WEEK 10.0: A GRAND FINALE

Dear fellow bloggers,

The title I chose for my week 10 course reflections may suggest I am into classical music. I'm not and I am all thumbs when it comes to playing a musical instrument. But at a point in my life, I used to be an avid listener to classical compositions whether they are sonatas, operas … or symphonies. Beethoven was my favourite. He composed ten wonderful symphonies. And just like a great maestro, Delicious Deborah orchestrated the ten weeks online course with unequalled beauty and dexterity. Harmony and symbiosis were easily and successfully established between the maestro and the orchestra. I enjoyed the crescendo and dolcissimo modes with which our webskill symphonies were conducted. Yet, at certain times of the course, I wished Delicious Deborah had opted for an Andante tempo. I’m a slow learner!

During this wonderful ten weeks learning journey, we were gradually introduced to a number of useful web2ools that will certainly bring about substantial and positive change into our teaching practices. Tuned and tweaked our approaches to teaching have certainly become. Much more important than this, we’ve learnt many valuable tips and tricks that would help us self-tune and tweak our teaching practices whenever we feel they no longer provoke our students for more learning. I consider the course a giant leap towards greater learner/teacher autonomy. Equipped with an impressive arsenal of web2ools coupled with our enthusiasm to go tech teaching, I believe our status of web resource consumers will change into producers and contributors to the ever growing wealth of ELT material on the web. I hope our students and fellow teachers around the globe will find our future contributions useful and conducive to learning.

Perhaps, one of the major principles of Web 2.O religion is ‘sharing’. It’s a truism that ‘Sharing is caring’ is at the core of social networking philosophy. But, let us not remain at the virtual level of social networking. A lot of teachers as well as schools are still immune to educational technology and its implications on both teaching and learning. It’s a fact and a sad one, but not impossible to change! Being a group of lucky teachers who were selected to take part in the E-teacher course, I think we have a moral obligation to disseminate the valuable knowledge and tech know-how we have gained among fellow teachers on the ground. A possible way I thought of would be organizing an ICT Day in the school where you work. In such a day, we could introduce our colleagues to a tool or two that would help them teach in better and effective ways. The staff room could also serve as a place where you could briefly tell a colleague about an interesting website or a useful tool you learnt about. I’m sure, creative teachers like you won’t run out of ideas. But don’t forget to apply the precious tips Delicious Deborah showed us while using PowerPoint as a presentational tool ;-) Always remember, Less is More!

Now, allow me to express my deep gratitude to our Most Respected and Delicious Mentor and Instructor Dr. Deborah Healey for facilitating our upgrade from teacher 1.O into teacher 2.0. You are simply a great teacher! Thank you.

My sincere thanks should, also, go to the University of Oregon, namely the American English Institute for designing and offering such a wonderful course.

Special thanks should equally go to Dr. Ruth E. Petzold, the Regional English Language Officer at the US Embassy in Morocco.

I’m also very grateful to both my wife Najia and my sonny Akram for being exceptionally understanding and less demanding throughout the period of the course.

Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank all my classmates for the sophistication, professionalism and most importantly the humaneness they have shown at the Nicenet discussion arena and their wonderful Blogs. I’m so happy to have virtually known and learnt from you.

God Bless You ALL

Arbi