Week 1

Week 1 at Building Teaching Skills Through Interactive Web

course at the University of Oregon is almost at its end and I remember how anxious and uncertain I was about it the first day. I was browsing the course site https://sites.google.com/site/webskillsuo/home in the attempt to understand what is the course all about. I found out that all the learning will be project based and all the participants will have to work on a project and submit it as a course requirement. Initially I thought that we will be attending some synchronous online classes but soon I realized that it was impossible as all the participants are from all over the world and from different time zones.

I also learned that we will be creating a blog as a Week 1 assignment and I looked at some examples of blogs done by students from previous years. I read Cecilia's blog at http://arriagada-cecilia2010.blogspot.com/ and this is where I got excited about all the possibilities this new experience will open. I understood how different this experience will be from all the others I’ve had.

So here I am, experiencing with blogs, playing around with layouts and designs, meeting a lot of wonderful teachers. And now that the rules for online interaction and the assessment criteria have been discussed I am eager to start working, sharing and exploring together with them in this new realm of technology.

While looking for a quote for my blog I came across this brilliant one by John Dewey "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow." I think this course will enable me to get to a new level of teaching and use along with the teaching methods of yesterday those of today. Students have always been more receptive to what is new and I am confident that the element of novelty will only benefit their language learning.