Week 6

Dear Cyber friends,

This week has been filled with activities as usual, and learning is happening, I have tried new gadgets in the use of a Powerpoint presentation, and the experience was totally rewarding.

Let me just go step-by-step:

This week I had two big things happening 

1) a Powerpoint presentation to submit, and 

2) An oral presentation in the Italian language class I take on Saturdays.

 I decided to prepare a Powerpoint show for my Italian presentation with some of the resources I have just learned in my online course; and, more importantly, I also enhanced one of my presentations for Cultura I, Marcus Garvey, and the results were very satisfactory. I adore my two presentations and I do think I have stopped being illiterate in Powerpoint! I certainly need some more practice, since it takes me forever to do the entire job, but there we go!

you can see Marcus Garvey''s presentation in https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzdTIwMTN3ZWJza2lsbHN3aWtpfGd4OmZmMzEyYjljOTBhZmYyOQ

This week we were also compelled to think about how to engage our students, create more stimulating classes and make our role as teachers someway more reaching, that is, try to surpass the border of being simply a class convener to become a teacher. I watched a video on a Professor in a Physics class, who is not only following her instincts as a teacher, but who is implementing strategies applied for other people, like Socrates and Piaget, in her teaching. These strategies work. 

Here is the link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQra4baNwP8

For my “Project Step” of this week, I need to report on the progress of my project. I have said I am planning an electronic portfolio, focused on the development of writing skills, that would stimulated various aspects in students'process: through the use of electronic resources for their research they would access promptly updated information; the use of the Net would give them a closer contact with their instructor (me) and in the fora the students could share their common questions and doubts; as well as helping each other (an important element in a portfolio, called peer-assessment). Cortney suggested I utilized a new tool learned about in the Webskills course in my final project.

I am planning to do it in this way:

The seven topics to be developed will be:

·        Nelson Mandela & the ANC 

·        The Oklahoma Bombing

·        The Black Panthers

·        Eco-Terrorism

·        Islamic Fundamentalism

·        The State of Israel

·        US war on Terrorism

Students will need to check on my blogspot or delicious https://delicious.com/baginska_ucv the links for their reading, so they can prepare themselves for the writing activity.

They will need to have an account on Penzu | Free Online Diary and Personal Journal, to which I will have access, and in their writing diary, they will report once a week about how their process is developing.

I will suggest the use of write or die (http://writeordie.com/) only for those willing to challenge their process.

They will send me via email their outlines every week, with a dead line: the day before the writingactivity in class. I will use the forum in my yahoogroup (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/baginska_ucv/), in order to create a space that would give the students quick access to help or share their ideas with their peers.

In this way, I will be using: the blogspot and my delicious, update every week with the information they need for their research (new tool), the online diary to report on their process (new tool), optional use of write or die (new tool), and emailing of outlines and use of yahoogroup (not new, but electronic web tool).

Sadly, I will not have time to implement this change in this term, but I am working to refine it so that it get as ready as it can be for my next term!

What do you think?

Looking forward your comments!

See you next week