Week 10 #1: Levels of Technology Integration and End of Course?

Hello Everybody!

Welcome to Week 10, the last week of our exciting Web Skills Course. It is very difficult to believe and accept that this course is ending this week. But a proverb in my Mbesa mother tongue asks: "Did any sweet thing ever last in the mouth?" I feel like writing an official request o UO asking for an extension of the duration of the course!

In response to this week's requirements, I have to take a retrospective look on this great course, focusing on the following areas. So, let's go!

What Topics Were Most Successful for You During the Course?

To this question, my answer is a big ALL. I mean that all topics covered in course were appealing and enriching to me. There is no single topic that did not teach me new things, skills and concepts. Beginning from web searching tools and sides, passing through writing ABCD model of behavioral objectives, project-based learning (PBL), using Padlet, creating interactive PowerPoint Presentations (PPT, which I dare call Power to Point to Success), developing the final project plan, teacher online resources, creating WebQuests and rubrics, alternative assessment, learner autonomy, online social bookmarking through Delicious, learning styles/strategies and multiple intelligence theory to levels of technology integration into our curricula, I found every topic useful. I am now ready to turn my learners into real digital natives without losing sight of their language needs and character development in a world of diversity--diversity in all spheres of life.

What Were Most Useful to You?

The Search Engine List, Noodle Tools, Web Poster Wizard, PBL, Zunal.com, Quest Garden, Delicious, ABCD behavioral objectives, Padlet, Hot Potatoes, blogger.com, PPT, and Tiers of Technology Integration are some of the technology tools that I have developed a special soft spot for, but I must repeat here that I found every tool and topic in the course useful.

Which tools will you use in your classes?

Everything being equal, I will use all the above listed tools in my class as well as those not listed. I just pray that access to ICTs should be improved in the schools where I teach because some of these tools are hard to come by. For instance, purchasing a video projector for PPTs in ordinary Cameroonian schools is almost a far-fetched dream for now. Most rural schools do not have computer labs and most urban schools with these labs do not have access to the internet in most cases. My integration ICTS into language teaching (both French and English) will largely depending on the school environments where I teach. One thing is however VERY CERTAIN: from now onward, the way I use technology in teaching WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN. I am targeting Tier 3 technology integration/Infusion and Transform, from the Tiers and levels models we studied this week respectively.

Which, if any, do you think were not relevant to what you do or will do?

Honestly speaking NONE of the tools explored and applied in this course was IRRELEVANT to me. As I said earlier, ALL of them were USEFUL/RELEVANT to me in ways that a blog post like this one cannot effectively communicate.

What other tools might we have covered or would you suggest that we could have looked at?

My suggestion here is that it would be good to include aspects like Skype Teaching in the course content subsequently. Skype Language Teaching is one of the newest and most viral teaching approaches/techniques emerging in the field of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) these days. The organizers of this course will DO WELL if they integrate this novel approach into this great course.

And What have You?
Now that I have finished responding to the blogging tasks/demands for this week from Dr Donna Shaw (a name I my keyboard and lips have already stored in their long term memory!), I will turn to personal choices. I believe that the Nicenet tasks for last week (week 9) were somehow requiring us to RECALL the salient issues acquired so far in the course. In that forum, I interacted with many people through my posts  where they commented and by commenting on their posts as well. Some of the comments I made on posts there are included below. You may share the various feelings that I expressed in them. Here we go!

1. In response to a discussion topic generated by Donna about the importance of alternative assessment (something close to my heart too!), I wrote:

         Hello Donna and Maja!


       And the regrettable thing for me is that my country, like that of Maja, still focuses on 
       standardized/traditional/classical testing/assessment and our educational system is largely 
      examination-driven. I have a dream like Martin Luther King Jr. that one day Cameroonian 
       students and students all over the world will be tested/assessed in ways as varied as are human 
       races and individuals on earth.

• If wishes were horses, I will ride them to study in a great educational hub like UO and come back to Cameroon with a big title like Doctor or Professor that can increase the weight and volume of my suggestions and proposals towards salvaging this situation!
  
  I really like this discussion topic. We should stop focusing on errors and look out for what our learners can really do with knowledge. After all, to err is human.
  
  Nsah Mala
  Cameroon

2. I wrote the following comment on Ali Sher Ghanghr's post on learning strategies, styles and multiple intelligence: 

• Hello ALi!
  
  You sum up a lot about the use of blogs, nicenet and podcasts-great technology tools for publishing (and even peer-review), discussing and sharing handouts (plus other forms of assignments).
  
  Honesty, Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences really transforms teachers into learners and call for a self-evaluation in order to pinpoint our own learning strategies and then know how to help learners learn.
  
  From your post, I have also gathered that PowerPoint is almost the king of technology tools for teaching. Though I have not yet used this tool, I understand how central it is to teaching and learning in today's world. Used with other tools, it has the "Power to Point to Success" (my personal coinage!).
  
  Nsah Mala
  Cameroon

You can realize the source of my personal name to PPT as Power to Point o Success. I first used this expression in the above comment. Should I say, copyright held by Kenneth Toah Nsah (Nsah Mala) for coining the above expression? Hahaha!

While commenting on another discussion topic generated by Dr Donna Shaw on PBL and WebQuests, I said: 

• Hello Donna and Everybody!
  
  PBL is like running a state or nation. Consequently, students' choices and voices must be sought for and respected the way we seek for and respect those electoral voices of the citizens with whom we build our states/nations. Thus, learner autonomy, alternative assessment and PBL entail the actual democratization education.
  
  This is another enriching discussion topic and I really like and appreciate it.
  
  Nsah Mala
  Cameroon

You would notice that I personally liken learner autonomy (seeking and respecting learners' choices and voices) to political democracy. I hope this remind us of the democratization of education! 

If you take a second look in the colors of the three comments above, you will notice that I wanted to use something like GREEN, RED, YELLOW which are the national colors of Cameroon. Our flag is GREEN, RED, YELLOW, with a GOLDEN YELLOW STAR on the RED strip. I love my country so much, in spite of corruption and other ills in it!

In the Bible, Jesus started with prayer and ended with prayer. I am not Jesus ooh! However, in a similar manner I stared by blog posts in this course with photos and I am ending with photos.

Take these ones!

Before you wave back a GOODBYE as the one you see in the last photo above, do not forget to hook up with me and other course participants on our Facebook Group at  University of Oregon Summer 2015 Web Skills Course. 

October 5th will soon be around and I wish all of us a HAPPY International Day of the Teacher for 2015 in advance. BONNE  Fête des Enseignants 2015 en avant! (Remember that Cameroon is bilingual in English and French and that I am a teacher of these two languages.

Thanks for your kind attention.

It was a wonderful pleasure being with all of you in this class! I will miss all of you.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Nsah Mala

Cameroon