My personal Experiences with the new Tools
First of all I have to admit that it was difficult for me to remember all the new web tools and their purpose when we were introduced to them for the first time. I had to take notes during the classes and looked them up at home when I visited the web tools again. As our course instructor suggested, I created a table to remember all the URLs and passwords. This really helped me to get an overview.
By now, I really got familiar to netvibes.com. I use it for the new media class and I created a private account as well. I think that this web tool is really helpful to get the most important information and news I need without visiting every single e-mail account and news page. I find it very easy to add RSS feeds and other content to my dashboard. There is only one thing I did not manage to do: to add my student’s e-mail account to my private dashboard. But I’m sure this is a problem that could be solved.
A mindmap created with bubbl.us
weebly.com, being the web tool we create our e-portfolio with, is very easy to use, too. It is really self-explanatory and user-friendly. The more I use it, the more I get an idea of how to create an e-portfolio and a web blog others might be interested in as well. The idiom “learning by doing” fits very well in this context. One surprising thing was that I got a spam-comment on one of my blog entries. It was a written comment which did not fit to my post so I clicked on the author’s name which was linked to an advertisement for a shoe label. Although I did not name the URL for my e-portfolio anywhere, the advertisers must somehow have found out that my homepage exists. This incident reminds me of the significance of data protection.
There are several web tools we were shown which I did not use yet outside the new media class’s context. These are for example wordle.net, bubbl.us, delicious.com or flickr.com. Nevertheless, I can imagine to use them in the EFL classroom with my future students. Wordle.net and bubble.us seem to be very useful for text analysis and brainstorming. I think that bookmarking-tools, such as delicious.com might be helpful for research-tasks. I would also use it in my personal learning environment and I’m sure I will soon since this tool could replace the table of web tools I mentioned before.
We also worked with collaborative web tools such as titanpad.com in class. I like the idea of collaborative tools as you can share and develop ideas and projects together even if you cannot manage to work together at the same time. I personally didn’t like to work with it when we all sat in the same room. As everybody could see what was written by whom, I felt forced to write something, too although I would have liked to read more information before contribute something. I’d then prefer to sit and talk together instead of sitting alone in front of the computer. Concerning the school’s context, I can imagine instructing my students to use those collaborative tools for their homework and for group work.
All in all, I learned a lot of new things during the first weeks of the new media class. Although I’ve been skeptical about it at the beginning, I now got the impression that it will help me in my future studies and working life as a teacher. I got a lot of new ideas of how to create an EFL-class and I learned that one should be open-minded for things one doesn’t know even if one doesn’t see its purpose on the first sight.
There are several web tools we were shown which I did not use yet outside the new media class’s context. These are for example wordle.net, bubbl.us, delicious.com or flickr.com. Nevertheless, I can imagine to use them in the EFL classroom with my future students. Wordle.net and bubble.us seem to be very useful for text analysis and brainstorming. I think that bookmarking-tools, such as delicious.com might be helpful for research-tasks. I would also use it in my personal learning environment and I’m sure I will soon since this tool could replace the table of web tools I mentioned before.
We also worked with collaborative web tools such as titanpad.com in class. I like the idea of collaborative tools as you can share and develop ideas and projects together even if you cannot manage to work together at the same time. I personally didn’t like to work with it when we all sat in the same room. As everybody could see what was written by whom, I felt forced to write something, too although I would have liked to read more information before contribute something. I’d then prefer to sit and talk together instead of sitting alone in front of the computer. Concerning the school’s context, I can imagine instructing my students to use those collaborative tools for their homework and for group work.
All in all, I learned a lot of new things during the first weeks of the new media class. Although I’ve been skeptical about it at the beginning, I now got the impression that it will help me in my future studies and working life as a teacher. I got a lot of new ideas of how to create an EFL-class and I learned that one should be open-minded for things one doesn’t know even if one doesn’t see its purpose on the first sight.