Week 1: "Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web "

Today's Food for Thought is:

                                                "Most people don't care enough to make a difference. 

                                                 Fortunately, we're not most people."

                                                                                                    --Seith Godin

There are teachings everywhere. You just have to look hard enough. As a teacher, I know that it takes curiosity to make things going and brighten up our lives and world, and mistakes to learn from, in order to become better. 

During the past week, I felt very happy and extraordinarily grateful to have been given the chance--by the Oregon University-AEI E-Teacher Scholarship program-- to participate to this wonderful interactive web course that should help us - teachers- overcome our technological 'inadvertence' when teaching our students English and keeping up with the latest trends and technological changes. The problem with technology is that it can be rather disheartening at times, so we are to devise tricks like motivational quotations, stories, songs  or pictures to cheer us up. (see the picture above)

I should probably confess by now that this is my first blog to have ever written. Moreover, this has been an exciting week as I had to struggle with new terms and discover a whole new 'galaxy' that differs from the time-consuming socializing networks as well as other internet resources that I might have already been familiar with. It has enlarged my teaching vision in a way that I may have not expected: I was aware of the fact that the course would help me work my way out through new teaching techniques, but I don't think that I've ever foreseen the potential of these tools, e.g. blogging or word-processing to give immediate feedback to the learners in such an easy and open way.

Furthermore, I must admit that I am much impressed by the course itself as well as the way it is conducted, not to mention the brilliant idea to design it in the form of an 'organic web,' that is a learning community that learns at its own pace and evolves constantly, similarly to a hive. I am looking forward to expressing my thoughts here, and weekly,  with regards to the course and its every weekly task. 

Finally, I salute all the members of the course, and especially the intructors, thanking them for reminding me that: "Inspiration exists; but it has to find you working." (Pablo Picasso)