Friday, May 10, 2013

Prezi: Bring your Presentation to Life

Retrieved May 10, 2013 from here
Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software with a zoomable canvas that allows you to create visually captivating presentations that lead your audience down a path of discovery. It is a virtual whiteboard that transforms presentations from monologues into conversations: enabling people to see, understand, and remember ideas. With a few clicks, you can bring life to your presentations adding text, images, videos, background music, files (pdf, ppt, pptx), diagrams, symbols, links, and choosing a lively template. You can zoom in and out to attract attention and inspire your audience. You can share your Prezis with your friends to edit as a collaborative work or let the conversations go using the comment box. You can present online or download a portable version to use it offline. I think that Prezi can add a different taste to your presentations. Students will like because it addresses most of their learning styles and helps to extend their attention span.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

DNLE Brought Out the Best in Me!

Retrieved May 9, 2013 from here
I'm Azhar Youssef, an Egyptian EFL teacher who teaches high school students in a village. Learning adventures are only what I seek for since I became a teacher. Completing my post graduate studies helped me a lot to research and try out things to make my students happy while learning. My whole professional teaching life completely changed when I was nominated to take a 10-week online course offered by Oregon University titled "Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web" and instructed by Prof. Deborah Healey in 2010. This course was about how to integrate technology into curriculum. We were introduced to many tools that can make a difference in our classes. Once I got involved and found my way in the Nicenet platform, I started to help my colleagues as I always do. One of them called Roxana commented on my last post: "You became my trouble shooter. I am very thankful for all the pieces of advice you gave. They really worked." Helping people and drawing smiles on their faces is one of my dear things that I love to do in my daily life. As a result to my hard work during these 10 weeks, I was also nominated to attend the E-Teacher Scholarship Program 2011 hosted by Maryland and Oregon universities. This 3-week program was another amazing learning experience where I managed to meet 26 colleagues from all over the world face-to-face at UMBC. Really, I never forget all those sweet memories we spent together learning, discussing, creating, evaluating, presenting and finding time for chatting and laughing. I came back home with a strong desire to create a new life for my students. I used all  what I learned previously to encourage them to be more innovative and responsible citizens who are able to serve their country. They created  a wiki through which they invite tourists to visit Egypt again after the 25th Jan. Revolution. They won the First Place in the Regional Forum held in Jordan 2011 and also participated in the Global Forum held in Washington DC, 2011 to showcase their achievements. I was also Featured on Microsoft website to tell the whole world how a teacher with limited facilities can make a difference in her classes.