Week:3 - Reflection - trying to chew some delicious reading texts, trying to know more about the project work and trying to get ideas on how to incorporate computer technology in my English language classroom

Hi Donna & e-friends,

As the earlier weeks, the third week remained very important for me. For this week, I was given some tasks to do. All the tasks were very important and I could learn a lot from them. The tasks were creating delicious blog, reading articles related to the use of CALL in second or foreign language teaching and making nicenet discussion on the articles, reading the project reports given and making nicenet discussion and finally writing the weekly reflection and posting on the blog.

Delicious Blog
Creating a delicious blog was very interesting and important task for us. In the beginning I felt a bit difficult to accomplish this task. I thoroughly followed the guidelines for creating it. I created the blog and added the URL on the delicious wiki. I also added the URLs of our teacher Donna and other e-friends. As I added the URLs, I visited their blogs and knew the reality. What a fantastic world! We have the access of the books or reading materials that one finds. I went through some of the reading materials. I also searched something new from through the cite, http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html . I added the bookmarks of the findings in my delicious blog. From this task, I learned that we can share the reading materials and making our network reading effective. Similarly we can use it in our classroom. We can encourage our learners to create their delicious blogs and share what new reading texts and others fruitful documents they have.

Reviewing the Articles Related to CALL
Reading the articles related to CALL and reviewing them was another task for us. We were encouraged to make nicenet discussion on the use of computer technology and other modern innovation in second or foreign language teaching. Mainly three articles were given us. ‘Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials’ by Lindsay Miller, ‘New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation’ by Maria Grazia Busa, and ‘The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second / Foreign Language Speaking Skills’ by Julia Gong were the main articles for reading. We were also provided the reading resources of lesson plans for teaching different skills and aspects of language. I found all the articles very informative and all of them clearly emphasized the crucial role of technology in language teaching. CALL is really very advantageous in that it makes the learners learn on own pace and it also makes the learners free from any kind of psychologically threatening classroom environment. I went through different resources for the history of CALL and knew how important it is for second or foreign language teaching.

Reviewing the Project Report
Reviewing the project report was the third task that we had to carry out. There were seven reports and I went through most of them. I found all of them very commendable. The researchers have worked hard to come up with the findings they have written in their reports. Among them, I selected the project report carried out by Prem Bahadur Phyak. He carried out his project on the students of M.Ed. second year, University Campus, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. His project was on "Developing the Research Skills on the Students". The students were under the access of computer technology and internet facility. Later he encouraged them and guided them to use that in carrying out their research. The findings were highly positive. I got a kind of insights for carrying out my project work.

The tasks that I mentioned above are really fruitful for enhancing my teaching professionalism. The first task has taught me how to involve my learners to share and read the limited materials. Similarly, I myself can use a lot of materials that my e-friends have collected and added in the form of bookmarks in the process of teaching English. The second task has taught me how to incorporate the computer technology in English language teaching. I will apply the knowledge in my class. I have come to the conclusion that use of computer technology makes my class live and dynamic. The last task has taught me how to carry out project task relating the use of technology in the language class.

Suggestions are welcome.

Thank you all.