The first draft of my dissertation is completed. Thank God!!!

Title: Affordances of WebQuest: The perception of students in the case of the Ethiopian Civil Service University.

The major finding was that WebQuest is found to be a potential instructional tool for the course study skills. it is found out that WebQuest can facilitate inquiry based learning, that is often missing in the education system I experienced. Students however are skeptical about the physical situation in relation to resources supply and skills of managing the tool in their specific context.

full copy to be released soon.

Thank you 

Please read articles form the following links to learn more about WebQuest.

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtpe20

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utef20

http://questgarden.com/

Training days of the week

It seems that I missed class once more. I have attended two training sessions organised by student career center of the university of worwick this week. The first training on speed reading was on Tuesday June 12, 2012. The second training was on working with team on today, June 13 , 2012.

Speed reading

The training has made me understand two issues. the frist issue is about the perception of speed reading. It seems clear that speed reading and skills of reading overlap. However, this training clarified the extent of the overlap. Speed reading is both context based and relative to other important eading goals such as level of comprehension and success in reading at a given stage. The second point is about the techniquies to improve speed reading. Five points were discussed as techniques and some of them were practiced in th training session. I need to deal with them in detail in my next post.

Working with team

The training was focusing on identifying characteristics of individuals based on their role in group work. First, we discussed the characterisitcs of successful teams based on our experiences of team work. Following that we were handed back with the Belbin team role report result and made a lively discussion on our dominant charactersitics as team roles based on the belbin report and potential to develop othe roles. It was an interesting opportunity where I realised that recognising team roals can be an essential step towards facilitating success in team work.

See you soon in further detail.

getachew

June  13, 2012

Review of an Article

Apps

Just in a rush to today.
Are you interested in producing different multimedia tools for your calss or personal use?

This post is to introduce you to a home for several types of softwares called dvdvideosoft.com
Just type the link in your browser and you will find the site.

Under the page you will find different tools that can help you creat, convert and produce different multimedia documents. let me share you what I did.

I wanted to upload MP3 running music on my mobile phone. Because my mobile phone can only take that format. The other problem was that I was able to find an appropriate music from you tube. My real search for a tool emerged then. I wanted a tool to concert the you tube videos I got to MP3 format.

The 'FREESTUDIO' helped me to convert the you tube videos into mp3 format and I uploaded it on my phone. I am using the music when I jog.

However, I am thinking about the further possible potential of the tool to help me for my calss. The operation is very simple and short.

when you open the FREESTUDIO' you will see the following page

You can copy and paste the you tube video link into the given space at the center of the box marked 'copy a you tube video link and paste it here'.

you can chose the types of mp3 you want from the cursor given in the dialogue box marked 'Quality'. Finally you can run the conversion by clicking the 'edit' button. Within a sort period of time you will find your mp3 document.
Important features
1. squised size
2. different options of mp3 documents
3. instantly downloadable to any apps

Give it a try and lets talk about it more
good luck

April, 2012

My interview on IATEFL conference, 2012

My interview on IATEFL Conference,

PP Project Presentation

Nasa Science Cast. In interesting source of listening text

Once we move from consumers of ICT products to contributors to it due to web 2.0, the amount of materials up on web is increasing from time to time. In the mean time, the developments in technology are increasing rapidly to enable us sharing between and among ourselves.

The development  in the area of producing audio and video materials is now amazing due to podcasting and vodcasting.  It is now possible to share large number of files fast. It is also possible to transfer those files from one source to another.

Podcast is the focus of this post. Many things has been said about podast.This is just to pause a question in the minds of my readres about how can we use such large and varied sources to facilitate teaching learning.

Podcast records avilable free online are interesting sources of educationl materials for teaching  English language. The link below is what I  have come across recently. I will come to comment on the possible ways to use this and other sources. For now I would like to invite you to have alook at the link and think what we can do together.

Mesmerising February Evenings

See you soon