Week 10- An end for a course and a beginning for using technology to the full

Some experiences in our lives affect us for all, some not at all. This one, taking part in this course,  is part of the former category. These ten weeks are absolutely relevant for my future career since my way of teaching will be defenatly changed.

After I had acknowledged the level I am , respectively level 4a, due to LoTi, I have already a goal in mind so as to step a little further.

These weeks were tremendously full of everything: information about things I thought I knew all about, just to discover even more, webtools which will not be just a spice to add in my lessons, but a part of my teaching. Anvill, WebQuest, Nicenet, Jeopardy game are only some of the names I got acquainted with and then we got to know each other. There were things to be reminded about all the four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking, about assessment and things to change our perspective. We can now approach everything mentioned with technology in our activity. The context each of us has in his/her country can be changed positively since we were offered so many alternatives( as just one example- how to use only one computer in our lessons). Creating interactive power-points was the best for me since I found out extremely valuable information and I could put it into practice, assisted and guided by our wonderful guide Donna. I feel like grading Donna with 100% for her activity and tell her that I want that her activity influence more and more teachers who come here, in this virtual space with a good level, leave with a better one and depends on them to become the best in using everything they learnt here.

We were busy sometimes, happy when we accomplished the tasks, willing to offer support and advice, sad for not being able to read everything, glad reading our tutur or colleagues’comments and so on. I have experienced a variety of feelings and I have learnt a lot of things, ready to be put into practice when the school year starts.

The course seemed like a constuctive play for teachers, where we learnt a lot and we had fun as well, we  encouraged one another, tried to impress ourselves and the others by what we created, in one word , we had to give the best of us. In my opinion, such courses make us become better, stronger and more motivated in achieving our goals in teaching and even in our lives.

All the best to you all ,

 Laura- Cristiana

WEEK 9- It's Not How Smart You Are, It's How You're Smart!

Dear all,

I confess that since I have seen all the topics of this course, I have hardly waited for week 9 to come. I have been familiarised with the types of intelligencies at different conferences but, as each week I was amazed to find out so many new things, I expected the same to happen during this week. 

And indeed, my expectations were rewarded. First of all, referring to the classification,  to the seven types of intelligencies I knew about, I found out that I can add others , namely the naturalist and the existentialist intelligences as Gardner proposes. The last one mentioned here is  called by others the spiritual/religious intelligence. 

The types of intelligencies are of utmost importance for teachers, it is as if they have all the necessary data so as to be able to accomplish the best of their activity. The teachers, especially the form teachers should apply tests at the very beginning of the school year in which to see what type of intelligence his/ her students have and also to make them know this. Thus the students would be helped because they will learn what are the best methods to be used by themselves so as to acquire the necessary knowledge. On the othe hand, teachers will be able to use the information when they prepare for their lessons, taking into consideration these aspects. A teacher can’t address within the same class to all types of intelligencies but he/she can be able to do it within a unit. School in our country still insists just on the verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical types of intelligencies since the results here seem to be more palpable. But we, the foreign English teachers have wonderful opportunities to use all the types in our lessons, I repeat, not all at once, but whenever appropriate in our lessons. 

What is more, technology can help us in doing this with great success as I found out by reading the article ”Do Technology Based Lessons Meet the Needs of Student Learning Styles?”, on the site, http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec596r/students/Rosen/Rosen.html#ls. We, the teachers, need to do our best so as to meet the needs of our students by providing a variety of lessons using various teaching methods. And since technology and computers easily combine various media formats, they can provide a variety of different learning opportunities and address to various learning styles. Using technology, I personally can provide my students’ types of intelligencies lots of activities to be used both in classrooms and at home.

All people learn in different ways, and we need to take that into account when designing our lessons. There is not one teaching method that will work for all learners. Since all learners are different, we must provide a variety of teaching methods to better match the variety of learning styles that students bring to the classroom. In this way, frustrating situations for both teachers and students will be easily avoided. Teachers will not be frustrated with low test scores, unresponsive or hostile classes, poor attendance and drop outs , while students will be able to understand what they are taught.

Last, but not least, we had to post our final project. It is great to be able to apply almost everything we have learnt during the past weeks in a final product. I have used the ideas my colleagues , Celeste and Natalya oferred me and I hope that this project is better written than the previous one. Still, ideas keep coming into my mind in order to improve it. I am looking forward to Donna’s feed-back. We still have one week to share our thoughts and feelings, so let’s enjoy ourselves!

WEEK 8- New web tools at everybody 's disposal

Time is running pretty fast. For so many things we were presented this week, it would have been wonderful to have more time. After so much theory, this week we had to experiment, to create, to choose materials for our students taking into consideration age  and psychlogical particularities. Whether experimenting with HotPotatoes, EasyTestMaker, Crossword Puzzl Games or Word Search Maker, we understood that they, among others are great opportunities to make our lessons more dynamic and attractive. We have to choose from the offered variety, so as to use them at their best value in our lessons. The tool I have created for my students was a blog which will offer them the possibility to post comments on it, to create their own blogs and post their reflections there. Its URL is http://learningenglishxie.blogspot.com/2011/08/welcome-you-all.html. This tool represents a step towards their increasing autonomy.

Another tool we have found out a lot of information was Anvill. It is  a tool for all the teachers and students who have a web access and by using it we can do a variety of activities from: listening to the news, watching video clips, to submitting voice or video-based assignments. ”ANVILL is quite flexible, and permits the kind of extra listening and speaking practice that language students need so much” as I read on https://anvill.uoregon.edu/anvill2/.

Another thing I found very useful is the fact that it's easy for a teacher to create and assess speech-based tasks, either synchronously using ANVILL's built in audio-video chat tool, or asynchronously, using ANVILL tools for recording voice or video. There are so many things you can do using Annvill, but though, you need a lot of time in order to get familiarised with all its tools.

Last but not least, we had to read our partners’ projects and comment upon them. It was a great experience not only because we could compare, analyse and express our opinions, but because after all this we could improve our own projects. My two colleagues, Celeste and Natalya gave me very insightful comments and I can in this way make some changes so to make a better final project. This cooperative work is really helpful since you see other perspeectives and in my case, very good ideas.

Good luck to everybody in writing wonderful projects!

Week 7- WE REALLY THRIVE AND STILL SURVIVE

At the beginning of each week I wonder what other interesting articles on the  topics presented we are going to deal with. And the surprises never stop to appear, since we find out new and interesting things or just clarify others.

This week’s articles ,”What Is Learner Autonomy and How Can It Be Fostered?”by Dimitrios Thanasoulas and ”Learner Autonomy: Bird-in-the-hand or Bird-in-the-bush?” by Samuel Sheu,presented the topic of autonomous learners which society nowadays seems to promote more and more almost everywhere. Teachers encourage the aspect of learner autonomy by helping learners to assume greater control over their own learning. The student –centred system, which seems to flourish, will insist on the fact that the autonomous learner is an active agent of his own learning process.To become autonomous means to follow a path, you don’t have to concentrate just on the end of it where you find the person who is able to use the language in the best way possible. Students should  be guided by a teacher,but they  have to undersatand that much depends on themselves.

Becoming or not an autonomous learner depends a lot on the attitude students have and also on the motivation, whether they have an external one, insisting on what is concrete and what immediate advantages they may take,  or internal which energises the whole personality to acquire the foreign language no matter what efforts have to be done. Learner autonomy is best achieved when, among other things, the teacher acts as a facilitator of learning, a counsellor, and as a resource (Voller).

First and foremost, teachers have to help students understand what an autonomous learner is. In order to become one, they have to actively involve thermselves in a process and take some risks- a process very much alike with life itself.

The article”How to Thrive - Not Just Survive - in a One-Computer Classroom”  has a very relevant title since with just one modern thing we can open endless possibilities to our students. The computer may here be compared with an open window which stirs both the teacher’s imagination concerning how to use it the most effectively and the students’ as well to accomplish the tasks in the best way possible. A  strategy which I consider very effective is to create "stations" or multiple activities, using the computer as only one of the tools necessary to complete assignments. But everybody should consider that in a one-computer classroom, it is imperative to plan carefully everything and be extremely organized.

Both on the former thread of discussion and on the latter one we were asked to think at possible solutions and activities to be implemented in the given context , thing which I really appreciate since it makes us connect theory with practice, information with real life. If we look at the previous weeks we can see that we really are autonomous teachers and that one computer in the classroom makes us thrive, usually in a context where we are let just survive.

WEEK 6

The themes we had to study this week seemed to mingle in just one context after reading the articles proposed,namely to use technology appropriately, no matter the size of your class is.

I will first refer to the article ” Best Practices in Presenting with PowerPoint” from which I had revised something I knew adding also new things to me, as reflecting more on the audience and presentation. I especially liked the title in this article”don’t parrot the power-point” thing which we all were tempted to do at least once. It seems easier for the presenter, but it’s the worst possible for the audience. Blanking the screen is a technique I really like , as it presents advantages for both the audience, they have to focus only on on what you are saying and for you, as the audience attention is not ”split”anymore between you and the PPT.  Making the PPT interactive and mixing up the media are both pieces of advice everybody should take into consideration.  Rehearsing before presenting is imperative for everybody no matter how much experience they have in doing it.Using PowerPoint to Make an Interactive Story and a Jeopardy game are very useful resources. They are the best ways to make a lesson more interactive near the ConcepTests and Think-Pair-Share."The interactive lessons take the form of self-paced, student-controlled, individualized learning opportunities embedded with assessment events along the way." as I read in the article "Creating an Interactive PowerPoint Lesson for the Classroom". These lessons are visually-based, behavior-oriented; contain self-paced instructional content; offers specific, logical, systematic lessons; are student-initiated and student-controlled learning.

In the articles about on-line assessment I could find valuable information as well. I especially enjoyed the tutorials where everything is so clearly presented so as to build online assessments using different question types, thus being able to provide students with immediate feedback, (with the exception of essay questions). Instructors can use the Assessment features to test student knowledge, measure student progress, and gather information from students. I have also found information about Respondus which is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to Blackboard and other eLearning systems.

In the video of Richard describing how he makes seminars interactive and engaging, on http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/seminars.html,  I saw the technique we usually use at least once a month usually at the end of a unit, when a class is divided into groups, each of th groups is given a different task and students  have to write a summary of what they have done on a sheet of paper, and one student nominated by the group will present the results to the rest of the class. Questions related to the topic will be asked and all the members of the group may contribute with answers. The moment when all the groups have finished their presentations will be followed by a summary of all the material presented. These types of lessons are  indeed very interactive, but the teacher has the responsability of helping each group, by adding supplimantary details, or leading them to the right path in case they misunderstood something, give advice etc. The teacher works as much as each of the members in the group, since responsabilities are equally shared from the very beginning.

Referring to the varieties of articles on ” Teaching Large Classes”, I would mention How to Create Memorable Lectures which  I consider meaningful to me. After reading the article I reflected on how little we were involved in the lectures we attended and how little we could remember. We are proposed several techniques I would partly apply to some of my lessons. Mingling the ideas of providing students with a framework for the lecture, not overloading them and using information that relates to ideas or experiences students are already familiar with, are the steps to follow. The teachers should orient their students’attention by telling them what to focus on. Giving brakes during the lecture, not using  too many different types of presentation materials at once and show students how specific skills can be applied to real-world problems are the results of the steps taken. The article”Teaching large classses” made  us familiar to some very useful activities like Think-Pair-Share, ConcepTest, interpreting graphs and making calculations , activities which are very helpful in our classes.

Last, but not least we were required to make an interactive power-point so as to put the theory into practice. It was a difficult decision whether to make a jeopardy game or an interactive story, but since my students like a lot when a competitive element applies to a lesson, I have chosen the former one. And now, I can congratulate you all for doing the task successfully. We are, as usual, learning a lot from each other.

Week 5- Top Quality Ingredients to Spice our Teaching Activity

What I want to say from the very beginning is the fact that making a summary of the week in order to post the information on our blog is the best way to offer our feed-back. The most important information is easier to be connected with  the other in the previous week and ready to connect with the one to come, so as to create a continuous chain for our final project.

The articles we had to read this week referred to alternative assessment, project –based learning and WebQuests.

As I have read in the article, Project, Problem, and Inquiry-based Learning students are engaged, excited and enthusiastic about PBL and so are the teachers.  On the site http://www.sun-associates.com/lynn/pbl/pbl.html we found that PBL presupposes to collect information and make observations, develop a hypothesis, make a prediction, do the experiment and communicate results. As I have read several more articles about this topic, I can say that PBL appears to be the best solution to totally engage the students and make them learn a lot effortlessly. In the article ”What Is Project-Based Learning?”, there are presented 4 types of learners who can help us create a lesson so as to make active all types of students where these characteristics predomine: spatial/visual, language-oriented, kinetitic and logical learner.

Concerning WebQuests, I consider they are brilliant since they are inquiry-oriented lessons. If well-designed , they have enormous advantages. Some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet. A WebQuest  should contain an introduction ,a task, a set of information sources needed to complete the task,a  description of the process the learners should go through in accomplishing the task and some guidance on how to organize the information acquired, and  a conclusion that brings closure to the quest. WebQuests are designed to be group activities and should include motivational elements  involving either a single discipline or more disciplines thus transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are involved.

Alternative assessment insists on what students know, on their strong points, thus the students being  encouraged to learn more. Alternative assessment elements are differently sructured, scored and graded. They apply in student-oriented cases and they insist on veridicity of the requests, topics, having the advantage of letting the students self-assess since they know from the beginning the things to lead them to  a top-grade.

All the three dimensions presented above, when you know the exact quantity of ingredients to add, will create a perfect combination, a relevant lesson both for teachers  and their students having as result making them more autonomous learners. So far, I have never used any of the types mentioned above, even if I was familiar to rubrics and checklist. I consider them all relatively easy to use, and for sure all of them can be applied successfully with my students who are so open-minded and enjoy everything which is different of ”traditional”.

At project task 4, I liked especilally the idea of working in pairs or groups at the disscussion referring to what solutions we can come up with to the problems we have at school. Our ideas were in this way reinforced or we have got others which made us think deeper, or better said, higher. The solutions to be applied for my classroom, something I am not doing at the moment is to create a webquest, I’m not sure yet if it will be ready by Sunday night, and to use a blog as well where my students should post their works so as to make not only themselves and teachers proud , but their parents as well.

For the task this week, I have realised a rubric on http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ having as URL http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&module=Rubistar&rubric_id=2072769&   which  I  posted  on the wiki page. I have already used the site to create several more rubrics and even if one wants to add or to delete certain rows, it still helps you a lot in your work. 

The title I used this week came up into my mind as I understood that I learnt about very useful things relatively easy to apply at the context in my school. I am willing  to say that all these would make my teaching innovative as long as I would apply them in appropriate moments of my teaching.

WEEK 4

Week by week I understand that we are given pieces of work just like those of the puzzles to create our final project.

The articles we were proposed to read opened us new paths to organising our lessons in a more attractive way referring to the skills of reading, writing and vocabulary. In the article "Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books",written by Mei-Ya Liang we found out that by reading interesting and authentic materials, each student's motivation and confidence in learning and using the foreign language increases. When students have understood that by reading , they enter a wonderful world with so many possibilities to visit and get to know realms of all kind, in which both dialogues as well as personal reflection are involved, our objectives are totally fulfilled. To sustain what I have said I quote Aldous Huxley :- “Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting”.  

Considering writing, Jarek Krajka  writes in his article " Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instructions", that on-line writing instruction should not be used all the time, or the Web materials only, but rather a teacher should enrich lessons with the Net component when it is really profitable for students and could help them in their learning. The Internet component is not a goal in itself, but it is rather a useful teaching aid, and it should be subjected to the general syllabus to enrich and give variety and authenticity to learning English.

The role of the teacher in the classes where technology is used is very demanding ,but also very rewarding.

If everything had been perfect with our students or with the materials we use, our roles would have been useless. There are times when I perfectly understand how important our role is in identifying problems and involving to the maximum in order to solve them. We were asked to identify problems we have to face in our school and I have referred to materials, to the teacher, to the parents and to the students as well. I hardly wait to identify solutions for all the problems I have mentioned here. It’s great fun to think at several solutions and then choose the best one; we ourselves develop the critical thinking and then we can easily ”pass” it to our students.

The most enjoyable task  for me was to write the lesson plan. We are not obliged anymore after 2 years of experience to write a complete plan , but to have only a draft so, I was very happy to write a complete one using the very well-structured model. It was something really new for me to include so many activities using the technology within the same hour. I enjoyed writing my plan at the rewarding thought of my students’smiling faces, because they were willing all the time to  use such means during English lessons. Lack of space and materials let me do it rarely enough. I have already thought at a solution for being able to use computers in almost all my lessons, even if it would be difficult. I let you know about it next week, when we have to come up with solutions for the problems identified.

“The road to success is always under construction”- Lily Tomlin, so we have few more steps to see our project finished.

Thank you, Laura- Cristiana