Week 10 Toughts

Hi everyone!

Wow! Week 10 is already finishing! The last week...it is a pity this course will end...so soon to me.

During the course I learned and experienced that it is not the technology itself that promotes learning, but the interaction among people. That to promote this interaction and transform it into collaboration is made easier by the technologies but nothing substitutes the ability of a good teacher to incentivate and monitor the use of them. That all technology tools (even Power Point) can be used in order to make students active, interact and learn. That implementing the use of technology in class is a slow process, which involves changing people's minds and our minds. That the choice for the use of technologies in class is political too, and that all over the world teachers face difficulties to implement technologies to their classes.

The course was really well organized and, by now, I can not imagine how it could be different. For me it was very important to realize the power of interaction technology brings itself. Everybody has a voice. Everybody finds and answer. Also, considering specifically language learning, I learned a lot about and could find a way to start using online resources in order to improve speaking. And ANVILL is awesome! For sure I will implement the use of it.

Hope I can keep interacting with the teachers who participated of the course...How about organizing a discussion group online or something like that? Good start, uh?

Best wishes,

Ju
Brazil

Week 9 Toughts

Hi everyone!


This week we had a wonderful debate concerning learning styles, which reminded me about how important and necessary is to consider and respect the characteristics of the students.

Technologies and online tasks can be helpful in the process of learning because it allows the teacher to work with a wider range of materials, such as videos and recordings. Also, with the use of technologies the learning process is controlled much more by the students than by the teacher.

A good surprise of this week was meeting Mr. Magoto and learning about ANVILL. It is a great tool  for implementing the use of technologies in our class. It is a kind of language lab. But virtual. I could learn a lot in our chat. Obrigada, Mr. Magoto! Thanks!

Ju
Brazil

Week 8 Toughts

Hi,

Wow! This week we had a lot of work! First of all we explored new tools to create online and offline activities. How great they are! Also we had to share and comment the first draft of our projects and plans. That was nice to feel that there is someone who can support me during my journey of implementing technologies in my class.

That is a pity the course will finish in two weeks. Hope I can keep contact with the teachers I met here.

Ju
Brazil

Week 7 Toughts

Hi,

This week I continued implementing my project and also reflected about learner autonomy. I could notice that it will take time for my students become autonomous considering the use of technologies. It is a process and besides that, I have been facing difficulties to access internet or use Power Point presentations at my institution. So, I suggest that students access sites and activities online without doing it in class, that is, setting up a model and helping them to understand how such technology works. Maybe that is why it took about a week for some students to start using Vocaroo to record and send me a sentence - but if they started it is a sign that they are starting to become autonomous.

Well, this week I started  with vocabulary related to clothes which was proposed in the lesson.  I wanted that students noticed that the way we write a word is not the way we say it. Most of the times Brazilian students try to read the words in English based on their knowledge of Portuguese, so, most of the times they say speaking English is difficult because they try to “mime” the way they speak Portuguese when they speak English. That was not possible to access the internet again, so I downloaded and recorded an audio from Elllo. This audio corresponds to the description of some clothes items, such as socks and shirts. Using the audio transcript and the  dictionary I prepared an activity. Students had to guess which word was the one transcribed in phonetic symbols (a word related to clothes). Then, they would listen to the audio and check which words the speaker was referring to. For example:

OK, let's talk about kl(th)z. The first bit of clothing you wear on your feet and they keep you feet warm, now you wouldn't want to we()r these on a really warm day and you want to make sure they stay dry. If these get wet, they're no fun to we()r on your feet.

After they did this part of the activity, wrote the words on the board and they could compare the way the words are “written” with the way the words are “spoken”. At the beginning of the task many of the students got puzzled by the phonetic symbols since it is the first time they have contact with them and also because they thought that the saying the word corresponds to reading its letters, something that they noticed was not true. At the end of the lesson I noticed that they could understand that speaking is different from writing and that how a word sounds depends on the combination of sounds of letters, that is, reading a letter is not simply spelling it. Also they noticed that every word has a stressed syllable. Since there was no access to the internet in class I suggested that they could access http://www.elllo.org/english/Games/G025-Clothes.html and take the quiz proposed at home. It consists of listening to the speaker and choosing the image that corresponds to the clothing item he is describing. I considered important that students did this activity because the more students practice listening the better they will speak. To follow their activities at home I created a Paddlet where they could comment on their results. They did not comment yet - hope they do it.

I also started writing my project report and found a partner to work with. Ola, I hope we can do a great job together!

Ju

Brazil

Week 6 Toughts

Hi dear all,

This week was very important and curious to me, specially because I discovered that Power Points can be used to promote interaction. Creating an interactive Power Point helped me realize that what is interactive is not the technology itself but the way we implement its use in the classroom.

I have also started implementing my project; I am having a hard time dealing with implementing technology in my classroom since the institution where I work, to sum up, seems not have interest in it. Also the students are very passive yet. It seems they enjoy technologies but do not want to try new things, specially considering doing things at home. Let's keep on the work and see what happens.

What I did? Students listened to various native speakers introducing themselves to discover their countries/nationalites considering a list. Then they matched rhyming words to the names of the countries (for example Brazil - refill). It was not possible to use the internet as I planned, so I had to record the audio and used a radio to play it and then, prepared a handout with the rhymes. My first intention was using wordcentral in order that they explored such rhymes. I explained how to use wordcenral. Then asked them to record rhyming words at Vocaroo and send to my e-mail. Nobody done this. Maybe if they had experienced these resources in class they could have been more motivated to do this. Next class I will try to understand what happened.

Ju
Brazil

Week 5 Toughts

Hi!

This week was very important to me. I learned a lot about the relationship among critical thinking, project based learning, rubrics and webqests.

I became aware of the importance of fostering students autonomy. How to do this? Invest on developing projects that are meaninful and  for them. Students learn more language when they have to share ideas and produce something that will have impact on their lives or their community. They learn more because they need to communicate for something important and contextualized.

Students should be empowered in class. Students learn with each other. Rubrics that help them to understand all the process should be used more. Webquests that give them opportunities to solve problems using the language and work in collaboration are a great tool for promoting language learning.

Well, this week activities made me remember Mitchel Resnick's text "Computers and Mud" many times...maybe that is what we should have been doing in class...projects, webquests, rubrics are for developing critical thinking and so autonomy. Don't you think?

Ju
Brazil

Week 4 Toughts

Hi friends!

This week started with the exploitation of websites to enhance writing and reading skills! One of these sites that was very well recommended is http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ which contains activities related to uptodate news. Also, http://www.elllo.org/ was very commented too because it contains lessons that explore students skills concerning different topics such as introductions and sports, as well as lessons graded by levels.

We had to prepare a technology enhanced plan. The more important thing that I learned with this task was that the lesson has to be focused on a language issue or problem that has to be solved in class. Technolgy is a toowl to help and enhance the way these problems can be solved.

Well, that is it for this week! Thanks for reading!

Ju
Brazil

Week 3 Toughts

This week started with the reading of two articles on aural/oral skills: Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials (Lindsey Miller) and The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills (Juila Gong).  It was possible to notice how pronunciation teaching was neglected and how technology tools can help practicing it and develop speaking and listening for communication. Also,  listening has been considered something you "learn by doing", that is not true; there should be strategies to practice it, considering the format pre-, while- , and post-listening.

After reading the articles we explored some sites and lesson plans - some of them I had seen before, but had not considered the potential for speaking learning specially. I hope now I am able to use them to enhance students communication abilities.

Creating my Delicious page was  not a new experience to me. I had one account in the past that was deleted for some reason. But it was good to do this activity since I could remember how important it is to share discoveries and ideas.

Reading some sample project reports so as to choose one of them for description and analysis was a provoking activity.  This task made me reflect on somebody else’s context and work, and helped me to feel confortable to start developing mine. 

Hope next week is great as this one!

Ju

Brazil

Week 2 Toughts

Hi everybody!

This week was great for me. First of all I  learned a lot about writing objective by  studying the "ABCD learning objectives framework". Summing up it is as follows:

The A.B.C.D. methodThe ABCD method of writing objectives is an excellent starting point for writing objectives (Heinich, et al., 1996). In this system, "A" is for audience, "B" is for behavior, "C" for conditions and "D" for degree of mastery needed.

1. Audience (A) – Who? Who are your learners?

1. Behavior (B) – What? What do you expect them to be able to do? This should be an overt, observable behavior, even if the actual behavior is covert or mental in nature. If you can't see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it, you can't be sure your audience really learned it.

1. Condition (C) – How? Under what circumstances or context will the learning occur? What will the student be given or already be expected to know to accomplish the learning?

1. Degree (D) – How much? How much will be accomplished, how well will the behavior need to be performed, and to what level? Do you want total mastery (100%), do you want them to respond correctly 80% of the time, etc. A common (and totally non-scientific) setting is 80% of the time.

Source: http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/

 Following this framework for sure will help students to learn more because, they can see better what they are expected to accomplish and how. Besides, the conditions students have to accomplish  the learning are strongly related to how much they accomplish. If they do not understand this, how can they have the adequate  behavior and so, learn? Learning has a lot to do with how the teacher sets the objectives of the activity with the students. The better it is done, the more students learn. For sure I will change the way I give instructions and set objectives in class.


The second thing I was surprised and grateful to learn about is related to effective searching. How naive I was! I used to think that Google was the best search engine of all! Well, although it is the most famous, it is not the best in all situations. There are a lot of search engines and using them well depends on our needs. For example, if you need a dictionary, search:

Yahoo Reference Definitions, etymology, synonyms (English and Spanish) and audio-pronunciation Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus Definitions, etymology, synonyms and audio-pronunciation WordCentral Definitions with pictures (student dictionary) Adapted from: http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/info rmation/5locate/adviceengine.html

Well, in all this process my course colleagues and my orientator, Donna, were very friendly and supportive. Hope we keep learning a lot together!

See you next week!

Ju

Brazil

Week 1Toughts

Hi everyone!

This is the first week  of  Webskills Course, offered by the University of Oregon American English Institute, and I have already learned lots of things.I am part of the Green group which is oriented by Donna Shaw, who seems to be a very careful instructor. She is constantly in contact with us in a very polite and motivating way. I can see she cares about us and our performance in the course. 

One of the most important discover of this week is related on discussion foruns. We discussed the "Ground Rules for discussions" and I learned that foruns can have different goals and can be evaluated  in different ways. I confess I had never tought foruns could be evaluated. For me they were just a way "to be in contact" with others.

Well,  the opportunity of being in contact with 20 teachers from all over the world, is priceless! I have met people from such diverse places I have never tought of and noticed that we all have a similar goal: understand how to be better teachers using technologies! That is so exciting!

I am surprised and anxious for what is to come the next week!


Ju