WEEK 8

Hello classmates!!

This week is coming to an end and it proved to be a pretty hectic one! So much to do and read!!!

Durign the first part of the week, we were asked to work upon checklists on a peer's project plan. I had the pleasure of working with Sosthene from Rwanda. He developed his project around assessment issues. We read each other's drafts and sent a checklist with weak points or sections that needed polishing up. The experience was great! Now, we are supposed to improve our drafts based on our peer's suggestions.

After the project plan's checklist were submitted, we started working on a vast repertoire of teacher resources, mainly authoring resources. We were provided with a vast list of tools to create online or off line excersices, worksheets, classes, etc. 

At the same time, Jeff Magoto was invited to take part in our Nicenet class. He introduced ANVILL to us. ANVILL (A National Virtual Language Lab) is a speech-based toolbox for language teachers. Like the language lab console of old, it's focused on the practice of oral/aural language, but at its core are very modern web-based audio and video tools from duber dot com and the University of Oregon: Voiceboards, LiveChat, and Quizzes and Surveys. Our newest tool, TCast, allows teachers to record and place audio or video files anywhere in a lesson--in 3 easy steps. Each of these tools really opens up the scope and sequence of lessons centered around spoken language tasks.

We then were invited to create a teacher account and join an existing session to take part in different activities. I personally tried Pavlov's dog, make the dog drool on demand. Very interesting and amusing experience.

Of all the tools suggested, I found the perfect forum tool to be used in my classes. I created a class on Nicenet.org for my EAP law students. I consider this tool is extremely user-friendly and neat when it comes to organizing and following a thread of discussions, a functionality I hadn't found on any other discussion tools I've tried so far. Here's the key to my Nicenet class if you want to take a look at it: S348829Q7. I will be using this session for my students to interact and learn collaboratively, building knwoledge consturctively.

All the best,
Pablo.