Week 8: Project report first draft

 Eager to read about what other colleagues may write, I took the initiative to build the first team. Then I urged myself to write my first draft with no choice but to be addict to the letters I trace as if to give them from myself a breath and a meaning that may make them alive and full. I was writing while discovering my project growing gradually with a steady development. I only copy what I see from my personal perspective, faithful to the idea and to the feeling, faithful to all the fires that are and carry on to be shared among all the human beings, faithful to what I constructed with my young students that I feel very proud of.

 The process of writing my report made me learn many things and remember a lot of details. Now, it’s time to work with my partner and exchange ideas to improve what we produced. I decided to read my colleague's report and treat it as if it was mine. Time for real dialogue has started!

Week7: Being part of the network!

Hello everybody!

I was very busy this week: on the one hand like my colleagues I was doing the weekly assignments on nicenet and Robert’s wiki, on the other hand I was working on my project in terms of finding a partner, preparing the first draft of the final Project Report, improving my resource website and many other stuff…

I have read many articles on learner autonomy and gathered much information from theory into concrete practices I used to live with my young students at class. Shifting between theory and practice, between consumption and production but more to the point moving from reflection to creation that was the step I left myself with!

 I was surfing between what has become as regular activities nicenet, Robert’s wiki and the new partner signup corner, my snapgrades  and our start up website course, then working bit by bit on my project together with using other websites as references of study…I became an active participant member in the Network! The only thing I missed was my blog so here I am back though late to see what I have read, consumed, produced and achieved!

It’s very fantastic to participate in this course and I feel happy that I positively contribute!

Khaled hafdhi, Tunisia.

Week6: "interactive"PowerPoint

Hi!

   A whole week of real discovery and creation, I feel very entertained! I have read all the suggested articles and I was eager to read more so that I can achieve a better performance. Reading about how to make our PowerPoint slides very dynamic and interactive has made me think more about my audience making them part of what I can produce. The point is that our students must not only react to our slides but also interact with them. We -as teachers- have to feel the difficulties that learners face if they are not involved in our presentations. They can easily share the responsibility of learning if they are doing something with what we present. In my class many children can produce their own slides and if I assign them a free project they can create nice simple but very meaningful presentations. They can understand better if I actively engage them in a game or a quiz or even a reading comprehension activity provided that it will be interactive.

        Practice makes everything perfect! And this week was full with practice. It’s true that I have known how to use PowerPoint since ten years now but still the time of rediscovery, that pleasure to produce a purposeful task and share it with others. I feel a great relief when I finish constructing some full of life slides and the next day invite young learners discover them with me as if we were both the producers and consumers! I hope the same feeling is shared by us all because our students should exist in anything we produce for them!

Khaled Hafdhi, Tunisia.

Week5: weekend synthesis

    Our friend Carl announced a nice synthesis, an unforgetable lesson at the end of this week. I quote from him this nice analogy seeing assessment as a balanced ecosystem:"I think that asking which assessment is 'good' or 'bad' is asking the wrong question. We should be asking, "What is the role of this assessment." Think of your assessment system as an ecosystem with all sorts of different plants and animals in it. We don't ask, "Is a bird better than a rabbit?" Birds have a role in nature. They aren't good or bad, just different. In the same way, there is a role for all sorts of different assessment techniques. Traditional multiple choice tests might be good for checking knowledge, but not proficiency. Project based learning is great for determining if students can really apply their knowledge in a realistic situation"

 Yet I would like to add something:

1. Alternative assessment, project work and rubrics denote a change in the way of evalution. they reveal that there are new methods of knowning the real abilities of the learners.
2. The creation of real solid assessment means the creation of reliable learning.
3. We cannot get rid of traditional ways of assessment because it still can encourage students to do the hard work of learning.

Khaled, Tunisia.

  

Week 5: Trapped by Time!

Hello!

I was torn this week between three major issues: our weekly discussion on assessment on the one hand, and building a web quest and creating my project website on the other.  Little time was left to my blog; I felt as if I lost something, time betrayed me!

At last,I decided to write with these aches of loss and I never expected myself to succeed in tracing this post though at the first glance I saw it as a whole ready to be built since a long old time. I regained the freedom I was longing for, the freedom I wanted to celebrate all my life. All my freedom depends on what I will write, to write more about myself, to write about what I feel and express what I may think to be true and real, what I defy myself to be my real value, what I urge myself to create.

We have to start the real game: the technologically expected change!

Best wishes for all!

Khaled Hafdhi, Tunisia.