A Water Drop!

Web Enhanced TPD
Due to constant advancement of Internet technologies, everyday the sun shines with a new "popped-up" opportunity to interact in cyberspace. The new born opportunities are brought on a silver plate for educators, teachers and learners. The interaction can lead to facilitating of language learning, teacher training and communication between both teachers and learners in the Internet.Issues of TPD have been in constant discussions in most educational forums in Sudan, as well as other developing countries. The major focus of this paper is to spot light on how a successful online learning, with the free Web tools, are used for EFL/ESL teachers around the world for ongoing TPD. The major objective is to further our understanding about the use web tools,( the why, how and what), with a suggestion to implement some of them in Khartoum for TPD.
This is my introduction for a short article I am planning to send to a local newspaper soon (time..time..time...)I guess a water drop is not an easy thing to get in summer ,so this is a water drop in a full water spout!

Don't throw what you already have!

On 11th of April, I had a Skype meeting with
Mr. Ahad from INTERLINK langague centers.I was well prepared with answers to questions like "Tell me about yourself", "why do you want to work with us?", etc.
It was aweesome how the conversations was turned over to soemthing like" why do you want to throw ALL what you have" for the sake of " the unknow"?
My eyes were wide opened on different aspects related to the job specifications.It was a truely freshly-minted experience. I was being semi-interviewd.Thank you Ahad!

To Web 2.0, with love!!

What a coincidence! Immediately after the previous post, at 8:00 GMT, I attended an online presentation of Vance at Ankara, Turkey recorded with Audacity to show it later on my presentation on June and I took some screeshots.Viva Web 2.0! A website????

Static Websites.Again?

Upon a suggestion to create a Yahoo Group for ASTEL, association for English language teachers, a professor suggested a website. Again. A static website, tidy, colorful, organized and up-to-date software used. OK .What the fuss? What will the teachers do then? If I were in their place, I will move to the BBC site to get more up-to-date information, lesson plans or whatever. I sent back to tell my own point of view and I think Web 2.0 is an orphan term and not a buzz word here in Sudan.
Enforcing teachers to use the technology is another way around to lead them through the path of online teacher professional development.

Old "Q"s

"we must instill a sense of duty in our children"; "every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty"- John D.Rockefeller Jr

NEVER CAN THE FUTURE BE PLANNED ON THE BASIS OF THE PAST." EDMUND BURKE

"You deserve all the praise you get and much more".Teresa.

"Technology is not being handled to help learning,
but just to have the technology there, to show it off".Daf

"I am afraid that while Technology is the main concern of institutions and not the integration of technology in education, things will not
change. Techies have the power now and they know nothing about education."Daf

"An online presence to me is in essence a set of WELL organized bookmarks" Vance.

"so virtually re-defined I remain, until the next evolution." Karen

"There is no use giving a sermon in Latin on how totill the soil.
The only way to help the poor lads outside who don't know a seed from
a plow share is to SHOW them."
Lyda Peters

Free Help for Online TPD

I have been helping my students in the YG I created how to use technology to improve their English. I can not describe how I feel when I see a student uses a correct English word, or when one of them succeeds in adding a widget all be himself!I have been taking courses online to learn how to integrate the Internet into the EFL classroom, but everyday, I get more more convinced that training teachers to use online tools is must.They need to be introduced to social networking, CMC and different Web 2.0 tools to help in their professional development.
If they only see the glowing eyes of my students!!!!

The Human Network

This is what I posted today on our class blog.