Week 8 Reflections: More tools and sadness creeping in

Before writing the reflections for this week, I decided to read what Jasmina had written. It brought about a sense of nostalgia before actually experiencing it. She had talked about only two weeks to go before finally all of us go our separate ways which kind of brought about a sense of sadness especially because I had felt an absence of it for the first four days of the week. I did not feel it much till Wednesday since I was busy like everyone else in drafting my project report, but still there was a feeling of something not right. I really felt it hard on Thursday morning and afterwards when there was a sense of ennui. There is a good feeling also that till now one has been able to learn a lot and has been able to apply it to classroom teaching successfully as well. Like Jasmina, I also want the rest of the classmates to be in touch even after we graduate this course.

Project Report

Nostalgia apart, the week was very fruitful for me personally. I did not think that I would be able to draft a report so quickly. It was very easy because of the simple reason that this course has been designed in such an organized manner that one keeps doing the groundwork every week for the final run and it does not seem to much labour towards the end. My parter Nino and I have already shared our first drafts on the class wiki and I am eagerly awaiting for feedback from all quarters. I would request everyone who reads this to please have a look at my project report and suggest changes and corrections no matter how minor they may be.

Peer Assessment as a Part of the Project

One of the fulfilling things this week that worked for me was organizing a peer assessment exercise for my class of Poetry i.e. BA Semester-I on Monday, November 20. It was held in the computer lab at 3:00 p.m. and was a thought out exercise in which each student was to be assessed on his/her post on Practical Criticism of the poem "The Daffodils" by William Wordsworth based on the interactive power point presentation that I had made. 

The task was done in such a way that all the students were assessed by two peers who were assessed by other peers. In this way any scope of benefit to each other was ruled out. To ensure objective assessment, a rubric was also provided to the students. Despite this, I could see that there are marked variations in the assessment done by the students. It was for this reason that it was announced initially that the peer assessment will be reviewd by the teacher.  I have also realized that I am very lenient in my marking scheme.

Tools

Besides the tools discussed this week, I realized that the biggest tool is the internet. As I posted on the Nicenet discussion forum as well that it makes me feel jealous with the present day students because I remember the struggle one had to make in collecting material for my MA classes especially in a paper on Greek Mythology and Drama. The books on the topic were so rare and costly that it was not possible to buy them. If I were doing my MA now, I am sure there would be no problem in getting the material.

The other tools that we were introduced to this week are:

1. SMILE: http://clear.msu.edu/teaching/online/mimea/smile/v2/index.php
2. Hot Potatoes: http://hotpot.uvic.ca/
3. Easy Test Maker: http://www.easytestmaker.com/default.aspx. I was also able to make a very simple test with the help of this tool and post it on our class wiki. 
4. 4Teachers: A very good educational resource that has a great pool of other resources within it like Rubistar, Quizstar, Academic Skills builder etc.( http://www.4teachers.org/tools/)
5. Dvolver Movie Maker: http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/index.html
6. Crossword Puzzle Game: http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html
7. Web Poster Wizard: http://poster.4teachers.org/
8. ANVILL: A National Virtual Language Lab. (https://anvill.uoregon.edu/anvill2/)
9. Tools for Educators: http://www.toolsforeducators.com/
10. Boggles World ESL: It has a huge amount of resources for teachers including worksheets and lesson plans. (http://bogglesworldesl.com/)

I could not explore any other tools as we have semester end exams at our university, but will certainly do so in due course of time during and after this course.

Looking forward to the final draft of my project and an exciting week 9.