Week 1, task 3: creating a blog and reflect

I am overwhelmed with excitement and enthusiasm for being a member of this online course, which I applied for last year and unfortunately I wasn't accepted. How lucky I to be accepted this year and be a star in this intercultural and international galaxy with other shinning stars, my online colleagues, and a moon, Donna, our instructor. I started the course few days ago by Donna'a mail with clear, direct and simple steps and tasks. Frankly, at first I felt anxious and worried to skip any of these steps or wrongly do any of the tasks, and I did. I was the first to create the blog and searched for the wiki and posted my blog URL on Nicenet instead of the course wiki. Donna deleted the post and thanked me for this quick but out of place start.  I felt relaxed that I didn't miss any thing thanked to Donna's active and purposeful efforts. I explored the course site and read the assignments for the first week. Then, I filled out the needs assessment survey and was delighted to see how can we, as teachers, tailor our material to students' needs. After that, I participated in the first discussion, self-introduction, and introduce myself and write about my experience in teaching. I would like to express my happiness and admiration with all my colleagues' experiences and intercultural backgrounds. I decided to break the ice in my online course by commenting on all  their posts and welcomed them.

The second mail from Donna initiated the first discussion commenting and reflecting on the guidelines and the rubric. I read the documents and was one of the first to comment on them sharing some links regarding using the rubric and asking two more questions to develop the discussion. I agreed on most ideas and tried to meet the standards of academic writing and the criteria in the rubric in my posts. I benefited a lot from reading and sharing experiences with some colleagues in involving in face to face academic discussions with colleagues in schools which we described as "unproductive" and felt that barriers that face teachers are nearly the same everywhere.

On reading the third mail  and knowing the sudden stop of the Nicenet, I felt irritated but I was sure it won't last for long. The next mail activated our souls and again we are now posting our first blogs and reflecting on the experience. This blog wasn't the first as a friend taught me a year ago how to create blogs using blogger.com and wordpress.com for commercial purposes. I wasn't really interested in that so I haven't used any of them. However, I felt differently when creating this blog for communicating during the course. I am really doing something and intend to start using blogs with my students for developing different skills. I think I will read more about this and I will share some links with you. I thought that after the sudden stop of the Nicenet some friends will take rest enjoying their weekends before thinking to post and share their blogs but I was wrong. I found them published their blogs and I enjoyed reading them all.

Finally, I am motivated and eager to fulfill the course requirements with the aid of Donna and the support and fruitful experiences of my new colleagues.

Have a nice weekend,
Amira