One good deed I have done was clean my room. It was considered a good deed because fisrt of all the room was messy and dirty. Also my mom told me too. Right now it is clean and when it gets dirty again I will probably clean it again. That is a good deed I have done.
Evan

One of my good deeds was when i helped my grandma with dishes.
One night my grandma was home from work and she was so tired. So i decided to do the dishes for her. So when she was asleep i did the dishes. By the time she woke up i hade them done already. so that is one of my good deeds i did. Gabrielle

A good deed i have dodne was when my dad had a lot of yard work to do. He had to malch our flower beds, cut the grass, plant new flowers, and water the grass. Thats a lot for just one man. So, i decided to help my dad by cutting the grass for him. Cutting the grass is hard for me cause im not very big but, my dad really enjoyed the help and that made the work seem easier. Next time my dad needs help ill be there for him.

Lauren

A good deed I have done is I washed my dad’s new car(A Mazda 6)on a hot sunny day for free. I even polished the tires and the windows.
I did it because my dad was reading the newspaper and I wanted to be helpful. I feel happy that I cleaned my dad’s car because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
-William

One of my good deeds would be holding the door for an elder person.
Savannah

a good deed i did was save two dogs. i was walking into shoe carnival (a shoe store) and i heard some yelping. so i went to go see where it was coming from. i traced the noise to a black van. it was 90 degrees that day. and it only take 3 minutes for a dog to die in a hot car. the temperture usually rises at least 20 degrees. so i called the medina police and they got them out of the car.
sophie

A good deed of mine is when i was playing football(rugby) and a player was injured and know one stopped to help him up. I stopped and helped him up.When the coach saw the player he rushed over and helped carry him.When we got to the sidelines they found out he had a concusion.After the game the coach thanked me for helping the player. So that was my good deed.
Zachary

My good deed is when my sister got surgery and I helped her when she couldn’t move. The type of surgery she got was knee surgery. My sister had to get knee surgery because she was born with a knee defect. What makes this a good deed is that I gave her food and drinks because she couldn’t do it herself. That is my good deed.
Austin

A good deed that I have done was gave a poor man on the street that had 4 children and was laid off from working in the marines a dollar. He was really nice… :sillygrin:
Katelynne

One of my good deeds is when I helped my mom out alot because, she had a brocken ankle.

Scott

A good deed that I have done, was done for my sister. She was sick, she had a very high fever. None of my parents were home, so I took care of her until my mom got home. She felf much better .
Julia

One of my good deesd are when I walked outside and I saw a little baby bird that had fallen out of a tree. I fed it water and after a while its mother came back to get it.

Emily

My good deed was when I took care of my neighbors dogs while they were on vacation. Thier names are Cici and Wags. My neighbors also have cats. On one of the nights, the cats broke out while the dogs were outside. but eventually we got them back in the house. When my neighbors got home they thanked me and I felt good that they trusted me with their dogs. It was fun to take care of them and I sometimes still watch them from time to time :goofy:
Benjaminf

My good deed is I helped my neighbor pull weeds. It was aro
und noon really hot and sunny. and I went outside and saw my neighbor. I saw he needed some help so I pulled his weeds. With a return of cash. That was my good deed.

Benjamin

My good deed was when i took a 7 hour baby sitting class. where i learned how to do CPR and the himlick menovour and also how to change a diaper and many many more things…it is a good deed becasue i can help out all the parents who want a little alone, or away time from there children. That’s when i come in. and that is why that’s my good deed.
-Connor

My good deed is I help my dad wash his car (Corvet Z7 red) a couple of days ago and it was really hot out :frown: :sillygrin: and I did it just because I was bord. It was really fun cause I ketp on sparying my dad with the water.

Joe

A good deed I have done is opening doors for strangers, my family, and friends. I usually open doors for senior citizens. I open doors for people at restoraunts, hotels, banks, really anywhere I have the chance. It is nice because you let them keep walking through and not waste more energy.

One of my good deeds was when I helped a women get her ten dollars back. She dropped her ten dollars right in front of me in a pizza place. I picked the ten dollars right back up and asked her if it was her as she was searching her purse. I gave it back to her. She gave me a hug and said I was a good kid. She got her pizza and we got ours and the rest of the day I was really happy.
Christopher

ahhh my first good deed. well i helped my grandpa threw his treatment on last wensday. it was fun. i made him laugh when it came to the painful parts. he had kind of a allergic reaction to one of his shots. his tounge got really big! :worried: he was mumbling like blah blah blah trying to talk but he couldnt talk but it was funny. but at the end it turnned out all good. :sillygrin: he was happy and i was happy too. we went to a restraunt after. it was appelbees. he got a hotdog and fries and so did i that was one of the best good deeds ive ever done it made me feel so happy

Jared

one good deed i did was i found a stay dog walking down our street and so we took it in. we thought it was only going to be a day that we had him but it quickly turned into a week. we called every shelter in medina seeing if anyone had called in a lost dog and no one had. and finally we found the one shelter that had someone call and we returned the dog safely to its owner.
Nicole

One good deed of mine was when my friend Dominic was messing up one of our football team. Football is a sport like rugby.My friend plays on defensive line and i helped him on a play.

Erik

A good deed of mine is when my PSR class, it is like a church group that meets weekly to talk as teens/kids about what is happening in church. Anyways, one of the weeks we decided to go up to the Medina Hospice Inn to serve ice-cream to the senior citizens there after they ate dinner for about an hour or two this year. I think they really appreciated us comeing there from our free time to spend time with them and let them have a treat every once and a while.
Megan

A good deed I have done is when I helped my great grandma stand up.
She was sitting in her favorite chair and she needed help getting out of it. I responded right away. She lifted and so did I. My mom got her walker next to her chair. I helped her Grab on tightly so she was able to walk.
Sara

My good deed was when I helped my mom get to the hospital. She had to go to the hospital because she was riding her baby horse”Molly!” and Molly fell on my moms hip. So I helped by calling my dad to pick us up because my mom coudn’t walk and if she can’t walk she can’t drive. But the good news is that she’s recovering good.And that was my good deed! :sheepish:
Susan

One good deed that I have done is help my friend open his school locker. I know it’s not much but if I didn’t open it for him he would not have been able to get to class. :frown: Once i opened it for him he rewarded me with a lollipop, a cherry one just in case you wanted to know. Well this is my good deed and i hope you have done good deeds too.

Joseph

My good deed was when I donated some of my clothes. I did this because they were too small but nice at the same time. It also emptied out a couple of my drawers!

Margaret

My good deed was when we were driving to a store and we saw a dog run across the road. so we picked it up and it had a tag on it saying where its owner lived. So we searched everywhere and finally found its home.

Marissa

Out of all the good deeds that I have done in my live just one is the one that sticks out the most. It was a hot day and I was at my sisters soccor game. I noticed a bunch af kids playing a game. I also noticed there was a kid who wasn’t included at all. So I figured that I would go and see if I could get the other kids to play with him. Well, it worked, I told them they should include everybody and they then decided to let the other kid who wasn’t playing play. The best part of that good deed was seeing the smile on all of their faces. Alex

One good deed that I did was over the summer. I was at a music camp at Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. One day, during lunch, my friend and I noticed one of the other campers was sitting all by himself, and looked like he was lonely. So my friend and I went over to where he was sitting, sat down next to him, and struck up a conversation. The camper’s name was Duncan, and he was really nice! I’m glad that my friend and I sat by him, because it seemed that he didn’t have any friends there.

Laura

Okay, here is my good deed. I was just sitting in my living room when all of the sudden my mom came in carrying a ton of groceries. She did not ask me to help, I just decided to go out and pick up a few things. It took five or ten minutes to finish. Once it was finished my mom said thank you. Then we went in and had dinner.

Zachary

My good deed was when my sister was having trouble with her math homework. She was only in first grade and they were doing multiplication, and she didn’t understand what the teacher had explained. So I showed her how to do it without telling her the answers. She did it herself and got 100%! That is my good deed.
-Taylor

A few moths ago, when a hurricane struck Haiti, they got really poor. The country was already poor enough and everyone there was suffering. So, people from America and other countries started giving money to Haiti. We gave money too. It was terrible to see the pictures of the suffering people there. My family sent some money to Haiti after the hurricane. I felt really good about it afterwards.

-James

My good deed started on the bus. on the first day of school all the sixth graders were lookin scared(well the ones sitting by me) and i decided to start a conversation with one. well, they all started making conversations and i made some new friends :sillygrin:
Samantha

My good deed that i did was babysit for my nieghbor. She had to go to work but her babysiter never showed so i volunteered. The little boy was 2 years old and i play with him alot so it was fun.
Daniella

One good deed I did was I helped my grandpa in his garden. My grandpa was picking cucumbers and peppers from his garden and so I went over and I held the bag open for him and he was really glad I helped him because he got done a lot faster.
Cara

my good deed was when i lend my friend a dollar. we were at mcdonalds and he neede one dollar.. to be continued, nicholas

My good deed was when i mowed the lawn for my grandpa because he had knee surgery. I did it to help them out because he couldnt do it him self. And i ended up doing it for him once a week till he could do it himself. And that is my good deed i did over the summer.
Alfred

One of my good deeds was when i watched and took care of my neighbors dogs while they went on vacation. I took their dogs on walks a couple times a day, i also fed them and made sure they always had water! They were on vacation for a week and i watched them the whole time. After, they paid me and i felt really good
Natalie

my good deed was i found a stray dog. when me and my mom were driving to meet the rest of my family we saw a dog in the middle of the street. we stoped and opened the car door and the dog jumped in. when i the dog was in the car she started waging her tail and was very friendly i looked at her collar and it said sassy and her adress so i told my mom and she drove to the persons house when we got there the lady was outside looking for sassy when we brought the dog out the lady was so happy ….. to be continued

Anna

I came across an interesting review of a recent study on multitasking. The study highlights the impact of multitasking on each individual using the internet, particularly web 2.0 and social web users. The review is in Arabic, but you still can watch the video or check the bibliography list at the end of that article.

I find this article interesting since I still ask myself the same question, do we really need to be multitask-ers? in other words, do you think people who perform multitasks are more productive or rather maintain the same product quality people in the past had? This could be another question for further investigation or studies..

This year I had the pleasure of chairing TESOL Arabia’s new initiative TACON online http://taconference.org. As a dream I had for the last two years, it was finally there for the ELT community in the ME and around the world.

Initiating this environment was not an easy process. However, it was a wonderful learning experience. It took me few months to prepare and understand most concepts related to this new system. Away from my teaching and other family duties, I think it was a wonderful experience that I enjoyed and feel proud of starting.

Many teachers nowadays need to realize the importance of initating or being involved in communities of practice or in other ways social networks of interests. Such communities provide great opportunities for development and collaborative support. You are all welcome too to join and access this year’s conference materials and discussions.

It might be a bit late in posting about my graduation, but I was overwhelmed with many things since I completed my MA program. It was a wonderful but challenging program that took me three years to complete from the University of Manchester. Taking the decision to make this program via distance learning mode in the Middle East might seem weird since many Arab countries still don’t accredit such kind of programs. However, I felt that it might be absurd that this is still the situation. It is becoming obvious that many Universities and academic institutions around the world invest so much in such type of learning and hence, it has to form a new dimension of today’s learning and educational systems.

In my final dissertation, I discussed the effect of online learning/ education on the current economical recession as well as other world crisis (e.g. H1N1 flu) in forming a solution to learner’s access to education. I also introduce Moodle as a friendly VLE in forming new ways of learning in the Secondary education. If you need further details regarding this study, please email me or add a comment. These are photos of my graduation, too.

A photo from my MA graduation..

This post is a suggested topic to include in the edtech chat series. I just would like to move a bit from discussing or debating the advantages/ disadvantages of technology to the actual implementation of it in the classroom. I would love to hear people talking from the field and sharing their real life and classroom practices.

I should confess it has been so long since I last visited this blog. Working on my dissertation took almost all my time. My initial plan was to use this blog for major parts of my research work. However, things turned to be very stressful at some points that I couldn’t stick to this. I should also confess that rely on technology could be very risky sometimes. May be that is why they say if you do not have three copies of your electronic files in three different places, then they don’t exist! I always needed backups of my files and writings sometimes newer versions on daily or weekly basis. Things are much better now and I think I should release some more time for this blog. Finally, it is nice to use it between classes and reflect on some my personal teaching context.

Ever wondered how some presenters manipulate data to show them in an impressive manner that attracts poeple’s attention. I came across this TED video which shows an amazing new initiative from the UK. The new service is based on the collaboration of some educators and programmers to integrate the use of powerpoint, flash, animation, and some other applications to produce amazing animated graphs and charts. You better enjoy watching this video yourself and think about the video of data analysis and interpretation in relation to this..

Talks Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen

Email to a friend

It is amazing what technology might look like in the future. Thinking about the possibilities and potentials of applied technologies for accessibility and life might drive one’s crazy. After all, what seemed to be a dream 10 years ago is now a simple reality because of technology! I leave you with this interesting introduction of the 6th sense of technology..

In one of the threaded discussions of the curernt IATEFL conference, Cardiff online 2009, a teacher about about websites that could be used to automatically grade students’ essays. Although it might look like a dream for busy teachers, I found quite few helpful responses on that thread. One of which mentioned using Moodle for peer marking where learners could anonymously grade their peers’ writings. This is an amazing option I have never tried in moodle. It gives moodle, as a VLE, a lot more power and encourage better use for writing practices and collaboration among learners. I hope to be able to share more findings on this regard latter.

Today I found monitor talents which is based on monitoring and interviewing some of the talented figures in several fields and share some of their ideas and perceptions about the future.

Access to Minds is a new trailer video where these leaders talk about innovation and the future. They describe it as

“Monitor Talent represents a wide range of the most provocative thought leaders shaping the agenda in business, science, and society today.

We invite the network to gather and share their thinking with one another. This year, we asked them to tell us something unexpected about the future of an area they know a lot about. We’ve collected some of the highlights.”

Some of the ideas I liked in that video is related to the spread of technology and networking solutions or ’social media’ even amongst those who always thought it is not for them. In other words, it became part of our daily life. They are also used by ‘everyone’ not just teenagers and so “we can’t ignore them any longer.” - Li. Another speaker, Kao, addresses the issue of innovation and its current capabilities in what he describes as ‘dispersed innovation’ and the change of global values.

The other good point Zuckerman shared is that there is a strong interaction among cultures, languages, and interests among social media users. This has created ‘citizen media’ as he describes it. He is also thinking about an answer to the question of ‘how you listen to other people’ in that big context? Perhaps it is a question we should all start thinking about. In fact, here are many questions and phenomena that we need to address and monitor nowadays when it comes to technology, innovation, marketing, education, and economy. In other words, we could say that the world is completely ‘changing’ into a new world. I think we will need more time before we be able to fully describe it or identify its characteristics.

Find more ideas or perhaps share your own here. Their youtube video channel is here, too.

This presentation give a nice simple clarification of the iphone potentials for educaiton. It was presented by Andy Rush and Jim groom. It starts with a nice summary of the different features that teachers and educators may use. You can download an audio recording of the presentation from here.

With the expansion of tweeter in many social networks, more users and educators are getting into twitter and use it for several networking purposes. This has led to the spread of many hundreds of widgets, applications, and partner websites that serve this tweeting idea. One of these is suppose to link itself to your blog page, sitetweet. I had some troubles configure it in my blog, but still thinking more about the best way to use from my portal. This page will be updated with any findings..

Last week I presented this topic for TESOL-Arabia. The participants were interested in the nature of task design and implementation. The presentation also gave participants an opportunity to explore and discuss ways for developing new language tasks to be implemented in synchronous mode using modern technology. See the abstract and other details below..

“With the expansion in technologies and wide adaptation of teaching and learning online approaches, there is a need to review and assess the current ways of educational task design and implementation. This presentation discussed examples of alternative synchronous tasks for EFL classes and learners’ self-access purposes. Klapper’s (2003) definition of teaching tasks as meaning-based and related to the actual communicative needs of real-world situations, urge’s today’s teachers and curriculum developers to reconsider the whole process of designing tasks with synchronous components.

A definition and rationale for using synchronous tasks in online or blended teaching contexts will be presented. A review of literature related to Computer-Medicated Communication and its role in SLA will be discussed, Lee (2002). Issues and concerns related to task design in accordance with the construction and negotiation of meaning and the types of tasks in a synchronous online situation will be discussed based on practice and the literature. This will be done in consensus with two sample models; where tasks are oriented towards goals, (Pica et al 1993) and the model of lexical negotiation for Varonis and Gass (1985).

The question of whether our current tasks and practices should be replaced or ‘virtualized’ will be discussed where findings and action plans will be developed. Finally, a demonstration of sample synchronous activities will be presented for further clarification.”

I received this list of resources for researchers for teaching writing from ELTECS. I thought it is worth to be shared here..

Resources for researchers

ERIC
http://www.eric.ed.gov

This database is for teachers and researchers who would like to download and
/ or read full-text articles. If you want to get full-text documents, choose
Advanced Search and then write your key words but do not forget to tick
“Show only results with free full text directly from ERIC”. I did and got
8568 articles as a result to the following two key words: ‘teaching’
‘writing’. Obviously, please notice that you can refine your search
according to level of instruction, type of publication, and date of
publication.
You can also consult abstracts of many articles and other publications if
you run a Basic Search. Highly recommended.

The Bedford Researcher
http://bedfordresearcher.com

This site is a good place for MA / doctoral students who are writing their
theses. It takes them through many tutorials on how to write, present,
report, etc. research findings. It also contains a tutorial on plagiarism
and how to avoid it. There are many payable options on this site but the
freebies are very interesting too.

The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing
http://bedfordstmartins.com/bb

This one is really my favourite! It contains a book of annotated
bibliography of different areas related to writing and composing. There is a
total of 704 documents. A major advantage of the online version is that it
contains hyperlinks for cross-references and it is easy to spot the
reference you are looking for.

The Research Exchange
http://wac.colostate.edu/research/
This is a plce where you can create an account for free in order to discuss
findings in research reports by researchers. Or else, you can use this site
as a starting point to navigate the findings of the reports in their
respective sites or to ask for the findings from the researchers.

Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives
edited by Charles Bazerman and David R. Russell (2003)
http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies/

This site contains a book for free. You can download it as one file or as
separate articles (chapters). The themes of the book cover three major
areas: “the role of writing in producing work and the economy; the role of
writing in creating, maintaining, and transforming socially located selves
and communities; and the role of writing formal education.” (in their own
words). There are more books here:
http://wac.colostate.edu/books/reference_guides.cfm

Please expect more interesting resources in an upcoming posting on: Journals
and periodicals.

*Selected and annotated by Abdelmajid

I came across this presentation which I find really interesting and referring to the type of skills needed for our students nowadays. The internet, as a learning ocean, provides many opportunities to fulfill most of the goals and requirements mentioned in these slides. However, it needs to be used with some control or observation in order not to lose connection to the real world and to keep that balance between what is virtual and what is real. Thanks to <a href=”http://mscofino.edublogs.org/” target=”_blank”>Kim </a>for putting this work together.The 21st Century Learner

In response to a recent short  article published today, I wrote the following. I would appreciate your comments about that and what you personally think regarding this subject.

There is a recent stereotype that I keep hearing these days in the UAE context that learning English will definitely lead to acquiring knowledge and skills needed for the workplace. As a teacher of ‘English’, I don’t really think so. A fact that I may argue about here is that many learners in UAE and the Arab world, are not fluent in their ‘native’ language, Arabic. You go to any school or approach a teenager in the street and ask him to say or explain the structure of a single Arabic sentence and you will be astonished with the result..

Moving to other very basic subjects will not make any big difference that what I mentioned before. I personally think it is not a language issue on the first place. I should also convey a personal and a crucial concern regarding the recent obsession with certifications and assessment in this same context where students are requested to sit for language, ICT, or other proficiency tests (i.e. IELTS, TOEFL, CEPA, IC3, SAT, etc..) The fact is that these new requirements are turning our institutions and organizations into entities that are completely structured as exam-oriented without providing a ‘friendly’ environment for ‘experiencing learning’ before we call it ‘learning’. In other words, we need to help our learners be involved in real-life situations before we expect them to ’study’ or ‘learn’.

In conclusion, we should not pin-point a single factor, (e.g. the teacher, curriculum, textbooks, a certain methodology, or a benchmark exam). Rather, we need to provide a practical, goal-oriented, motivating, and early-structured educational system that involves its counterparts from KG-12 in a ‘consistent’ educational philosophy. This vision or philosophy should be made clear to everybody involved. It should also consider all its partners as very important factors including those poor teachers who struggle with students. Maintaining loyalty, sense of belonging from learners and teachers, dedication, and stability to the educational system would evolve more talents and achievements. A final word is to keep a single vision, even if it is not completely ‘perfect’, keep it, review it, plan it ahead, pilot it, repilot and reassess it and maintain it before you keep it out of service to guarantee long-term stability and durability that lead to development.

Is it possible for today’s principles and other decision makers to agree with Perlman and Maynard who are discussing the role web 2.0 plays in shaping the future in their article, “Working in Wiki”? I think the answer could be true in some regions, but unfortunately it is not the same in many others. The examples they used of having a collaborative staff wiki for brainstorming and contributing to decision making could be ’scary’ in some cultures where the top-down structure is still the only dominating source of ‘life’ and management!

Anyhow, teachers, it is still your duty to keep learning and exploring new skills and solutions for development and improvement. You might face moments of frustration and disappointment, but you still need to explore new changes in teaching and technologies. The outcomes are always beneficial for both you and your students. Although some managers or school principles may disagree with that, it is still does not matter how much they may agree since it is your main duty as an educator and facilitator of learning to explore all possible options to provide the best possible help you could give to your learners.

So, my final word is to all who ‘care’. Keep doing what you are doing, but think of ways to do it better by continuous growth approaches and ongoing development and learning.

]]> http://edunile.net/blog/?feed=rss2&p=25 http://edunile.net/blog/?p=24 http://edunile.net/blog/?p=24#comments Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:22:11 +0000 admin http://edunile.net/blog/?p=24

I should confess that I sometimes forget or ignore students’ input on certain aspects assuming that there is no time or that they are not ‘mature’ enough. Today, I felt that this should not be the case. After reading the few comments I received on a studnets’ questionnaire I conducted, I felt that I was wrong. One of the ideas suggested was having more ‘games’ and more ‘fun’ activities on the VLE system. I think this is a point I never thought of myself. I am glad I am learning from my students.

A colleague from Brazil asks of the ways to develop help teaching to have more interesting classes. She wants to improve her teaching experience and students’ impression about her teaching. I found this question intriguing as it challenges most teachers including myself. Therefore, I wrote her this response which you can read below..

I can see how honest and simple your question is. In fact, this is the question the majority of us - juniors and seniors - ask everyday. There are many things that could affect a group of students. If you are asking how to develop your teaching skills, you may start with personal and professional development experiences. Networking with other colleagues through local communities, communities of practice, online list-serves could all help on that aspect. We should not also forget the secret our ancestors had, which is ‘reading’. It is that missing key to knowledge, experiences, motivation, and aspiration.

The second aspect would be your students population or as Holliday (1994 &1999) describes it as a “small culture” rather than a big group that belongs to a certain culture or nationality. I personally experience differences in students’ attitude and learning experiences from day to day, or sometimes from an hour to the other, according to many factors. For example, understanding students needs and interests could help a lot. Building on their motivation and understanding their differences also make it easier to interact together in meaningful learning situations. You should also remember that there is no ‘best’ or most effective way of teaching as some people like to call it. Instead, you better think of what works for your classes at a certain time. Planning your lessons, brainstorming, and adding some collaborative activities that foster autonomy and independent learning are all good starting points. Don’t forget to observe and ask people to observe your teaching. Students feedback through surveys or interviews could be useful tools for your use as well. The most important thing is to always ask yourself, how to relate what I do/ teach to meaning and more contextual situations in students’ real life. I think that is one thing we try to do through project-based learning and other similar class initiatives.

I hope these simple ideas might help as a starting point. However, I myself can’t deny that I sometimes ask myself the same question..