Week Three

The third week of our webskills course, like the weeks before has been very interesting. I can't believe how many new things I have learn't. I have actually never been so much on the net just surfing the different prescribed sites. I have used some of the newly found sites for my personal studies as well and found relevant articles in http://www.iseek.com/. Believe it or not, but since I have discovered other sites I haven't used Google for a whole week., Wow!. The Gong-article I found very helpful in CALL, but.... To access many of the programmes, she suggested, you really need a decent computer and unfortunately many of our teachers and schools function on outdated computers and hand-me-downs, they are very slow and are unable to access programmes that she suggested. In South Africa we have a bandwidth problem and access to these sites are a nightmare. They are so slow and once you are in, then connection is lost. One of my fellow class mates mentioned her students using songs to practice their English. This could be very tricky, because I have listened to some of the music my 14 year old son listens to, and I can't understand a word. It has happened to me numerous times, where you sing a song, only to find out later, what you have been singing was totally wrong. I attended a 2-day ICT schoolnet training programme and came accross http://www.wordle.net/, I think it's a very interesting site to use to enhance your Powerpoint presentations. I have loaded some more bookmarks on my delicious site, one in particular is http://www.teacher.co.za/ , This is the site of a education newspaper. I found a very disturbing article on the state of education in South Africa (July 2010) "A case of mistaken identity".Please read it if you have the time. I agree with Lindsay Millar, where she states that listening skills have been neglected, when it came to language teaching. The three step approach was quite useful, and I are sure I will use it in the future.


Good night, looking forward to week four.