Friday 28 February 2014

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


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.



6 comments:

  1. Hi Mrevat thank you for your so useful sites was first time for me to visit them*_*

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  2. Thank you Riham for your encouragement. They are really useful sites.

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  3. Dear Mervat, you made two assignments as one blogpost! But thank you.i would have liked you to annotate your links more clearly so that someone can know before clicking the link what it is about and why you like it
    Finally, I was not familiar with Alison before. Will ccheck it out. MOOCs are different, though, so I am unsure why you picked Alison? Can you describe it better for someone who never used it?

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    1. Dear Dr Maha, and my colleagues, Alison is website for free certified learning. It provides free interactive multimedia courses from IT Skills, Health, Photography, to English language and literature, there are interesting learning and up-skilling opportunities for everyone. Unlucky, I face some tech problems in logging in although I registered before and put the same username and password.but I don't know how.

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  4. Any source of knowledge is valuable . During the last week I registered to khan academy , corpus , Pinterest , Deep English free7 day e- mail course, Yola website and moocs

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  5. Hi,
    It was very interesting to learn what you found helpful as someone living and teaching in Egypt. I would love to know more of the challenges you feel when working with technology in your classroom.

    Regards,
    Insiya

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