Week 8: Teacher Resources Online

Learning about ADVILL and how to use it, finding more and more resources, checking my partners Draft Project and making my own Draft Project were really interesting things for this week. I keep on getting surprised every week with more new information and better quality resources which we can all have access to. This is great!

This week I started off by making my Draft Project and I was so limited on time, due to some trips I had to make, that I felt I wasn't going to make it. But when it comes to organizing my time I'm pretty good, so I set out to prepare a set of well ordered steps to follow and here I am finishing my tasks on a Saturday. Couldn't be happier! 

Making my Draft was kind of easy because we already did it all throughout these past few weeks and we also wrote about it in our previous posts, so I didn't have much problems with that. I though I had another activity to make (the online discussion on Nicenet) for Wednesday but learning that this week we had a little more tolerance really helped me. I was able to focus and highlight the most important aspects of my project. I'm still waiting to see if I did it alright and I hope my partner's feedback will come in handy at the right time. I write mainly about how I started my project and then how I applied it in class with my students, as I wrote before they loved the changes and they keep in asking me what are we going to do next or when are we going to use something similar again and before I would have told them "We'll see", now I can tell them "All the time" and they love that idea. The school year finishes today in my country and most of them were really overwhelmed with their activities there, lucky for us since my institution is private, we have students the whole year and we don't need to stop. We will continue to have classes with more intensity now that they are free from other obligations, which is exciting for me because I don't have to stop implementing change.

Later in the week I was able to check the ADVILL from the great Mr. Jeff Magoto. This idea is great I especially liked how the Japanese teacher is applying it and how his vision of students interaction with no borders is oriented towards the same goals I wanted to reach. This gave me lots of ideas on how to implement it with my students here and with the members of my community. Guided on the same path towards international student interaction, I have created an International Community called ICEP, which is available on facebook and whose main goal is to develop strong bonds and relations between international students, teachers and professionals, hoping to establish mutual cooperation among the participants and contributing with each other in any language educational purposes possible. This community’s purpose is to help international students develop their English abilities and improve their analytic and communicative skills. We also encourage our students around the globe to participate in both increasing their English level and understanding of global issues in all our countries. We strongly feel the need for them to interact with their peers in different parts of the world, so they can get to know more about each other’s lives and the reality of each country. With these initiative we can work on applying these resources such as the ADVILL and make it beneficiary for them as well. I am really excited about this idea, though my only concern is time, I'm sure we're going to make it happen. 

I was able to read, check and give feedback to my partner regarding his Draft Project. This experience was also interesting because it made me realize how I had done my own project draft. I had a few suggestions for SASI RAJ and I hope he can find them constructive. I think what he's doing is admirable because he not only works with 55 students (which is a lot) but he also find time and focuses an interest on making them successful. I wish him the best!

Then I made my test on the Easy Test Maker where I was able to prepare a quiz personalized for my lower intermediate students who are finishing the unit with a small quiz about Basic Simple Past

Grammar. I was also able to make a PPT presentation but completely different from a simple exposition tool, I was able to turn it instead into an interactive student friendly tool, thanks to The Mouse Mischief by Microsoft. This tool is meant to be used with my beginner class students, as an end of the class activity for practicing after the written assignments. Both resources I created are just a sample of how I'm changing my teaching style and how I'm trying to evolve step by step (or as my company says SMART STEP BY SMART STEP). 

This has been overall a really hard and stressful week due to my high demanding obligations but I proved myself that I can handle all these things and that despite having to do so much work, I was able to carry out this course successfully. I just want to tell everyone who reads this, that all we need to achieve something is just motivation, and this gives us a clear perspective on how we need to approach our students, so they can feel the same way we do. It's been a great week and I'm happy I had the chance to prove myself wrong.

Have a GREAT WEEKEND!!!

SERGIO