Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web : The End. Week 10

This has been an incredible program, and I had the privilege to work with a great instructor as Robert Elliott, and meet great teachers from around the world,my course mates.

 I will miss the weekly stress, but chances are open to stay in contact with all trough the web. 

Regarding the program: 

In order to  help the  students to take advantage of technology, you must start setting clear objectives  for your activity or program, the  ABCD Model is a practical and accurate tool that describes:

The Audience, desired Behavior, Condition (Academic Context), and Degree (Accuracy and grading). 

Once you have the problem defined, you may plan your CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) program or activity, you may focus on one communicative skill: Listening, Speaking, Reading or Writing, and/or on any sub skill: Grammar, Pronunciation, and Vocabulary. 

It is very important, when possible, to include the activity as part of the course curriculum, this Integration will help you with your planning and with the overall goals achievement. 

Keep in mind, that resources available on the Web and the way to use them are thousands, but there are less available resources planned toward Speaking, due the fact that Speech Recognition systems are expensive.

When planning your activity or program, probably you will need an online environment to interact with the students, this is the Platform, it will allow you to interact and organize the students’ activities, we have explored tools like Nicenet, Googlesites, and ANVILL.

Using the technology as part of the learning process has a number of benefits:

• Help your students become autonomous learners, and be responsible of their language acquisition
• Change your class environment, motivating students and making it more appealing
• Approach different learner styles and different intelligences through different resources, tools and ways to use them
• Increase English practice, changing your six-sides classroom for the Web
• Carry out parallel projects to help students reduce their weaknesses in terms of communicative skills, so that the Web gives you extra time that is not available
• Sharing Rubrics at the beginning may help you to motivate the students and drive their behavior toward the desired performance
• Consider your students’ aim to learn English, how are they going to use it in the future? Technology may give a meaningful content to their practice, and according to your students’ profile a  PBL (Project Based Learning) program may help them for their future requirements
• Large classes? Use technology to help the students, and help yourself  managing the group
• Look for other teachers' experiences with CALL activities, there are Blogs, Sites, Facebook Pages, Groups, Twitters, where many colleagues share their experiences, and there is always the possibility to contact your class mates. 

Luis

Cluster Bombing Week 9

Week 9 has left a lot to apply to teaching English:

How Gardener has developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences, there are 9  intelligences  by now,  and no one is black or white in terms of fully belonging to a specific kind of intelligence or learner style.  

The idea or suggestion in the article: Technology and Multiple Intelligences, is that you may use a different technology to approach different learners/intelligences. Applying different technologies implies a second benefit, changes the learning environment, making it more effective; this environment is defined as background in the article: Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits, by Benedict Carey, and according to him, changing it helps you achieve your teaching or course goals as human brain relates the content with the background.

Finally, if you apply the different technologies in different moments but on the same topic, giving a break from one to another, you will help your students to benefit  of the process of “forgetting and learning”. Recalling the information after some days will help your students’ brain to retain it for a longer time. Cluster bombing comes to my mind, as you can apply different technologies to reach different intelligences, at different moments.

This week, was the deadline to present our Final Project Report, my project American Holidays, accomplished the objectives with the second group of students after failing with the first. The process finished with three Power Point presentations through Skype for a group of students of the CBA Sucre. We have the final week ahead, and is time to start processing all the huge amount of information, tools, and experiences we got in this course. 

Preparing the Project, doing the tasks, and reading was demanding, you could feel like under a bombing, but it is worth the experience and all knowledge acquired. 

Luis

Peer review and Nicenet week 8

Regarding  my project American Holidays, I started a second group:

1.       Registered 10 students

2.       7 students are participating actively

3.       I have created a Hand Out, and changed the instructions on the course site

4.       I send alerts , and try to keep in touch

5.       I think results and feedback will be on time to evaluate the project  for the final report to our  teacher Robert Elliot

This week I had the chance to read Said’s project, he is going to implement it on his school in Egypt, and I learned many things, also from his comments on my project:

•      Teachers commitment is not restricted to class hours
•      Technology can be used to help change teaching style, Said will try a major change on the logic of grammar-translation and exam focus strategy used now, toward a communicative approach
•     Said blended the course content of his class with the project,  that is something we learned with Robert, and  is turned from theory to practice
•      Said recommended me to do things on an easy way, so students can more easily engage in the activities, I will keep his advice in mind.

I also reviewed Angels work, in this case not a project but an activity on a school in Spain:

•     It is possible to combine English with other subjects, as Biology, using in this case a Webquest for children
•    Multiple intelligences approach is possible with technology: Graphs, Videos, drawing are examples of different approaches used by Angels
•     Angels, recommends to work closer with the Institution to ensure students access to the Internet, and it is implied also that internet access should be part of the planning.

Finally, this week we concentrated on the Projects, but we had some Readings.

 I found it very useful to receive instructions about Nicenet. Although we use it almost daily since the course started, I hadn’t explored it properly. This week I created a sample course site for Debates, with the idea of helping student improve their writing skills. This is the course key: E346908O50

Luis

Week 7. Reflections

We are about to finish these great course, as we keep on moving, I see that resources on the Web are almost infinite, so when reading my classmates experiences and projects,

 I discover always new ways to use the same technology, or a new technology to work with the same idea, problem or skill. This universe of options, limited by time, program textbooks, and/or mandatory procedures, can be accessed inside a six-side environment (classroom) with only one gate or computer, with specific activities, and sometimes with resources provided by the course text book.

Technology is a means for the teacher to help students become more independent or autonomous learners, leaving the six walls of the classroom students may explore and discover new ways to improve their English command, at their own pace and perhaps setting their objectives, but student’s motivation to learn a new language is the key element here, so as teachers the challenge is to wake that motivation or help students develop it.

I see a double challenge when teaching English as part of a career or program, thus, students are in your class because they have to, not because they want to.

In terms of our final project, I’m working with Said and Angels, we are already on the class Wiky, I will learn a lot of their experience as teachers through their projects. For more on this, visit the blog on Sunday 26!

Implementing the Final Project Week 6

This week we started running our projects for the E-Teacher Program, so it’s been very demanding.  During the week, I have:

• 
  
•           Defined the details of the American Holidays WebQuest
•         Created a Google Site to work with the group on the WebQuest and  instructions
•           Enrolled the students as long as this is not a project for one class but for a group of grantees of an English and Leadership Scholarship Program
•          Shared the resources and created a Reading Comprehension test with Google Drive- Forms

·         For the future, I would have an introductory session P2P before launching the project, as this is the first time students participate on an online program, some instructions are not being followed properly-

·         Balancing the students knowledge and English content of the program is a hard and important issue.

Working with Large Classes

One problem with large groups or classes, specially in language learning is that students don’t receive individual attention,  feedback and perhaps also an individual chance to practice, so we have learned that:

1.       The “old trick” of making groups is still useful

2.       The use of technology through online tests, videos, interactive presentations, helps the teacher save time in class, and students have the chance to practice and learn individually at their own pace

3.       Team or Group work in the class require a random selection of the groups to control their work, if possible all groups should participate in the control process

4.       If you have a large group, creating an application that saves students answers in the form of a spreadsheet, it will save you a lot of time of the correction process, and you may give individual feedback to the students. Using the results to drive the in-class  discussion is possible too.

5.       From my point of view, although technology helps the teacher to work with large groups Speaking is the skill that need special  attention, so the time saved using the web could be used in the class to practice Speaking

Power Point Presentations

Power Point is a not completely exploited software for many of us (users), making linear presentations and rarely using the interactive tools available.

Power Point gives you the chance to change the routine and attract students attention toward the lessons

engaging them through the interactive options offered, making the class more interactive. 

Power Point/ Prezi (Cloud based presentation)  gives you the chance to use other resources as videos, animations, audio files, word docs, links, action buttons (PPT)  to innovate the class presentation and activities.

Beware of not making abuse of the tool or the animation-effects this could reduce effectiveness and create a different routine.  Content of the presentation as the content of  a regular class is a key element.

Don’t forget to have a B Plan just in case any issue comes with technology.
 

Week 5 Reflections

This has been a great week in our course, as a conclusion I can say that:  

1. (PBL) Project Based Learning is a great strategy to have the students learn and apply English giving it authentic meaning through the Project content

2. WebQuest can be used as part of a PBL activity or as an complete activity, can be less complicated for the students than PBL

3. Creating a Rubric and sharing it helps the teacher organise the the class on an effective way, and also will motivate the students to complete the tasks focusing on what really is important

4. Both  ZUNAL (WebQuest site)  RUBISTARS  (Rubric creator  site) are great sites, but are partially, free, so you may either get used the available options, or pay a reasonable access to the more complex options.  I think that Zunal.com can be more easily be substituted than Rubistar where you find pre-established content for general Rubrics that save a lot of time.


Luis

Curiosity . Week 5

This week we are reading and learning about WebQuest among other topics. 

The sites that were shared by Robert, are useful, and using a WebQuest gives you a number of benefits:

1.    You can save time having the students do the research and information analysis  using that time in the class for another activity  

2.    You may do the whole activity online

3.    You can integrate skills as you bring the result of the Quest, or part of the process, into the classroom for discussions or presentations

4.    As you assign the students a certain task using a limited information source  keeping  control 

5.    As Robert recommend in one of his tips, for Integrated Lesson Planing, do not  stick to one technology, site or application, to conduct the WebQuest there is a lot of options from Zunal   to Facebook.

 Curiosity may drive your students to complete a Quest!

Luis

PBL + ESP

Project Based Learning (PBL) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP)   make a great combination, I think that teaching an ESP class is the best and easiest time and chance to use PBL for ESOL. 

Why?

Firstly, most ESP courses include students that have a similar background, activity, profession, culture, or business, so the topics are much easier to be chosen by either the class or teacher, as Susan Gaers say: The project must be geared to the population.

Secondly, in general, the ESP content of textbooks makes it easy  to work on a final project

Finally, including as part of the evaluation a PBL activity will make the students to give a practical and monitored chance to practice.

Some examples:

English for Mechanical Engineering:  Writing a short project to solve a problem (real or fictional) with Curiosity Rover

English for Law: Role play on a trial using the Red Code movie

English for Business:  Analyze an article on an industry trend of Forbes Magazine  using Michael Porter’s 5 Competitive Forces model

Luis

Reading and Writing Week 4

Without noticing we have completed 40% of the program, and it is a big coincidence that we are developing techniques to teach Reading and Writing and last Tuesday, the World Book Day was celebrated.

Some ideas about the week:

1.        Considering the nature of Reading and Writing, it is easier to find tools and integrate them in the classroom than the use of tools for Listening and Speaking.

2.        Larry J. Mikulecky states that to void “Frustrational Reading experiences” you must command at least 95% of the vocabulary. 

I have observed and experienced gaps when speaking, all due to the lack of vocabulary. Then, working toward vocabulary building is a core target when planning CALL activities.

3.        Jarek Krajka,  Robert Elliot and Margo Dill, remark the need to integrate the online or CALL component into the regular curriculum or class content.

4.       Jarek Krajka defines a number of roles for the teacher when using technology: Tutor, Supervisor, Teacher, and Tech-Assistant.

5.        Using focused on children material with adults or teenagers, but with an English level that is a challenge for the new audience, will probably lead to a successful activity. I think that is a great suggestion of Larry J. Mikulecky’s article.

6.       All lecturers recommend having a B Plan, in case something do not work with the chosen technology.

7.       The resources shared by Robert and classmates, are quite interesting and easy to use in the classroom to help the students, moreover, them give to chance to integrate the practice of English through the four and three communicative skills and sub-skills.

8.       Finally, as previous week I recommend mostly using and exploring the sites including ready to use activities, with the option to check answers, “Plug and Play”.