WRAP-UP WEEK

Dear Visitors,
       
 Its 10th Week-the wrap up week actually.
'Building Teaching Skills Through Interactive Web' is the first online course that I have attended and that too from the prestigious international University. I am so happy to have completed it ! Though I have not received the consolidated scores yet, but I was so full of doubts when I entered the class with almost no knowledge about 'what am I required to do here to pass the course?!'
It went well, support from Sean was always there. And though it was a bumpy start , I kept on learning new things and tools that could improvise my teaching.
So many new terminologies have been added to my vocabulary during the course e.g Web-quests. Consequently I will introduce my colleagues and students with this new world of web skills.
To me, the most engaging and convenient tool for communication and also for posting new announcements is 'The Blog'. I am using this as a platform for continuous interaction with my students and they too seem very enthusiastic in participation.
  There had been so much contribution from the fellow participants on the Conferencing yet I could not benefit from all of them due to being always on run throughout this 10 weeks' course.
I hope to add some of the shared links on my Delicious page soon.
Overall, I feel satisfied from the standard of the course and that it was worth spending time and effort on.

Yusra Anwar

Week 9: The Final Project

Dear Readers,
        Its week 9, culminating all the major assignment with the submission of the final project. It was a huge task and I was full of doubts whether I would be able to submit a respectable and presentable project because of the time.
The template and the guidelines provided for building up the project were very helpful, it was just the time constraints. September onward our college teaching load is also on peak with immense pressure of course covering, marking monthly tests and other routine teaching jobs. The load magnifies because two out of four classes of mine are what we can easily term as 'large classes'.
Yet, it is perhaps human psyche that we don't work to out utmost unless and until there are deadlines!!
I feel satisfied today that I was able to maintain a balance between my work and domestic responsibilities and still was able to accomplish the assigned tasks of this course. It was the effect of adrenaline that made me think,read and write and write for the last few hours on expanding the first draft to the final version before uploading the final version.
I received more emails from my class that is working on the project on this weekend and I will keep on updating the project website with the information collected by the students. This way, I am learning how to edit and add posts/links and files to the website.
I wish I could make a final presentable version of the site before the week 10 ends.

Week 8:Class Blog and the Project

Dear Readers,
        This week I wrote so many times on my blog-I mean the new blog that I created for my class ; the same class is working with me on the Project Wiki.
Its link is http://bseng2013-literature.blogspot.com
I would invite the readers to visit the blog to be able to appreciate the participation from my class on it.
This is an entirely new teaching/reflecting tool for them and it has really encouraged me to see their spirit for learning new things. they created their emails for this project and the very first words that majority of the girls wrote on any site are on this blog. They hardly know even how to type in a good speed.
So many girls did not have a regular access to internet but when they see others participating and then discussing about the blog and their interaction with the teacher and class fellows via this blog, they are getting interested in convincing or rather pushing their parents to get them internet access.
Our guest moderator Jeff Magoto is introducing our class to new tools via ANVILL on the discussion forum.
I must say it had been hard accessing many of the ANVILL links and taken quite a lot of time while getting to the exercises proposed.
Its majorly because of the technical faults with my system. That I have been trying to resolve simultaneously.
Its a great learning experience though.
Yusra Anwar