Delicious!

Hello to all the stakeholders in this course

This week first I have known more about aural/oral skillbuilding sites. I read and learned more about how to use technology to develop aural and oral skills in class. I particularly read two articles: The Best Practices in Technology and Language Teaching by Dennie Hoopingarner at the Michigan State University and Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials by Lindsay Mille. For example, Randall’s Cyber Listening Lab at http://www.esl-lab.com/ , pronunciation links at hhtp:/www.uoregon.edu/~dealey, http://www.esl.about.com ,http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/pronunciation/pdf/exercises/ , http://www.onestopenglish.com/ http://www.esl-gallery.com , among others, are very good sites for developing listening and speaking skills.

Second, I learned to create on Delicious.com my Delicious! URL, which is http://www.delicous.com/brunoniki. It was that easy doing it; it took a few days before being able to create the URL, but without succeeding in bookmarking and tagging. In my opinion, Delicious! And the similar tools are simply magic. I was from imagining the existence of such important teaching aids on the Internet. They are useful media for teaching and learning.
I love Delicious! because it provides teachers with a variety of teaching and learning materials in a quick and simple way. The way things are presented on Delicious page makes reading easy and attractive for the readers. No sooner than had I read Jonathan’s Delicious! page that I realized that Delicious has a figurative sense. Jonathan’s page whetted m appetite for reading the bookmarks that I found very interesting for me, and my students as well. It was so delicious going through the bookmarks that I said to myself that Delicious! is a dish that should be shared with and tasted by other teachers and students.

After reading through the bookmarks a question came to my mind: Why did I not know about Delicious long ago?, and the answer to my own question was: Surely my students and I missed a lot by not knowing anything about Delicoius! in the past.

Now a final question is: Is it conceivable after getting acquainted with Delicious! and the like to ignore the importance of technology in the educational setting? My answer is definitely ‘No’.
After going through the aural/oral skillbuilding websites with all their tutorials and after learning how to create and use Delicious in teaching and learning, my conviction is that no teachers should miss the opportunity to use technology in teaching.

Thank to the facilitators for the tutorials on how to use Delicious in teaching and to the classmates for their contribution.

Sincerely,

Bruno