Blogging: Hoping that some of our class will look back

This is just something I want to leave on my blog in case somebody of our class think of going back to our postings.
My Creed


By Edgar A. Guest





To live as gently as I can;

To be, no matter where, a man;

To take what comes of good or ill

And cling to faith and honor still;

To do my best, and let that stand

The record of my brain and hand;

And then, should failure come to me,

Still work and hope for victory

Final posting for the course

I am sitting here in class with mixed feelings, because there will be no more classes after today. I am going to miss it. Denise, Nazeem and Josephine are not here today. Josie is looking after her mother who is not so well. Josie , may God protect and guide you and may he give you all the strenght that you need. I am not bribing anybody but I must say I am going to miss all the lecturers. Well , if I fail I will see them again. I am exited on the other hand because I shared some information with the teachers at school. I am going to workshop "creating wikis" at school. They were pretty impressed when I showed them what I can do to help them. I guess I will be very busy this coming holiday creating a library wiki for our school. My husband will be working this holiday so I will have a lot of time to work. I envy the students that are full time students.

When ever you feel downhearted, stressed and depressed make use of this motivational site

Remember to forget - Charles Ghina

                                                    

                                     Achiecements often come when we

                                     Forget our fears and try,

                                     For that's when we accomplish what

                                     We're most remembered by.

                                                            

Do you remember ?

This video was taken in 2009 when we visited Grove Primary. Unfortunately I did not have a very good cell phone then. The visuals are not so good, but I tried to bring back some memories to you. I realize that I can make my own videos to use for teaching if I cannot take my learners for an excursion. I'm happy today, yes happy today, with ........... do you know that song? Don't worry be happy. Teaching is not going to be boring again.

Each one, teach one

This is Friday night and I find myself busy with course work. Sandy taught us how to add widgets to our Wiki's yesterday. When I got home, I practiced puting a slideshow onto our Wiki. I created my own slide show to put onto the Wiki and it was awesome. Sandy taught us a great deal. She actually gave us the key to many  doors, but it is up to us to unlock these doors and discover for ourselves. I was very nervous and felt absolutely stupid when I started this course, but now I feel confident.
 By teaching adults that is "a bit older", Sandy let herself  into a challenge that requested a lot of patience. Hope we did not cause you grief Sandy. We all meet challenges each and every day of our lives and it is really up to us how we relate to them. I get learners each and every year that have various problems with their ability to learn, then I have to adapt to the situation and be creative to meet their needs. I must admit that I tend to focus too much on the learners with learning problems and that I sometimes find myself in a situation where I don't know what I can do to stimulate the learners that is above average. Since this course, my eyes opened and I know now how I can accomodate them by making the work more interesting and challenging with the use of my newly discovered technical skills of the computer. What I know about the computer is not merely enough to have answers to my working situation, but at least it is a start. I still discover tiny bits of skills and knowledge each and every day because knowledge gives us power. Don't get me wrong. I am not a power or control freak. I simply mean, power to handle my teaching in a way that I feel happy with, that I enjoy doing  and that I know my learners will also enjoy.
At the beginning of this year 2010, I made a resolution to myself that I am going to make this year worth awhile because I want to have good memories only, because I was born on the 20th of the 10th month.
I found myself amongst a situation of "each one teach one", during all the sessions and  sometimes when our students had informal discussions. I absorbed so much by only listening and observing from your discussions. I observed that the most of the students got that inner drive that we all need daily to reap the benefit of learning and teaching. You must all be proud of yourself and give yourself a pat on the back. We did not get official results yet, but I choose to remain positive about that also. Charlene, thank you for that wake up calls I got from you from time to time. Thank you for always sharing your thoughts and that extra mile you took to accomodate me in your life. Nazeem, thanks for the help you offered to create a yahoo account for me. I knew very little then. Denise, we did not converse much but I enjoyed reading your reflections. You reminded me about things in my past that I completely forgot about, but enjoyed remembering. Michael I perceived you to be a person that are very honest about how you feel and you were always straight foward. I like people to be like that because you can always trust them. I found a lot of strenght from you also. You taught me indirectly to find my strenght within without realising that. I will honour and respect you for that. Please everybody, let this be the beginning of a life long social networking so that we can benefit from each other. I enjoyed each and everyone in a very special way. Now to get back to our last official tasks. Give it your best shot so that you don't have to do it over.

Heading back to apply the knowledge and skills gained.

I realize today that all the different modules we had and currently are busy with, forms part of the picture, a picture that I sometimes could not clearly visualize because I made it difficult for myself. Sometimes we tend to look for solutions far out of reach while everything we need is within our reach. Teaching and studying at our age can be very challenging but very stimulating if we realize what we gained. I am not the same person within, because I allowed myself space to grow so that I could be of a benefit to the community where I live, work, and play. I choose to dwell primarily on positive matters because I promised myself that I want to bring about positive change within myself at first in order to bring positive changes to my working environment. Remember: If you think you can't, you won't and if you think you can, you will. Thank you very much for everybody who made this journey pleasant for me. I am going to miss all of you. Belinda,you are a very intellegent and honest person and I appreciate everything you said and done. Shahieda I will always remember you for your challenging nature. Nihaad, thank you for always showing your concern, no matter what your own circumstances were. I will always honour and respect you for that. We sometimes get so occupied with our work that we forget to nuture each other, but I place you amongst the great women. You were a mirror to me and what I saw, made me realize how desperately I needed to make a paradigm shift. Thank you for all that motivational SMS's you sent me.You know change is not an easy thing to do, but it is good. Josephine I will always remember you for your progressive thinking. You were always one step ahead of me,  in other words you were a leader in some or other way.You know how to reach out to people and that really makes you a sister for life.I learned so much from everyone and I will try and apply it where ever I go. If I did not thank you for shaping my life yet, watch out for my next posting!

Internet Security Education

I discovered this educational site on Internet security.

Reflecting on our essays and Web evaluation test

Thursday we discussed common errors we made with our essays and the test. I learnt that I should never give my own opinion on the topic although I wrote the essay myself. In my essay I also wrote a question as a heading that was a mistake. I got 79% for my essay because of late submission. That was very irrisponsible of me, but I never thought of getting  marks like that. Sometimes we really underestimate ourselves. My English improved although I still get mixed up with the use of verbs. I must really make use of the grammar tool to get rid of the language errors. I motivated some students to practice their computer skills to make it better, but I must really practice my English. My children speak English at home and I guess I don't set an example for them. I am Afrikaans inclined and love it because I can express myself better. I love to read inspirational books and I even write poems for my daughters( In English). Thirty years of teaching  at a Afrikaans medium school really forced me to read, write, reason, and speak less English. I grew up in an Afrikaans environment and as far as I can remember, the little English I heard was in church and a weekly program that my father used to listen to on the radio. I cannot remember the name of the program but I remember at the end of the program  the man said: "If I don't see you through the week, I'll see you through the window! " Gosh, my father scared the daylights out of me. I covered my face with the sheet or blanket during winter and summer because I was so scared that the" man " will look into my window. I stopped doing that when I was in High school because only then I understood the program better . We used to laugh about that, but today I realize what damage it caused because I completely shut down and never listened properly. My parents also chose the books that we read and at times the books were very boring.  They were conservative and at times over protective. In my practice, I prefer to let the pupils "choose" English books during the half hour reading period and they love it. When I arrive at school in the morning, some pupils run up to me and ask me whether they can read to me. They are so proud of themselves and they have so much more confidence to converse in English. We are meeting with five other schools at St Pauls Primary School tomorrow in the hope to establish a "Soul buddy" club at our school. The pupils of the other schools are mainly English , but my pupils are very confident and are very exited to meet with them. My colleagues at school laugh when I say:" My engelse tande het nog nooit uitgekom nie".  To them it is a joke, but to me it is serious because I know I was deprived of something so important. I was requested to serve on various executives during my life but I was always afraid to speak English. I can still recall the first day when we had to introduce ourselves to the ACE class. When I asked wether I could  introduce myself in Afrikaans, there was a roaring, unanimous boo. I felt humiliated in a way.  I will overcome this problem .