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