AEI/UO/Winter 2014 Webskills Online Course <Reflections on  my new Online Course Journey about "Building Teaching Skills Through The Interactive Web".>

Webskills WEEK 1 Reflection : Introductions, Creating a Blog

Foli in green shirt, fourth from the right, behind the lady

Since Monday January 6th, 2014 I have started this new journey. In the winter 2012 I had the same kind of journey, with more stress because it was the first time that I ventured into such a journey. In spite of the challenges I concluded it successfully. Now, I feel more confident although time constraints still hovers around.

Sean, our teacher and adviser gave the kick off with substantive welcome , informational and instructive emails to show us (participants from about 20 countries worldwide) the roadmap and the  milestones of the journey. Sean is a cool, organized, discreet, helpful,very humble but firm teacher. After a few days of interaction 99.99 % of participants have adopted him as our friend and guide through the journey.

Participants in the course are almost a team now. As Sean said, "everyone is on board". This reminds me of the days I was a tourist guide. Composed of some experienced and young teachers, the group is very highly motivated and we are all beginning to learn like "mad". I already like this dynamic, multicultural and global class.

I am experiencing the meaning of globalization in a very special way. Two days ago while I was still struggling to create my reflectve blog, I ran into the colleague Baetty. I didn't know then where she was from. It was 11: 30 pm UTC in Burkina Faso, time to go to bed. We had a brief chat. She told me she is from Indonesia, it was 06:30 am and she was getting ready to go to work.  I said to myself :"that is globalization in progress powered by technology."

There are 5 things we should do in week 1, summarized here:

·      visit the course website and explore

·      fill out the needs assessment survey 

·      join the class discussions on Nicenet

·      create our own self reflective teaching blog 

·      be able to log in and join the class wiki at Google sites.

Today Saturday January 11, 2014  I have completed all these tasks but I retain a couple of points.

1. I feel I belong to a very supportive and rich  learning community having the same goals and objectives with gentleman Sean as a trustworthy guide.

2. I am having a good review of how to initiate ice-breaking activities and  launch a new class ( with Self introduction, needs assessment survey, ground rules and rubrics discussion )

3. Creating a blog. It is my first blog. I have struggled for three days to be able to make it eventually. I had a problem with the choice the right address and/or username. The www.blogger.com website rejected about five addresses I proposed. I had to email Sean to ask for help. He suggested creating the blog with www.wordpress.com.  In the process, WordPress suggested me some options which gave me hints. Less than two mintutes after, I created the blog at www.blogger.com and added it to the AEI/UO Winter 2014 Webskills Online Course. Fantastic feeling!

I have had an unpleasant experience about joining  a friend's blog. I spent a hell of a time trying to log in or upload my picture so I thought it was a waste of time and stopped. I will to go back and participate in my friend's blog. I understand now through the nicenet discussion that not creating but rather managing and maintaining a blog is hard work.

I have read and kept useful materials on blogging i.e."Blogs Blogger-How to" "Blogging for ELT", "Creating Online Content" and "Larry Ferlazzo's Blog". I need to keep myself updated in blogging. Week 1 Milestone1 is almost done. I will come to a close tomorrow Sunday January 12th 2014.

Foli