Week 1. The exciting journey has started!!! :)

http://www.distancelearning.com/online-teaching-strategies/

Hello dear Sean and my new great groupmates,

I am so happy to have this chance to start blogging. I am so delighted to start this new and promissing Webskills course together with all of you, people who represent different cultures and who come here from all over the world! I am grateful to have been selected as a participant of this course and I have so many expectations related to learning new things and sharing ideas with all of you.

I am not going to introduce myself again and again, since then you will think that I am just boasting all the time. :) I have already told a little bit about myself on Nicenet and you can also find some information on my profile here but you are also always welcome to ask me questions and I will tell you even more with pleasure. :)

I must admit that I have heard of blogs a lot and I have followed some myself (e.g. Cooking blogs since I am in love with cooking!), yet I have never created a blog myself or used one! Shame on me, maybe?! :) However, it is never late to start and I have a wonderful opportunity right now to create a blog for our online course. I must also tell you that I know little about blogging used as a teaching tool, thus I hope Sean and you will teach me more over this online device.

I can imagine using blogs for teaching or learning English, since this is a great opportunity for students to develop their writing skills. I believe a Blog could be a great tool for practicing reading, which is always a complicated area for students to deal with. I can only imagine or predict that maybe it would be possible to use a blog for some project work and I am sure blogging is a great way for teambuilding. I mean here that students achieve the best results only when they possess the team spirit and blogging could be one of the ways to unite them.

If I had to tell you over the process of creating a blog, I would tell you that it was a very interesting evening and I could not stop "playing" with the templates, design, colours, etc. I really loved that process even though it was the first time for me. The instructions Sean has shared with us helped a lot but it gets even more interesting when you try new things yourself. I love the fact that you can change things and a variety of templates and colours is necessary, since I believe that the design of the blog can also tells us something about the owner of it and his/her personality. I do hope you will like the look of my Blog and nothing will disturb you here? :) I like the fact that the posts can be commented by other people and if I think about my students, I can again add that such things help them with written communication and the concept of "collaboration".

We have quite a few tasks this week however I do love the fact that Sean has divided them and we are going to do everything step by step. I have completed the Needs Analysis so far and introduced myself on Nicenet. It was so great to meet Sean and Lupita there, and I can see now that there are so many of us together! Yeahhhh...I love this! :) I am going to do some other assignments tonight and even if I had been scared a bit over the workload before we started the course, I am not afraid anymore, since I know that I just need to manage my time propely and everything will be great! :) I will run to my private teaching class right now and will see you later! :)

I wish all of us great, productive and creative time together, wonderful mood, and lots of knowledge! :)

Smiles to all of you from Vilnius! :)

Jurga.