Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Week 1: Towards A New Experience

I’m so happy and excited to be one of this course members. Actually, I thank Deborah and all people who are responsible for conducting such online learning experience. It is not my first time to convey my ideas and thoughts through online spaces. I’m already a member of an Egyptian discussion board called “Developing the Egyptian Education”. Here is its address: www.egyscholars.com/vb. However, this online discussion is a little bit different. It includes many people with one goal and many minds thinking about one world “Teaching English”. All of us pour our ideas and imaginations in one pot that’s how to improve our teaching skills in order to produce independent and creative students.

Through reading the posts of all members, I noticed that they have great experiences and creative ideas about learning and teaching English. I’m not joking If I say that I have 250 years now (I just add all the experience years of all members). So, I’m sure this course will be beneficial for me.

And now let’s start blogging!

4 comments:

  1. Salam Mr Azhar,
    Honestly, I took pleasure reading your two posts and I found your scaffolding remark very pertinent. However, I’d like to expand on the notion of scaffolding in our online course context. True , Dr Deborah has both a pivotal and guiding role in maintaining momentum in our discussions. Yet I consider every single coursemate a metal pole in the scaffolding structure. Learning here is reciprocal and everyone is contributing a bit to embetter our teaching practices using webskills.
    I admire your blogging dynamism and your commitment to improve the Educational system in Egypt. I also had a look at the forum and I must say you’re simply doing a great job.
    Best Wishes
    Arbi
    Morocco

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  2. Salam Arbi,

    I'm so happy to meet you online. Thanks so much for your decent words. I'm waiting for your registration in our Egyptian forum. We need different experiences form all over the world.

    For scaffolding, all what we do now is an example of it. We have a helpful instructor. We have helpful coursemates. We share our experiences with each other. I think one can be more successful when working collaboratively with others.

    One more thing, I'm Ms. not Mr. My name means flowers in Arabic.

    Yours,
    Azhar

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  3. Dear Azhar,

    You are correct in saying that collectively our course members have a wealth of experience. Both the quantity and quality of the experience is impressive. I'm confident that the synergy of our creative ideas and experiential perspectives can result in great things!

    In order to be progressive, professional educators need to connect to diverse perspectives on learning and instruction. Online courses, blogs, and wikis can be thought of as synergetic initiatives that can facilitate the kind of interactions that are necessary. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

    Best Regards,
    Stephen

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  4. Dear Azhar:

    Your Task-based approach rings a bell as I train teachers on the topic and I often often we find it it chalklanging doing writing with a kind of free language input.

    Wish you all the best. I hope we can share more

    Yours
    Hanan

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