODO: where we will be able to participate in groups and share information with teachers and classmates.

NOODLETOOLS: Where we will be able to get information in an specific way.

BLOGGER: where we will be able to create blogs to present electronic journals and reflective essays.

DELICIOUS: where we will be able to share, discover, bookmark and share information.

NICENET: where we will be able to create virtual classes for our students.

    Finally, this was a very interesting presentation because I learned important web tools to improve my knowledge and share it with my students in the future and of course find way to make my students love learning a language based in the use of technology teaching the four skills Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking.

LEARNING REFLECTIVE LOG Nº 5

WEEK 5

       In this week I learned important uses of specific web sites like the UNESCO ICT, in this case I got very good ideas about the importance of technology in education. we had to read three paragraphs from this web site http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts and discuss in a forum on the Aula Virtual. In my opinion, Internet is fundamental for learning specially a new language, in conclusion of the reading that we practiced, of course, a Teacher must be open-minded to get strategies to improve his/her classes, because the educational world is improving and people need very good teachers to help the development of the world. 

       Furthermore, in this class we practiced The use of Diigo, in this case to make discussion groups, i chose a web site where we have a clear explanation about vowels and consonants sounds http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/english_main.html where we just have to click in one sound and we will be able to listen to it and check the movements of articulators.

          I learned another important on-line tool that is called Dropbox. Dropbox is a tool to help us to save any kind of document on-line instead of a memory flash or a computer, with all the securities that we can have. For the free version we have 2GB to save information and we need more space we can buy another version, i up-loaded some documents, and i can download them in any computer from any country.

      At the end of the class we review a very useful web site that is http://www.esl-lab.com/ where we have many listening exercises for three levels Easy, Medium and Difficult. We were listening to some links in class. Finally, this class week was great because i learned new tools that the internet offers. I will use the suggestions from the ICT page to increase my knowledge as a teacher my Diigo account to save the useful websites that i could find, my Dropbox account to make "Respaldos" of my important documents. Thanks for make interesting this week.

LEARNING REFLECTIVE LOG Nº 4

WEEK 4

       In this week i learned some important activities on the web. First, we started cheking our blogs and the instructor gave us some advice to keep them in a better way. The main topic of that week was "How to use a DIIGO acount". It was a great web site where i started signing in and following some suggestions of my professor i understand everything about it. I learned a very good way to keep web sites, in specific categories, of course it will be very useful for me because i used to save web sites in "Marcadores" in my computer but it was a problem when i had to install a navegator and all my "Marcadores" were cleaned. Using Diigo our bookmarks will not be cleaned we just need a computer with internet and we will be ready to recheck all the web sites that we have saved. It was so easy after to log in i just have to drag a small botton called diigolet to the Marcadores´ rod. If we want to save a web site we just have to go there and click on Diigolet and bookmark it, writen a description of the web site, the privacy if we want, some tags to be easier to find the web site. Something else that i learned is that Diigo permits me create discusion groups to talk about any topic or any web page with my friends that have a Diigo account. Finally, we checked the UNESCO web site and we had to work in the UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers document. I will use Diigo almost always because i love to save my favorites web sites.

       Here you have two web sites where you will find information of how to use Diigo and a tutorial video for learning to highlight texts, too:

• https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/diigo-web-highlighter-and-stic/

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RC3uvzv4_8