Week 10-

 These nine weeks have been really productive, but even a bit tiring for me I had too many tasks to accomplish in a limited time. Thus time management became the key word to succeed and success to me (but I suppose even to my colleagues). Some times I was really in doubt with myself and often I had the impression that I was not going to succeed because of my lack of knowledge in technological matters, consequently I had to work really hard to be accomplish the tasks successfully.

Personally, I think that the course's syllabus was well-constructed by providing to us all the supportive material we need. The materials and the task we studied and did every week were mainly of two types theoretical and practical. All the materials were hand in hand together, the theoretical materials to support the practical ones, but not always. As far as practical exercise I would mention the creation of: blogs, wiki, delicious, webquest, Rubi rubric, interactive PPP, Google maps etc. Whereas the theoretical materials helped us to Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials, The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills, Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction, hree Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books, Less Teaching and More Learning" by Susan Gaer gives some background information about project-based learning, Student Learning Styles and Their Implications for Teaching, etc.

 Students do and learn better with technology. Unfortunately, I have discovered this recently, only after the course began. Yesterday was my last day of school and next week the students are going to take exams for all the courses they had followed this term. As it was the last day, I asked my students to fill out an anonymous questionnaire about what they though about the subject, if the objectives were clear for them, if the lectures have been very difficult, etc. but I was more interested in the implement of the technology and if they found it useful or not, if they think it helped them to learn better and more, if it increased their critical thing and learning autonomy; and I also asked them to provide suggestion to improve what they think needed to be done in a different way.

The result was amazing. I was really surprised because I didn't expect from them such a positive feedback; almost all of them found blogs and the wiki page useful, some of them even suggested that it should be obligatory for all the students and for all the subjects (my initial idea was to experiment and then compare the students who used technology with those who didn't).

Anyway this simple questionnaire opened my eyes on how much the students can profit from technology in class and outside.

Has this course made us better teachers?!
If better means more conscious about the potentiality of technology the answer would be "YES, IT HAS"

Well, unfortunately this would be the last blog for this course and I want to say THANK YOU to all the participants for their thoughtful comments and to Donna for her extraordinary support. I will remember this for very very long THANK YOU :-)

BELIEVE AND YOU WILL SUCCEED!!!

Enjoy the Cake:

Week 9- Multiple Intelligences

This week's discussions and reading materials brought to our attention to the "multiple intelligences" and the various elements that enhance each type of intelligence. The key ingredient to this revise of the Gardener's Theory was the use of technology to increase our students academic performance and results. Personally, I always try to adopt and implement various activities appropriate for the intelligence of my students, although till now they were not very high-tech.

Keeping in mind the variety of students “minds” and the fact that each of them had different learning abilities, I asked my students to do the test to find out what kind of learner they were http://www.nedprod.com/Niall_stuff/intelligence_test.html. Faced with different types of learners I came to the conclusion that the Blog and Wiki page and the internet emails are not enough. After that I discovered that in my class I had:

1. Verbal-Linguistic.

Students learn best through language including speaking, writing, reading and listening. The technology advised should be focused on the creation of stories, reading comprehension, comments, poems, letters, articles, interviews, presentations, chats, debating.

2. Visual-Spatial.

Students can learn easier visually and tend to organize their thinking spatially. People like visual elements. We can use technology to work with comics, art, design, puzzles, animation, illustrations, graphs, presentations, paint programs, photoshop, charts, and video conferencing. For this group of learners I created an Interactive PowerPoint and as this was their first IPP they were surprised.

3. Musical-Rhythmic.

Students learn best by means of songs, sounds, rhythms. They like and compose music. Technology can be used for playing musical instruments, to produce video clips, animations, DVDs and CDs audios. I posted on my wiki some interesting links where the students can listen to their favorite songs and practice English.

4. Intrapersonal.

These students learn best through metacognictive practices such as getting in touch with their feelings and self motivation. Technology can be used in concept maps, internet research, blogs, multimedia portfolios, video projects, diaries, journals, etc. Thus to help the students I created a Webquest http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=100445  which in reality had little to do with the course. This webquest has little to with the course subject and it was done as pedagogical exercise for my students.

5. Interpersonal.

Students learn best through interaction with other people, through discussions, cooperative work or social activities. Technology tools could be used with this group, such as: blogs (some of them have already created their blogs), e mail projects, forums, discussions, group presentations, social networks, virtual worlds, games.

Gardner's Theory is useful in several aspects. It helps the teachers to know who are their learners, their talents, their kind of mind and provide them appropriate activities and exercises. This is theory is also helpful for the students because it can orient them for their future careers based in their type of intelligence. And we all know how important is to find the right type of profession....

Marsi

Week 8- ANVILL- QUIZZ

 Till now we have discussed, have studied, practiced various site to make the teaching learning-process as fruitful as we possible through technology. Anvill seems to incorporate all the necessary features to become an indispensable tool in the teaching process. Thus for this week I decided to post a video where Jef tells us how to use Anvill for quizzes.

Week 7- One Computer class and autonomy

In this week's blog I will not reflect on my week's assignment as I have usually done by writing and writing till it seemed endless.

 I have decide to shore with you this post which lasts only 2 minutes but what fruitful insights and advices for the teachers....so take a few minutes to have a look ate it...

Marsi

Learner autonomy

Week 6- Motivating students to learn

After the creation of the Webquest, this week we dealt with another very important tool: The interactive PowerPoint to increase class participation, students interest, curiosity and creating a comfortable atmosphere for the students. My IPP was really simple. It was in the form of a quiz, where the student was supposed to find the right answer from a selection of answers provided. It was a first attempt and it was successful. I am even thinking on how to implement it with my students during the lectures, how to make the lecture more interactive and student-centered.

Honestly this was the first time I used the action buttons and the rest, it was a bit time consuming till I gained some confidence and practice with the buttons, but after that things went better. It is very strange learning some thing new from a program I have been used for more than 5 years until now, sometimes it even make me think what else are we going to discover???
Marsi

 

Week 6= Interaactive PowerPoint

Week 5. -Rubistar, WebQuest,...

This week has been really tough!!
I had some personal arrangement which I could not postpone and a limited time for reading and the rest of the tasks. The time-limit had been an acute problem for me I think I had not properly "digested" all the materials of this week...


Anyway, Rubistar and webQuest were new discoveries, very practical and helpful. They somehow provide me some good sources of assessing and motivating students.


The questions that Carl raised were thought-provoking and help us see the whole process of evaluating and assessing from a different angle. 


Hope this week will be better... 

Week 4 - multi-skills webs and us....

When you compare your self  with a human being, what you notice are perhaps differences and similarities, things you find charming and other you would like to improve. But when you compare your self with a skyscraper what impresses you most is your tiny figure, your limits, your drawbacks and the enormousness of the skyscraper. Somehow this is how the web seems to me, a huge skyscraper, an enormous tool with unlimited possiblilities, endless resources and information. . . and I the tiny creature trying to go step by step to the last floor of it.....more than an impossible mission!!! 

This week multi-skills webs were really helpful and fascinating. Some of the tasks were not only multi-skills, but also multi-functional. I especially like the quizzes' page at www.manything.org, the bbc page, etc. I don't even remember...they were many, luckily Delicious can refresh our memories from time to time. The majority of the pages I visited were helpful for the students but also for the teachers.

The article I read was about using e-book to promote and motivate students to read more. The author has pointed out some interesting procedure on how to motivate students to read more using the net and e-books, I liked the idea of dividing the students into groups and assigning each of them a different task. I think I will try her ideas...

Well, ready for week 5 now...

Marsi

Week 3- "Piano piano si va sanno, e si va lontano"

While I was working in this week's tasks this Italian proverb, which I thought I had forgotten long ago appeared in my mind. It expresses the idea that it is better to achieve your own aims step by step and even pondering on your steps which in theory is similar with the methodological approach followed by the web course.

The first task of the 3rd week was the URL on Delicious, something entirely new to me and the majority of the group. It was easy...or as its name's suggest, it was just delicious....This new URL, a more advance form than Bookmark, gave us the possibility to access our favorite webpages from every computer.

The 2nd task was related with the contribution of technology CALL in teaching and reinforcing the students' linguistic skills. The articles I read are 'Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials" (Lindsay Miller) and "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation" (Maria Grazia Busa). Both the articles were helpful and in two words I would classify the 1st as more practical whereas the 2nd as more experimental.

The 3rd was the analysis of the sample project from the previous year. I read all of the samples quickly and the one that attracted my attention was Camelia Pagila's project School with classes I-VIII, Academician Marin Voiculescu, Giurgiu, Romenia and Nadina Nicolici, Lorin Salagean Technical High School, Romania.

Personally, what I consider as a real achievement and innovation in Paglia's project is the incorporation of Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, with the various teaching methods in a lesson and with the implementation of technology in the teaching process mainly by using the blogs. Her idea of using Blogs in the teaching process is very similar to my first project idea. Moreover I agree with Pagila’s idea that students love to blog and it gives another opportunity to shy students to get more engaged in the classroom and outside it.  

The second sample project which I really appreciated for being practical and somehow even a bit more innovative and it has also some similarities with the subject I am teaching this semester, is Nadina Nicolici's. After a clear and detailed explanation of her audience, her classroom setting and the classification of the students’ learning styles, she presents the reader with the overall objectives of her subject and students’ needs. She explains them thoroughly, but I think she misses an important element if we refer to the ABCD model, and this is the time/semester.    

Nicolici encouraged her students to have their blogs, read the blog that she created for the class and comment on it. In addition to the blog, she created her wiki page so the students could have the possibility to get some helpful web-pages aimed at helping them learn more, to find some good online dictionaries, online exercises and games, quizzes on different topics where they could practice all the four skills: listening, speaking, writing and reading.

I really hope to find the best way out to put together all this knowledge ....

Week 2 - Is over...?!

My God!!!
I really find it hard to believe that this second week is almost over...
It has been a really fruitful week on several aspects, although the number of tasks to fulfill were a bit demanding. 

The First task was the ABCD Objectives, a thing completely unknown to me, and even to the others. After exploring several sites and articles, I come across an interesting article who somehow illuminated me and gave me the answers I was looking for. This model incorporates the four basic components in the teaching-learning process, A - audience, B- behavior, C- condition and D- degree. After I read how this separated elements could be implemented together for an overall objective I noticed that the ABCD objective is very helpful for the teacher and for the students. It makes things clear from the start what we (the teachers) are supposed to do and how the students are supposed to behave to be assessed properly. I think I will adopt this objective in my teaching process.

The second important task we had to prepare was the first draft of the Final Project. After I racked my brain I came up with the idea that the best thing to do was to use blogs to foster the students knowledge and motivate them to read more and express themselves freely in their blogs. I tried to explain to my students what I had in mind and they found the idea interesting, they were enthralled at the idea of being 'the masters' of their blogs and they saw the use of English language as a challenge. I really hope they will have the same attitude till the end of the project, they are a bit lazy and extra homework is always a good reason to complain...

The last but not the least important were the many search engines that we had the chance to use and navigate. I have always been a Google fan and now with the enormous variety of sites it will be difficult for me to stick to the old habit, thank God! The sites were really endless and they seem to offer 'the right solution for every kind of difficulties or problems.

Week 2- Mid week Reflection

We are almost are in the middle of the second week...

A lot of work has been done, a lot of time in front of the net has been spent, and the more information you get, the more you want. It seems like an endless process but with a very humanistic aim 'improving our teaching skills.'

Today I read some papers and links about the ABCD Model, but still I am not very sure what it really means and how I can implement it with my work. So I have to work harder on this point.

Today I did the first draft on my final project. I have a lot of ideas in my mind, but I have to ponder carefully on the details, the results, the students reaction and a lot of other questions that invade my mind.

Marsi 

Reflecting.....

Well, here we are... almost at the end of the first week and ready to put everything in a scale; to balance our successes and failures, to ponder on what we have gained and what we have left behind, where we have arrived and how far there is to go. I imagine everyone in the position of Robinson Crusoe in the isolated island trying to calculate the positive and the negative sides of his disaster.

In a hyperbolic way, of course, this resembles my situation. However, mine is a wonderful choice for a brighter future and although the starting difficulties I will never regret this!

Let's focus on what I have gained this week. I have had the chance to meet very professional teachers and share my teaching experiences with them. I become acquainted with on-line teaching, something entirely unknown for me. I have created my first blog, ( and the second as well, because I didn't like the first) and I am already thinking of how to use it with my students.

I think this is a good start!!

-Marsi