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”.

Call it Delicious

This is the third week at the program, and is time to share some ideas and reflections about all that we did and studied:

1.  Delicious.com

•    The site helps you to keep in one place all the pages related to your activity, this case English Teaching
• You can explore and share inside Delicious
• You can link your Delicious  account with Facebook profile or Twitter, thus importing the liked pages

 About this site; I would recommend to use it in order to save time keeping track of your favorite pages and getting to know new ones trough the network and friends

2. Class Activity of  Zlatka Dyankova from Tryana Private High School of Languages and IT in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria. (1)

• Teachers specially in Schools and Universities, face students have to study English instead of want to, have low motivation to participate in class and practice
• The use of technology changes the student's learning environment, making it more appealing, attractive and motivating for many of them
• If you combine technology with an event of general interest as the Winter Olympic Games, the result is that probably you will have the students engaged in the activity
• There is a number of applications and web sites that are simple to use and can be combined to carry out the activity: WebQuest, You Tube, Blogger, and others, that won't be hard for the students to get used to 

Conclusion: Blend different applications with a topic of interest for the students  as sports, music or movies and you will probably have a successful activity.

3. CALL

•  There are less free available resources for Speech Recognition on the web than those focused on the mechanics of speaking
• You may combine the content of different  sites to practice with your students
• Some sites  are "plug and play" including ready to use practices & questions, with  check your answer applications,  like VOA or  Randall's ESL Cyber Listening
• You will find ready to use  exercises and practices, or lesson plans on the web 

Explore the web, integrate the resources offered  with a class activity in order to practice the four communicative skills; have the student print the reports and share the results in class.  If you don't have internet connection in your class, there is a lot of content that can be downloaded, you can leave the "six walls" in your teaching using the PC.

Calling or Blending?

The definition of CALL  (Computer Assisted Language Learning) on Julia Gong’s article is  (1)“the search for and study of applications of the computer in
language teaching and learning”.

On the other hand according to wikipedia (2):  Blended Learning,  is “a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace^{” ,} 

^{and/or "} is a form of education that combines face-to-face classroom methods with computer-mediated activities". 

^{Students may ask you if an activity is Blended or CAL-Learning, or which definition includes the other one?}

From my point of view CALL is a concept that includes Blended Learning  just for the definition or academic discussion. Firstly,   we’re moving toward  smart phones every day (processors inside the  phones), and  you may use a computer in the classroom with no Internet connection at all. Finally,  the second definition of Blended Learning implies a need of at least partial face to face contact, on the contrary if you conduct a completely online course,  like ours for example, you are using  CALL for the class. 

Do you agree?

All ways lead to Rome

This is the end of the second week on the University of Oregon Webskills program, with Robert Elliott the professor I can say that three main conclusions come to my mind: 

1. The importance of setting clear and accurate objectives for teaching is a key element, ABCD method is a great tool

2. There is a lot of information available on the web,  finding it might depend on the accurate search and sources explored

3. You will do and find better information if you take a time to plan what and how will you look for on the Web, you can use Noodles' list to organize your search

So maybe you don't want to go to Rome (ABCD Objective or Google)  so there may be different ways (Strategies, sites, search engines)

Addiotional comemnts on  browsers and resources.

We explored  and tried different web resources provided on a list of Noodletools, these list is very helpful because:

·         Is organized in different search categories or topics, helping the teacher look for an specific resource or plan a search strategy to get find the most accurate information

·         The list allows the student assign tasks to the students  with different purposes using specific sites

·         Reminds you that searching with Ggoogle may not be the best nor the only option for all cases

·         It is important to use the tips provided in the list to get better results with  your browser or search engine

·         Many of the partners in the class use Google, but are very happy with the results offered with some of the alternate search engines and sites provided

2.   

Strategic and Operative ABCD Objectives wk- 2

From Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland, one of my favorites dialogues...

"Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go. ..."

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes

This week we are studyng the ABCD method for writing objectives, ABCD comes from the concepts of Audience, Behavior, Conditions and Degree. 

Planning is the leading or first step in the administrative cycle, the goals in those   terms are strategic or operative, so in education we may also talk about strategic and operative objectives, referring to the general objectives of a Program and objectives for a specific class or session. Therefore, there is a different level of complexity and room for personal innovation.

 If you are designing a new program, you may choose the Audience or target in the market, plan the expected results (behavior) conditions and degree of command, so this process is quite open to  personal inspiration, but when cascading the objective into classes, all those small objectives will have to point to achieving the main ABCD, leaving less space to personal inspiration or innovation. Once Alice decides where she wants to go (ABCD), the Cheshire Cat will be able to help her choosing the pathway (program, strategies, series, staff, academic hours, tests and more).

Luis

Food for thought first week UO Webskills

This first week is about to finish, there is a lot of information and new tools and applications that we've discovered and explored with Robert the e-Teacher in charge of the class: 

1. Interaction on a fully online-virtual program with students from around the world

2. The need to state rules for discussion ,course evaluation  and tasks

3.  Discovering Nicenet as a platform for English teaching and class management, is a free, simple and light platform as Robert says. 

3.Use of google maps to practice some Internet skills and also to have students practice English

4. Creating and managing a blog with Blogger

5. Using google-drive forms as a survey tool

Some conclusions

a. It is important to practice and learn more about the potential of google maps as a blended learning tool 

b. Nicenet gives more control to the teacher than google groups in terms of discussion control and new threads

c.  It is hard to have the students participate and engage in learning process so, the number of posts should be described in a class rubric or ground rules

d. If you are going to generate a discussion activities plan the rules and make sure students understand them, so they don't spam, make no sense comments, respect others opinion and benefit of the process

Ground rules and citation

It is very easy to copy and past when surfing the web, and it may lead us to forget mentioning the original source of the information, that's why citation is an important rule on the e-Webskills course at Oregon University AEI,  when posting on a discussion.

 One way of making citations is following the APA  (American Psychological Association) Citation Style,
http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/apa.  

I found out about APA, when reading  Zahirah binti Wan Mohamed's post in the discussion "Groundrules"

This video gives a good idea about citation and its importance.

My first Blog. week 1

Choosing the name was a complicated decision. I didn't know that Blogger was owned by Google, so it makes it easier to create and handle the Blog, also the chance to link the blog or refer to Google+ contacts gives you the chance to pull people to the Blog.

I think the Blog would  be extremely useful when you have a writing class so you can have the students practice more or less formal written English, and also get more confident to write. Writing online may force students to look for not completely academic English so their vocabulary will increase. Usually students are affraid of making mistakes so using the Blog will force them to overcome the stage frigth.

Luis Fernando