Week 6: Busy As A Bee

             This week I am keeping my log, which is not an easy task to do, because I do not like all this diary-keeping routine, but I clearly understand I have to do it, so that not to forget when and what I did. I also started introducing my students to the technology involving changes.  But I did this not to one group as was asked, but to two groups (this part is for myself, a kind of a control group; I still have one more group, and they will be taught the same subject traditionally, without any changes), one is the group I had wanted to work with from the very beginning (when we had to describe the audience), and another is a small group of four students of English Philology. I practiced my PP presentation and the technology enhanced class with them, because we have a special lab with four computers only and I could arrange our having classes there, each student having a computer.

        This week’s task for my students was to create their blog on yvision.kz (this is a free site for Kazakhstany bloggers, they write in Russian there, but we will in English) and share the URLs with each other and me. I gave my students (the part of the project group) printed instructions on how to create a blog (as I had no opportunity to this on-line at the university). Meanwhile I also got successfully registered on the site and created a closed community to add all my students there, because they sounded rather shy when they asked me if I would make comments on what they would write and everyone else would read.  And… I am still waiting for my students’ URLs, because they got registered, but did not manage to get their final account approval link (none of them, which sounds unbelievable!). Meanwhile the group of four students who are not in the project got successfully registered on the site, and started posting (this was not the task for the week, but they were told they would have to this starting with the next week) and commenting! They went further on, because one of them created a closed community, and I had to ask her to accept me in it, and wait for several days, because the student was pressed for time to reach the Internet.

            And then this week I was much busy with PP presentation. Power Point was not  something new to me, I have been using it for some time now both in class with my English students, and at home, with my child. However, my PP presentations rarely contained something more than linear quizzes or slideshows. This week was my first attempt to create 1) an interactive PP presentation 2) for a lecture. Something that sounded quite easy took almost all the week, but at last it is ready, used, re-vised, and published on the Wiki. The class was really better than it had been without PP! As Val says, any class with a bad PP is better than a class without a PP at all!

            Happy to meet the deadline, I wish all my ‘webmates’ a happy weekend!