Project work and exploring websites: My Week 3 Reflections

Exploring skill building websites is a very interesting experience. I explored four skill building websites this week.

    Randall's Cyber Listening Lab (http://www.esl-lab.com/)will definitely help ESL students and teachers who are interested in focusing their attention on listening and other skills. The second site Larry Ferlazzo's Websites (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/the-best-sites-to-practice-speaking-english/ ) is very useful and resourceful. There are thousands of links on these pages. Most links have both audio and text. The third site which I explored- The Internet TESL Journal("http://iteslj.org/),  contains good articles on ESL and a lot of materials for ESL teachers such as online textbooks, language games and other activities.  The last website I explored is Dave’s ESL café (http://www.eslcafe.com/ideas/). It is also a very resourceful one. It is a massive repository of all things- ESL grammar activities, lesson plans and so on. I really enjoyed all these websites. Let me try to make use of them in my class rooms.

     The second important task I completed was to study a few projects assigned to me. The project report of Runganayagie Nalini Reddy, USAID Southern Africa, Pretoria, South Africa attracted me. Her project is titled ‘Project for distance E-support using technology to the TEACH South Africa Programme’. Ms Reddy’s main objective is to provide ongoing support to university freshers who are working in the under resourced schools in South Africa. She set up E-Support structures that would interactively offer the teachers a micro-system of distance support. She set up synchronous and asynchronous systems like E-mail, SMS, Skype, Nicenet’s ICA facility, Internet classroom, class website, Webquest, Internet diary and so on as part of E-support system.

     Inducting teachers for low-performing schools requires intensive, ongoing support. In the five Southern States in India there are a number of low-performing and under-resourced schools. Teachers working in these schools need a lot of support and mentoring. The project of Ms Reddy is a good example of a micro-system of distance support to teachers working in poorly -resourced schools. I think that as an ESL teacher trainer, I have to effectively make use of technology for face to face and distance mode teacher training. After this E-Teacher scholarship programme, I’ll certainly chalk out a programme to empower the teachers working in low-performing and under-resourced schools. I am optimistic that the E-Teacher Scholarship programme will give me a lot of confidence to take up such kind of projects.

 I think I have learned a lot. By going through these projects in general and the project of Ms Reddy in particular, I have learnt the different steps and the processes of doing a project. Now I am confident and optimistic. I will do a project work on a distance mode technology supported E-support system for providing ongoing support to teachers working in tribal schools- the most underprivileged schools in South India.

This is a great week. I have learned a lot. Thanks to E- teacher programme. Thanks to RELO New Delhi.

P.K.Jayaraj, RIESI, Bangalore.