Week 10, 11 December 2013

This is the last entry of the course blog but definitely I am not going to stop using this tool – as I stated in my project, it is going to be used with my students next semester so I do wait impatiently to see how much they will like itJ

First of all, I would like to express my awe for these great people – the devoted educators from all over the world and, first of all, for Courtney for such a wonderful course. My thanks also go to the US Embassy and the University of Oregon for letting me participate in this course.

These 10 weeks seemed long at first but with the passing time, you can see it’s over now and although we were given quite a lot of work to do, now I could have a feeling of missing something. But of course, the learning experience, discussions, sharing knowledge with other course participants enriched my teaching and learning skills.

Honestly, it is difficult to choose the most useful topics of this course as all of them led us to the final product – it was like puzzle elements to be put together to see the whole. Blogging, wiki or creating online and offline exercises will become part of my teaching now and I won’t be afraid of using it any more in the classroom. Besides, I learned a lot about new sites to explore.

All in all, I feel that all these topics and tools we were presented with should be incorporated in this course as teachers not only benefit from learning about them but also they can reflect on their teaching. For sure, technology is and will be in the classroom  and our task is to take advantage of it.

Once again, thank you.

With love and best wishes,

Ewa

Week 9, 4 December

Reflecting on week 9 assignment, the discussion dealt with learning styles and how they may be enhanced through using technology in the language classroom. As always, we were given several reading materials to discover, discuss and next reflect about the use of technology to enhance learning styles.

Gardner distinguishes 9 types of intelligences nowadays:

1. Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence (speaking, listening, reading or writing)

2.    Logical-Mathematical Intelligence (reasoning, problem solving and numbers)

3.  Kinesthetic Intelligence (making physical exercises, movements)

4.    Visual-Spatial Intelligence (visually delimiting the space)

5. Musical Intelligence (hearing or producing sounds)

6. Interpersonal Intelligence (discussing, working in groups or cooperatively)

7. Intrapersonal Intelligence (working in isolation or by reflecting on their emotions and feelings)

8. Naturalist Intelligence (the contact with nature)

9. Existentialist Intelligence (philosophical reflections about the human beings’ existence)

After reading articles on Gardener’s work, it is important to say that by identifying learners' strengths and weaknesses, teachers could re-design their classes by integrating multiple intelligences in order to cover different learning styles in the same class. This fact could help teachers facilitate their students' learning process.

It is true that technology can help provide a range of learning styles in the classroom. Each of our students is different and when designing a lesson or a course, we should take into consideration different intelligences and learning styles as well. Photos, music, logical exercises, puzzles or experiments – all these things once brought into the classroom by a teacher can be now replaced by a computer and the Internet. Catering for different styles, we should try to use a variety of tools that technology provides us with, for example:

-          Photos, films, PowerPoint presentations, flashcards or pages with maps for visual learners,

-          Puzzles, crosswords for logical / mathematical

-          Music, films, reading online stories, jazz chants  for musical ones,

-          TPR in a film for Bodily/Kinesthetic,

-           Vocabulary and grammar exercises, spelling sites (http://www.spellingcity.com/) , reading, stories and poems for Verbal-Linguistic,

-          “sighseeing” the sites about nature, “virtual travelling” to far-away places for Naturalist

-          Using social networking, peer teaching (checking by posting on a blog) for interpersonal

-          Journal log = blog keeping for intrapersonal

If we vary the activities that we use in your lessons, we are sure to cater for learners with different learning styles. What is important, the learner’s profile is changing and all the intelligences work together, so we should not focus on one only.

Finally, the last and the most important part of this course is the final project report to be submitted   on 6^th Friday!!! Still some work to be done but thanks to peer-reading by our course partners, I do hope to polish it. Thank you Akbar and Muhammad.

Warm regards

Week 8, 1 December 2013

Another week passing by: still so much to be explored and tried out with students in the class. This week was really interesting after having a chance to look at some sites with practical tools and exercises to take and use in the classroom. To be honest, this week gives an insight of what technology really is. After learning about the Nicenet, Blogger, google sites or powerpoint presentations, I can simply state that technology should be used in the classroom and it is really easy and convenient to integrate technology in to classroom. All the information we got either from our teacher or all learners involved in this course is really useful.

This week we were assigned to use different tools and implement them in the classroom. All of them for free and simple to use, though at first I had a completely different point of view.

The suggested sources I checked are:

1)      I also had a Chance to use WebPosterWizard, which I may use in my projects –http://poster.4teachers.org/worksheet/view.php?id=169516.

2)      SMILE – another interesting site to visit – gives a choice of web-based activity generators. The application I’ve checked is WORKSHEETS, unfortunately it takes time to learn how to use them. But definitely I will try to use it.

3)       http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html – very simple and easy to use, every topic or grammar can be checked here; suitable for different students’ levels.

http://www.mywordsearchmaker.com/play/2013-11-30-QCP9GP.html

1)      http://bogglesworldesl.com/ - a great source of various activities: crosswords and word searches, flash cards, verbs, songs. Besides, one can chose from lesson plans and work sheets. Great for lower levels of students.

This week I do plan to create a class site using Nicenet and a class blog. The technology changes I am going to introduce are connected with writing thus I think that these two tools would be the most appropriate for them. I will start using them next semester, in February, so still I have some time to test and chose the best applications, sites and online exercises that would work with my students. Besides, they still can benefit a lot from other sites to practice the general knowledge of English, like to have some practice in nouns, verbs or adjectives.

After sending the draft of the project report, still a lot to be done in my case. It is not easy to come back to your duties after almost a 3-week absence. But I will try to do my best and catch up with the other course friends. I am working now on the final version of my  Project Plan report, and the timeline is not finished yet.

Week 7, 24 November

This week we were to focus on Learner Autonomy,  The One Computer Class, as well as the use of Mobile Devices.

The whole week was rich in reading, learning about the concept of learner autonomy and finally talking about the use of mobile devices. As for the autonomy, there is a need for students to take charge of their own learning, making them responsible for what they are doing and at the same time promoting the lifelong learning (they have a right to determine the direction of their own learning) (Holec, 1979/1981). It seems to me that rote learning technique, which was widely used in the past in Polish schools, is slowly disappearing.

What came to my mind while thinking of making students more responsible for their teaching is the idea of a flipped classroom model; see link: http://www.knewton.com/flipped-classroom/

As for the second part of our readings and tasks to be done -One Computer Class - I can list some of the pros of using it in the classroom: the computer can be used for writing (letters, quizzes, note taking), as a language resource (dictionaries, thesaurus), materials (images, music, videos, podcasts, e-books), to promote social networking activities or just to communicate (e-mails).
To continue with the topic of ICT in the classroom, it's worth mentioning the growing role of the mobiles in everyday life, either inside or outside the classroom. The teaching and learning activities to be done using these devices are as many as you can find on the computer, thus many people seem to call a mobile a very private computer to carry in a pocket. Even I myself use the mobile much too often than I used to in the past.

Week 6, November 24th

The week 6 titled "Creating Student-centered Classes and Interactive PowerPoint" dealt mainly with two issues: teaching large classes and the use of PowerPoint to increase interactivity in the classroom.

The topic of large classes is pretty new to me as for many years I have been teaching groups of students not bigger than 15-16 students. Anyway, the ideas presented in the readings on the webpage: http://tep.uoregon.edu/resources/largeclasses/usingtechnology.html can be used in any classroom.

The quote I find very useful here is:
“ Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.” (Chinese proverb)

I would like to focus  more on presentations here; PowerPoint can encourage student learning by engaging them more in the learning process as multiple learning styles can be reached easily. Adding animations, inserting multimedia or using interaction seem to be working well towards students' success as we need to teach to as many of  preferences in how we learn best as possible. Thus, some points to remember (do's and don'ts) are: break the ice, eg. effective openings, eg. start with a joke,  don't make the brain switch off, use the hands-on approach, don't run over the time, involve the audience, use the menu, make the structure very clear, use visuals, summarise what you've said at the end  of  (or throughtout) the presentation, don't patronise and remember about the standing room.
Another very intriguing topic discussed in week 6 was the use of interactive Powerpoint - never done before by me thus quite challenging.
 

Week 4, November 2nd

The next week is almost finished and still so many sites to be explored.... this week we were into websites for writing and reading skills. And again, a number of new websites to be added to my teaching list. Every time I open a new activity or an app, I promise myself to put it into practice, but it's not so easy. Little by little, however, I try to change the classroom environment I work in. For example, last week I invited my students to create a blog for our English lesson; seeing their reluctance, I thought it would never work out but finally they agreed:-)
For the next few weeks I plan to use the information I've just learned about the writing and reading websites; I liked the one about the museum, where your task is to choose a picture and describe it following the questions you see on the screen. I think it might be great fun and, for sure, students may get involved as they would see this activity as fun and game, not real learning.

Week 3 - 27 October

Week 3 - 27 October

Unfortunatelly, the next week is over and me still promising myself to find more time to get into technology. The time is "shrinking" each day, every week so I try to do my best to follow the assignments and the colleagues from the course ( even today when we changed the time by setting it one hour back in Poland, still 24 hours were not enough ;-) )
As for my reflections, well..... all of my colleagues are really doing a great job, just the men for the job. I wish I could join them:-)
Referring to the material given this week, I found it really interesting and involving; for sure, some of the sites and activities I found there I am going to use with my students, some of them I would send to my friend who is using ICT in teaching to young learners.
I was scared a bit about Delicious but there was no point in it; it turns out to be really a helpful site; I will try to add more links and sites to the list.