Week 1 - Reflection

Hello, my Journal.

I can’t believe that the first week of our online course came to an end. The time has passed so fast.   So many things have already been done.

    To tell the truth, before the course I had a slight hesitation whether I will be able to be an effective participant.  I asked myself:”Can I be a good student? Am I prepared enough for this? When I start, will I be able to accomplish all the tasks before the deadline?”  I must confess that the answer was not always positive. For me it was something challenging. The first week has passed, my fears have disappeared and my story has begun.

    At the beginning I was so excited that I started my acquaintance with the course program long before it was officially opened.  I set many goals and continued my way with introducing myself, making friends and creating blog, discussing ground rules and rubrics and using Nicenet. It was something new and challenging for me. First I got lost, but then I concentrated and told myself magic words “Yes, I can” and everything went well.

   I created my blog, uploaded my photo, and wrote a short introduction. Though I was a bit confused, but when I managed it I felt really happy and proud.
 
   The next day I wanted everybody to know what I had learned and I shared my experience with my colleagues at school. We even created blogs with some of the students! I also wanted to teach my students how to make their communication effective and productive. Thanks to the discussion on the Ground Rules that was going on in the course, it helped me to make my list of rules:

   Be Positive – Whatever reply you receive try to be positive and show your positive attitude towards everything;
   Be Prepared – there can be different opinions about the same things, so we should be ready for that;
   Be Respectful – people should feel that they are within the secure environment where everybody's opinions are respected and valued; the discussion group should feel safe for everyone;
   Be Responsible - All comments should be clear, meaningful and relevant to the discussion topic and to what others have said;
  Be Helpful - our goal is to help each other.

After everybody had contributed the list became longer.

"Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success" - Henry Ford.

Hope we'll be working and learning together within the next nine weeks.