Thanks to modern technology that helped man a lot in acquiring so much knowledge,  information, experiences,experiments, creation and inventions.

I was amazed when seeing this incredible number of micro lectures, videos and courses presented by tutorials on each bit of knowledge. On the equal, I realized the big gap between our Educational system in Egypt which is distinguished by following the old and traditional ways of teaching and the Western one which depends mainly on invention and creation.

Khan Academy is a non-profit educational website founded by Salman Khan.( Wikipedia,2014) He was so courageous and creative to establish such wonderful , profitable  and free e-educational organization. Not only students at schools or universities but all people all over the world who know how to use software can benefit and learn from these helpful tutorials as they present the skill and the performance as well. They supported their work by valuable detailed videos and created good varied tests and grade assignments. They help the struggling students and encourage the good ones. The software exercises are open sources available at any time.

However ,I noticed that most if not all of the courses, the lectures and videos mainly  focused on mathematics,  health care, medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology,   economics, computer science and microeconomics.  I didn't find lectures or videos talking about teaching languages.

In addition to all what Dr Maha had said about the different merits of using moocs which I totally agree with, I think Moocs is the most beneficial site for me and I hope to continue sharing in and benefit from in my work soon. This site would help anyone who wants to develop his proficiency in any branch not only the languages. Through Moocs, we can replace the traditional class setting into dynamic and lively class if we choose topics that students are eager to learn about or interested in to ensure following and learning via an attractive and enjoable media like Moocs.  I have known that Moocs  ( Alison) introduces the assistance for teachers to monitor students progress through  creating groups for them with Alison Manager account. Once the students set up their accounts in Alison, The interface will make it easy for us to control our group on line. We will choose the suitable content and use the assessment provided for each content to follow our students and test their progress.  Teachers will improve the teaching process with regular feedback from their students through Alison Manager. I hope I can manage to set up my own group with my students on Moocs but of course I will need help.

These sites specially Moocs helped a lot in creating interrelationship  among participants as many of the courses given if it wasn't all of them ask to share opinions about the proposed topics on blogs or face book or etc so I think this helps in exchanging experiences and knowledge and establish  wide communication and  mutual benefits on all levels, with different degrees. 

 I have visited  and shared in some important and vital sites in learning and teaching  English language  Like these ones:

·     This focuses on speaking as a skill in different branches of knowledge.

http://alison.com/learn/English-Speaking-Skills

·Another important site  introducing courses about the importance of education in  shaping the changing world.( Teaching Adult learners)

https://www.open2study.com/courses/education-in-a-changing-world-090913 

This is another course consists of seven weeks about

Rhizomatic Learning-( The Community is the curriculum.)

It is supported by important videos on each module and  I published the first  video about the benefits of cheating in learning on my blog.

I think Khan Academy and moocs are very important and profitable websites. They introduce valuable e-learning which we can depend on for those who know English and somehow have enough knowledge about software programmes. Also they serve adults who didn't join universities and want to complete higher studies or for students who prepare for post graduate studies, for our advanced learners who can use computers and share in these courses. Thanks for all who participate for the welfare of humanity for nothing they can get except from God.

Rhizomatic learning : community as curriculum (rhizo14) Week 1

Hi everybody,  When I returned home that day I thought a lot of was was presented by Dr. Maha,  what she meant by the game,  I found that she wanted us to comprehend that the students who we teach or deal with  daily are totally varied  in their backgrounds, circumstances, religions and intelligence  and all these factors affect our students learning at different degrees as the people she introduced in the play She wanted us to estimate all these differences in our teaching and  appreciate their achievements on all levels. I think Dr. Maha conveyed her message in an intelligent way through her game with the papers.

Secondly, She practically introduced the lesson she wanted us to learn when she divided the board into sections  to ask us about our opinions and problems concerning the diploma, our schools ..etc.and accepted the discussion with all arguments and tried seriously to find solutions.

valentina's recommendation encouraged me to make an account on Twitter. I opened Dr. Maha account   but I couldn't follow her writings  yet. I hope inshallah  I could use it  well as blogs.

I should thank both of Dr. Maha and valentina for their co operation and caring for us.

  

Welcome back to our blogs my colleagues. I'm so happy that Dr.Maha is our instructor in this course . Throughout the different courses of this diploma.,I asked myself several times about the best way  to integrate technology in teaching, how to use it to facilitate learning, to change our students  from being dependent  to be independent learners. I found out that the best way is to begin with some vital and important steps which I consider them my short term goals  

* First of all, I think I should establish a good understanding to the role of technology in  self and remote learning in addition to the familiar mission of communicating with others.

   * I will show my students the other beneficial  side of technology in learning and that it is not for amusement only, and that could be achieved through every technological tool in their hands or the available media.

  * I need to learn more efficiently about the best and the shortest way of finding information  about certain topics as I still find some difficulty in this. 

* I will help my students to recognize the framework of  different resources that will  help them to build their own opinions or support their writing or even take photos or videos from (  e.g. a magazine, a newspaper, a book, a website,..etc) . I will do this to prepare them to the next step which is teaching them the rules of copyright and avoiding plagiarism, and I think learning these rules of quoting or paraphrasing will extend to be a long term goal during their the students' work.

  

* For myself I need to decide  how to divide my classes into groups and how I will take a permission to surf the internet during the school periods and  how many periods I will take to show them the different sites and discuss with them the frames of the resources. How I will convince my students to learn new ways of acquiring knowledge or information or  to share in  an additional work in this short term.

 

* I need to know more about assessment and find out more educational websites that  can be used later on a larger scale.

On the long run,  I'm going to encourage them to set up their own blogs  as means to follow up their work or  their own portfolios as personal means to publish  anything they want about themselves.

* Also  I will