A Rewarding course

Good morning Classmates,

We are arriving to the end of a new beginning,
From the beginning I have been learning with a lot of enthusiasm everything I could from this course. I was able to know about the sites offer for teachers around the world. I first learn about having a more interactive blogs and delicious web for storing important articles and webs that provide all necessary information about how to use methods and techniques with my students. Also, I first learned about the way kids can be more confident with the use of internet in classes.
I am able to create objectives that are more engaged to my students’ course development. All of the articles about ABCD objectives are very complete to be used in my classes and I am now using them in my daily plans. Also, the idea having a traditional teaching and including technology to all my classes make my class more interactive and useful for my students.
I had the opportunity to read articles related to oral/aural skills, perspectives in the language communication, lesson plans including technology, project-based learning, use of webquest, how to make useful rubrics and how do I need to assess my students when I use technology in classes.
For me has been so important to see how can we work with technology when we do not have access to the highest technology. Now I can do an interesting class for my class without having the problem of internet connection or with a single computer. Also, I learned something that was very challenging for me, creating a blog for my students and a webquest, as well as interactive power points.
All of these tools are part of my syllabus now, after reading theories and strategies and suggestions from experts I can plan my classes easily and quickly. Before, it was kind of difficult to do it but now I have a better guide in how to do it. I do not need to do extensive researches on internet because I have collected suggested sites that most of the teachers use and most of them we do not need to pay for subscription.
In a country like mine, all of the topics studied provide support for teachers. I am sure my colleagues from the school are going to learn a lot from what I studied. For example, creating a google site for keeping students work, or by making a nicenet class. Every teacher according to his or her need can decide whether to use any of these tools. Through all the videos I watched about how to make a blog, an online exercise, listening sites, videos for an authentic material and one-computer class activities, are only examples of how can I become more useful and excellent facilitator for my students.
I know that not everything is in technology but in how can I use it to specific subjects. Furthermore, I am now more aware of my goals and my priorities are getting my students to be more autonomous learners even from early ages and let them work at home on their own. I can now see how some shy students are performing the language better and that does not have any other value than my rewarding feelings as a teacher.
I am going to keep using these techniques and tools. I am going to be attentive to read more articles about approaches, learning styles, classroom management and arrangement of curriculums.
Thanks to this course I feel more encourage to continue with my mission of teaching my children into their language development.
I know that there are more ideas and sites to research but unfortunately we cannot cover all in one course. So, as a good independent learner I will be in constant self-learning.
Finally, I want to thank all of my classmates – “teachers” from other parts of the world, who were able to give me suggestions, ideas, techniques and comments about my work. All of you guys, those who visited my projects, my written reports, my blog, I really appreciate what you did and the communication we had.
And I would like to thank Robert for his patient and dedication. He knows how to be a model, it is not only theories and articles, Robert, you have also been able to show us how to do things. So, as a good facilitator you were our model.
I know this will be kind of sad for me because I will finish this course but at the same time I am so proud of myself because I can see that other people know more about my way of teaching and my experience in my school. I feel blessed for having the tools I have access to and I have now a big responsibility in sharing everything I learned in this web skill course.
Somebody in the school told me on week 2 that I was wasting my time in reading, studying and taking this course because I could have done it by only using internet and looking for an article. However, that is the big prove that there’s not good technology in a student’s hand without the guide or instructions from a good teacher. This person has seen my students’ improvements in terms of language acquisition and now this teacher is asking me for suggestions. Wow! Life is so rewarding, right?
I hope we can continue having communication to share and exchange ideas. Meanwhile, thanks a lot to Blerta, my partner for my final project, Avraham, for his visits and suggestions and comments in my blog, Tatsiana, for being a good advisor in my plans and lessons, Maria, Mariam, Roza and Felipe for their involvement in my discussions, and Vinicious and Myriam for sharing and comparing what he lives in his country with my national system.
To all the rest of the class, thanks a lot for making this class as Robert says: “Interactive”.
Warm regards from my beautiful country Nicaragua.
Let’s wait for our grades! And feedback
“El libro es fuerza, es valor, es alimento;Antorcha del pensamiento y manantial del amor.” Ruben Dario, El libro.

This is a quote from a poem written by Ruben Dario, one of our greatest poets in the history of Nicaragua. His quote says something like this in English: "The book is force, is value, is food; Torch of thoughts and spring of love."
See you later classmates and Robert.

Yariela Cantarero