week four

Week four is  almost over and lucky me, I learnt so many things. I read about using CALL in reading and writing activities. I also navigated some useful websites. To name just few:

1) Rong- chang.com .is a big library for ESL learners with a nice library of leveled stories for reading with. You can listen too. Also it offers a variety of activities on the reading passage.

2) Dvolver.com  http://www.dfilm.com/moviemaker/index.html is a nice website that allows you to make your own movie, choose characters, setting, script and everything ,.a nice site. I'm sure kids will love it.

3) Gutenberg. Org. The url is http://www.gutenberg.org/ a big library for free e-books.

B) One nice thing I learnt is how to write a technology enhanced lesson plan. I used some technology before in my class but they were clumsy tries, but now I have a deeper insight. Also I have a bigger variety of options, tools and websites. I can't wa it to get feedback on my lesson plan. You can read it here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LKtbwsgHSBe1AiHzgL5ljFt6VKhFtWtGc1n8yxs9EEQ/edit

c) I also Described a problem I face with my class. They are not very much motivated to read. I hope technology will help me overcome this problem.

Week Three

Week Three
It was as amazing as the ones that were before. I learnt many useful things.
1- I read two articles about oral/aural skills and CALL. I liked Julia Gong's article about the advantages and disadvantages of CALL in teaching speaking. Two software programs in her article attracted my attention. The first is called SlIM . It can detect the student's oral mistakes, offer visual aids and written diagnosis. The other is called Conversations which offers a variety of conversations that allows the student to record for him/her self and later to compare with the model. I tried to get more information about those programs but couldn't. I'd be grateful if one of the audience could help.

2- Delicious is a nice website where we can exchange our useful URLs. I made an account there and shared some of the useful websites. Here is my page https://delicious.com/abunasr and visitors are more than welcome.

3- As usual my generous active colleagues offered a rich menu of useful websites.I liked most of them and I invite you to  enjoy some.
http://www.esl-lab.com/
http://vocaroo.com/
http://www.elllo.org/

And here is a real delicacy: 
http://www.artofstorytelling.org/
where students can write and record their stories based on a picture,share and send their stories , moreover it allows the students to make their own picture for the story. Bon appetit!

Mohamed Nasr

Week Two:

Week two is almost over on this amazing course. I learned so many things about web search, writing objectives and blogging skills.I learnt about many interesting  search engines such as Ask.com which I liked as it offers "popular Q&A" which I think is real fun.Also, I have to admit that It's the first time  hear of kids' search engines like Kids Click and Yahoo Kids. I imagine I can see the excitement on their faces when I introduce those kid friendly sites to them. Kayyum Khan amazed me with his idea about bookmarking our search and exchanging our store of useful bookmarks. I liked the idea and was thrilled when I knew we would be dealing with it later on the course. Also, I was interested in the idea of improving Google's search skills. I found a nice link that explains it in a real fun way.I'd happily share it with you. http://www.howtogeek.com/98698/improve-your-google-search-skills-infographic/. I hope it helps. I also logged on Angels's web blog and read her nice idea about skyping in classroom. I liked it very much as it brings the whole world in the classroom. I think I'll introduce Kids Click and Yahoo Kids to my students, give them the chance to explore them.I'm also running talented students program in my school, I'd assign them some simple tasks on those sites like finding and reading a nice story. This week is so nice fruitful week. I can't wait to start week Three.

Testing , testing, 123 testing. Everything is ok? -Good.

Hi everybody,

 Believe it or not. I have a web blog. This day will be a remarkable day in the history of English language Teaching. please forgive me for being a bit enthusiastic and humorous for having a web blog for the fist time. I hope it will be a successful blog full of valuable information for me and for my fellow English teachers and for learners from All over the world. Please feel free to post your valuable comments and ideas.Thank you all for coming here and special thanks for the University of Oregon for admitting me to such a valuable course.