As week 3 is coming to an end, I sit in front of my computer and start thinking of what we've done and what we've learnt so far.

There's no doubt that we have been provided with plenty of material and activities to keep us busy without suffocating us. Thanks Donna! I particularly enjoyed labeling Donna's map (week 1), starting a blog (week 1), discovering new search engines (week 2), using Delicious (week 3), researching aural/oral sites (week 3) and reading past projects (week 3).

As for the readings, I found the articles Assessment Guides and Rubrics for Language Classes (week 1) and How to Write Clear Objectives (week 2) very innovative and useful for my own teaching environment. On the other hand, I found The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreing Language Skills (week 3) by Julia Gong a bit too technical and perhaps somehow outdated, as most references are from the past century. Though the general guidelines are nonetheless useful,  my perception is that a great deal of user-friendly resources we have at hand nowadays must have been introduced in this century and could not possibly have been accounted for by Ms Gong. 

Well, this is a brief appreciation of our course so far. Needless to say, I'm really satisfied with it and look forward to learning more and more. 

Hi everyone!

I'd like to ask  a couple of  things to those of you who have more experience in blogging (namely Donna and Alex, but anybody's reply will be welcomed).

First of all, how do I change the background template to add a photo from my personal albums? Google templates are wonderful, but I feel them a bit too impersonal.

Secondly, when you go to my profile, all the information is in Spanish, because it was a profile I had created before joining this course when I was asked to by Google. Is there a way to change to language to English?

Thanks for your advice.

Carlos

P.S. The photo shows the fireworks at the closure of our 200th independence anniversary. The building in sight is the old "Cabildo" - the Legislature - facing the Bay of Asuncion.

Hi Donna and everybody,

This is my first blog, so I'd like to reflect a bit about how I felt creating one. 

First of all, I realize now how much I lack computer knowledge. In fact, being from the "older" generation, I've never had formal studies on information & communication technology and the few things that I know I learnt them by doing. Luckily, I've been always surrounded by fairly knowledgeable people who kept teaching me new things.

I think one problem we may all have to face when dealing with ICT is that it moves forward so fast that it is literally impossible to catch up with it at any time, even if you dedicate all your time to doing so. Therefore, I resign myself to learning bits and pieces here, there and everywhere. 

I feel there is so much to learn that there's no point in worrying about it. Instead, I'll take every new piece of knowledge as it comes and have a positive attitude towards the chances of developing my computer skills to the standards required by this times of technological aids.

One last thing. If you wonder why I appear playing the keyboards in my photo, it's because I'm also a musician, an amateur one by the way. My band is called "Madera Noruega" (Norwegian wood, the name of a celebrated Lennon-McCartney's song) and - I bet you've guessed already - it's a Beatle tribute band. If I put a sort of emphasis on this, it's because it has always being a wonderful aid to my teaching; the moment my students learn I can play the guitar and sing, they just love doing it together. 

Thanks for reading. I'm adding a link to a song played by my band, if you happen to like The Beatles. Madera Noruega plays "Help"

Good morning (or afternoon or evening) everybody. I've just read

@Using Google My Maps for Classroom Projects

by @Robert Elliot,   one of our optional readings, and I've found it great for those who have interactive boards with internet connection in their classrooms. Incidentally, although I wrote the @ sign in front of names I want to link to Google, I just can't get the desirable effect; in fact, I don't see that I'm getting any effect at all. Can anybody give me a helping hand with it?

Carlos C.

Hi course mates and tutors!

I must admit that it was quite difficult for me to find the right way to create my blog. One of the difficulties I had was that I already had a Google account, but I couldn't remember neither my user name, nor my password, so to cut things short I created a new account, but when I tried to link my new blog to Donna's wiki zas!! magically my old account reappeared - it did happen that it was linked to the email address I am using for this course. So, I'm posting everything again, hopefully this time for good.

If anyone knows how to get rid of blogs and email addresses that you are not planning to use, please give me the instructions. In this moment, I have 8 email addresses and two blogs!

I hope to see everybody's blogs in the next few days and learn how to improve it to make it more interesting.

Carlos Cheval