Views of my students over this project

A few of my students have given their views over my mini project.

Mohammed Shakir said: This was a nice experience as we learnt how to make a blog and how to post our work on the net. There were many new things we learnt for example we learnt how to do marketing of our product. We went to each and every class and made announcements and made and display banners etc to make our school fellows know that we are planning to do this project. These types of activities should be continued as it gave us confidence to work and be creative. This time we have worked in groups and no doubt there were plenty of ideas to carry on with.

Anoosha Pervaiz said: The whole project was a little slow in speed because of the connectivity problem but our class was taking great interest in this work. Our teacher, Ms Nazia helped us through out and encouraged us to complete the work in time. This time we have worked in a professional manner as there was a committee responsible for the whole project. These sort of practices should be continue because in my view this way students will become more creative. Working in groups is another strong point of our project, no doubt we had some clashes but still no body can deny the advantages of working in groups.

Iqra Iqbal Hussain said: I thoroughly enjoyed working over this project. I learnt how to conduct an interview? and what is proofreading? Plus, how to publish your work on the Net? I also learnt how to use scanner (as we wanted to scan pictures and drawings submitted by the students)? This is a new as well as different way of learning and this is the way through which students can learn more. Not only this, but our confidence level has increased. Working in groups gave us an insight of other people’s views and we learnt how to work with each other to complete a task in a better way.

Zaryab said : There were so many new things that we have learnt through this project and these type of activities should be continue so that we can learn more and more and gain confidence. We learnt how to conduct an interview or a street survey? How to use a digital camera? and how to transfer the snaps on computer? and ultimately we learnt how to publish our work on the net? It overall was a great experience.

Reflection posted on 29th Novemeber 2007

First of all my students were required to suggest a name for their newsletter. They were all very excited in this whole activity. Almost everybody suggested a name and not only mere name it was but a whole lot of logic behind their thought for example one guy came up with Rising Sun for which he said as this is the first time for us so this newsletter is just like a first ray of light for us. Some body suggested Rising star , Baby bloomers etc etc. But eventually every body got settled over the name of Creative Gazette. According to my students it is unique and is representing the true meaning of the newsletter.

The second step was to form a committee. Which included Editors, Sub editors, Proof readers, Reporters (typists), technical staff, Hawkers and miscellaneous. They were so excited to take up the responsibility that they literally fought over who will be what. Not only that they even made up their own jobs' specifications regarding the responsibilities held by different title holders of the news letter.

Hawkers were being scheduled the very next day to promote their newsletter and to make a request and announcements in the whole school to encourage the students to write and contribute in their newsletter. Posters and special class presentations were being made and it actually provoked other students' interest in the whole activity. Dead lines were set by the committee for submission of the work .

Mean while the submitted work was being collected and proofread by the concerned students. Once proofread the whole work was being submitted to the typist and then eventually to the technical personnel who were directly responsible for publishing the work on the internet. The problem of connectivity was there but students were enthususiastic enough to continue this work at homes and this way our work was done quite smoothly. Once an incident occured and their whole newsletter was gone. Somebody from them must have shared their password and login id with an outsider and due to this reason the whole project was simply vanished. The blog was there but nothing else, every single post was removed but my students re-posted everything as we had a back up of each and every submitted document . Of course they changed their password after this incident. I was wondereing that is there any way that these sort of things should be avoided?

I noticed in the previous class that some of my students are not paying attention because they were not having proper basic information regarding the softwares they will be using during the making of their newsletter specially Ms. Word and the main reason for that was the negligence portray by themselves in the previous classes. But I again took these handful of kids in my and theirs extra timings and briefed them about the softwares that we will use during the making of our e-newsletter.

Surprisingly they remembered mostly every thing and wow what a fun they had. I mean in the first classes when they were given full permission of publishing each and every thing. Most of them even chat about their own activities and friends on net and the sites they browse, even were providing the links in their blog.

Still I feel that teachers should also visit this site and post their comments and all. Lets see I will talk to them and ask for their response.

My Reflection on the first day of introducing the blog

The first time when I planned to introduce the idea of blog to my class. I was really worried that they will be able to do it or not. Surprisingly, though the idea was new to them but they got very excited and some of them were so anxious to get themselves publish on the net that they made a blog in the same class. To attract the girls I told them that they even can talk and gossip on blogs. They agreed to give it a try. Surprisingly, I noticed that because I took it for granted that they all know how to use atleast Ms-word ,came up with the problem of not even knowing the basics. I got worried that why is it so . Because last year only we have covered this topic. This was very frustrating. The reason for this ignorance was that they never bothered what ever is being taught to them because they think that they have to learn only when they are rewarded with marks. In this condition only those students take interest who are actually interested in computers.
I hope working on blogs will takes up their interest and will motivate them to learn and explore more.