Week #3: Flooded and Roses in the Rain

(Photo credit: VnExpress/Pham Duy)

Ho Chi Minh City has been experiencing torrential rains for the past two months, leading to heavily flooded streets. Many city dwellers have to re-set their travel schedules: getting to work earlier and going home later than usual when the weather forecasts are in favor of the God of Water. Under most circumstances, I am one of the the lucky ones whose motorbike, just a simple a 110 Honda Wave, is still greatly functioning among heavy waters. Mere luck.

I seldom fear the rain or the floods. Week 3 of Webskills is when the first term at HCMC Open University starts. It could the workload that is engulfing me: course planning, teaching, training, research in progress and online tasks, all with deadlines hovering over my head. Thanks to Celeste's friendly email reminders, I'm on track again!

The thing I feel I'm improving the most is finalizing written products in Webskills such as discussion posts, comments, and blog posts. Yes, I do fear writing! To me, getting down to writing is never an easy job. More often than not, I'll be in a desperate search for a suitable word, a phrase, or a structure to convey the particularity of the message. Another important aspect of the course is that it is training me to become a better writer. And when I do complete a task, I feel like roses in the rain.

My wife is growing them in front of the house. Honestly speaking, I never care for them, but the realization that roses grow more beautifully in the rain (my wife told me that) makes me confortable.

Getting back to online learning, once committed, I believe that online courses will be much more intensive than any other face-to-face modules. The latter mode might involve lots of in class oral discussions, significantly reducing the written tasks. However, online course quality assurance seems very much depend on participants' written artifacts.

Then a quick thought popped up: maybe we could have an ORAL discussion task in the future weeks of the course. We might submit an oral discussion post instead of written. We might work in groups to call a peer or join a group chat to discuss a reading text.

The idea of Skyping a Webskills friend sounds promising, doesn't it? I've started to learn how to identify voices via other Webskillers' writing, but having a  meet-up like via Skype or Google Hangout could be an interesting thing to try when this week's focus is about improving learners' oral/aural skills.

Do you agree?

Tien
Vietnam