Week eight - Online Resources

During this week, I realized how quickly  time has flown and that our course is gradually coming to an end. Hence, this week offered me a chance to reflect on the technology-related change that I started implementing and once again various tools were introduced to us, which can be used to create online and offline resources to use with our students. 

Many tools  offer the possibility to create online classrooms which are used with students. They can be used for discussions, assigning tasks, uploading and downloading files, such as assignments, extra materials, quizzes, questionnaires, etc. 

Others offer online and offline possibilities to create worksheets, exercises, crosswords, word searches and much more. 

All these resources offer possibilities to reinforce students' skills, such as critical thinking skills, language, and communicative skills; enhance student collaboration and most importantly promote learner autonomy. 

Online classrooms:

www.nicenet.org 

www.blogger.com  

www.padlet.com

www.wikispaces.com

Tools to create worksheets and more:

http://www.toolsforeducators.com/

http://print-bingo.com/

http://www.easytestmaker.com/default.aspx

http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/general_content/free_resources/teachers_corner/flashcard/flashcardmaker.jsp

http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html

http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

Looking forward to exploring all the endless possiblities!

Krenare

Week seven - Leaner autonomy and technology-enhanced lessons

Transforming our students into autonomous learners is a continuous process which requires perpetual efforts, both from the teachers and students’ side, accompanying these with the development of various skills that contribute to learners becoming self-critical and aware of their learning, thus giving them opportunities to improve themselves.

As Dimitrios Thanasoulas, author of “What is Learner Autonomy and How Can it Be Fostered?” states in his article (http://iteslj.org/Articles/Thanasoulas-Autonomy.html) there are many attributes that characterize an autonomous learner and which have to be taken into account when fostering learner autonomy. Some of these attributes include the awareness of students towards their learning styles and strategies, being active while working on different tasks, being motivated, addressing learner’s specific needs, etc.

Technology can be used as an extremely appealing and attractive tool to provide students with limitless opportunity in becoming autonomous learners. Having started to implement the technological related change in my classroom, this week I had the chance to experience on of the most hectic, but rewarding days in school. In order to practice writing a paragraph, students used laptops writing on Microsoft Word Documents and using Edmodo to upload their files. In comparison to our typical writing lessons I noticed various differences, such as:

- The students were much more excited and motivated to work on the task, therefore, they used their time more efficiently and were very eager to work on the task;

- They were able to track their progress and autocorrect their spelling mistakes using ‘spelling and grammar’ option in Microsoft Word, thus becoming more aware of spelling rules and their writing habits;

- It was very useful for students that they had already planned the key information for their paragraph, through a graphic organizer and illustrations;

-     - Once a student was done working on their assignment they were willing to help others in writing and using the technological tools;

Even though the students need time to get acquainted with using technology for educational purposes, their motivation and interest are key factors that will drive their learning process.

Next time during our technological-enhanced lesson, the students will be working in groups and will create online invitation cards for their thematic party, which they have planned beforehand.

Feeling motivated!

Krenare  

Week six - Implementing a technology-related change

Engaging students in learning is a crucial element in the learning process, which is achieved through the implementation of various techniques, and results in student-centered lessons, where students are active participants in the learning process and acquire the knowledge by exploring the content through numerous tasks given by the teacher who acts as a facilitator. Keeping students motivated and interested in learning is attained by varying our lessons to break the routine and surprise our students and by giving them the tools to work with, which in turn help them acquire knowledge through a natural process.

Engaging students and having active participation in the classroom shifts the attention from the teacher, which is a trait of traditional teaching, to the students who become a part of interactive learning. The development of technology has propelled and facilitates this shift by offering teachers unlimited possibilities to use it as a tool in attaining learning objectives by having students act as the main actors in this process.

This course’s week was very exciting since I got to experience the first step towards making a technology-related change. As my goal is to improve my fifth-grade students’ writing skills, I have been researching and selecting different tools to use in my classrooms. Among others, I have also selected Edmodo (www.edmodo.com) as the main platform where students will communicate with each other in English, work on different tasks and assignments and share different links with their classmates, hence become autonomous learners and better users of English.

In the last lesson for this week, my students and I created our online classrooms. After introducing briefly this website, I helped the students create their accounts and they also gave their answers in a poll that I had posted beforehand.

It was amazing to see the children’s excitement and their curiosity to start exploring this tool. Right from the beginning they kept asking questions related to the website, such as:

-          how can we upload our pictures,

-          how can we post, what can we post,

-          who can see our posts,

-          how can our parents login,

-          how can we find the code,

-          how can we win badges?

After school, I uploaded a riddle, just to see if they would react and how. From that point on the majority of them have been responding to my post and not only. Many of them have been uploading their own riddles, jokes, and links and responding to their peers’ posts. What is more, I can immediately identify areas which they are struggling with and provide my student with instant feedback, suggestions, and links with videos giving instructions on certain uses and practice through games.

I can’t wait to go back to class on Tuesday and see their reactions and hear their feedback. I think that from this point on they will be much more motivated in learning and this will give them a chance to not only become autonomous learners, but also improve their skills in English and technology as well by using it appropriately.

Until next time!

Krenare   

Week five - Alternative Assessment and Problem Based Learning

When teaching a language the learning outcomes, that we set in each lesson, are important factors that contribute to the final results that we aim to achieve at the end of a level or course. However, when tracking the students progress, testing if they can perform a specific task or produce a simple structure is not proof enough that they are able to use those structures in real life situations. Therefore, a continuous assessment should take place when evaluating the students’ progress. As John M. Norris points out in his article “Purposeful Language Assessment: Selecting The Right Alternative Test”, language assessment is a process which uses tests or other methods of evaluation to collect data on students performance and then use those data to take action within the classroom, course, program or curriculum.

Students are much more motivated when they are given various tools to work with, when they don’t know what to expect and when they can express themselves in different forms, either through writing, role-playing, giving speeches, reading or performing well in a test. Hence, in order to keep the students motivated and interested in our lessons, we as teachers need to provide them with dynamic lessons, tasks and expectations. The expectations for each assignment can be given through the use of rubrics which are important when it comes to informing students about the criteria. RubiStar (http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=NewRubric) is a great online tool which can be used to create rubrics).

Problem Based Learning is a great tool which offers the students the possibility to work on topics that interest them, using an innovative approach in which students are required to gather, process and report information, come up with final products and are given the chance to be autonomous learners, whereas teachers act as facilitators guiding students through this process. This method engages students in collaborative learning, who in  groups, try to answer a driving question which as John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller put in their article (Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning) “should capture the heart of the project in clear, compelling language, which gives students a sense of purpose and challenge”.

As PBL requires the students to complete a series of tasks it also requires the use of rubrics to set clear expectations and the use of alternative assessment to evaluate students’ various skills and their final products.

Best of all,

Krenare

Week four - More resources

This has been a very hectic week with the Problem Based Learning week in our school, various tests to check and the preparations for this week's lessons. Therefore, it was very relaxing to read the articles of our course when I was able to find the time. 

With all the activities, I feel like a need to go over the materials of this week one more time and read all the comments and thoughts that others have shared. 

I'll get back to you soon!

Krenare

Week three - New resources, new ideas

During this week of the course, we concentrated on Teaching Aural/Oral Skills, but not only.

We started the week with a great tool I had never heard of. I am a person that likes to collect things, therefore, I am constantly bookmarking pages which I visit or use later. And every time I switched computers, I would always copy the bookmarks to my new browser or write them down in a piece of paper for later use. So, finding out that there is a way to save bookmarks online was very interesting. Through social bookmarking, you can save all the links online, share them with others and see what the others have saved and shared. Delicious offers the possibility to do this and you can use the bookmarks from any computer. Until now, whenever I wanted to use a link with my students I would send it to my e-mail, however since the beginning of this week I have started using Delicious and it is much easier and convenient. 

The next topic we worked on was Teaching Aural/Oral Skills and the articles that we read offered insights as to why teaching pronunciation is important and we were also introduced to different ideas on how to plan a teaching lesson. The following websites offer great resources which can be easily modified to suit our and our learners' needs. I was able to prepare a very interesting lesson on Halloween using resources from the first two websites. 

One Stop English               

http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/speaking/teaching-ideas/

The Internet TESL Journal for Teachers of English as a Second Language 

http://iteslj.org/

American English - a website for Teachers and Learners of English as a Foreign Language

http://americanenglish.state.gov/search/solrf%5B0%5D=bundle%3Aresource&f%5B1%5D=im_field_resource_pedagogy_categ%3A88

As we have to write a project for finding and trying a new technological tool or technique to address specific problems in our classrooms, this week we had to read previous participants' projects. I had the chance to read a very interesting project written by a teacher in Burkina Faso, who was working at that time with a class of 80 students, coming from different backgrounds. It really made an impression on me how the teacher took the courage to improve students' writing skills through technology and e-mail correspondence, in an environment where the majority of students didn't even have the acquired knowledge to use computers or  the internet. This teacher found a way to boost the students confidence  and curiosity and trained them to use computers first and then helped them improve their writing skills. 

Until next time!

Krenare

Week two - New tools to work with

Week two of the course unfolded interesting topics to work with. During this week I read about, researched and reflected on mainly two key topics, Web Searching and the ABCD Model for Behavioral Objectives.

I believe that the first topic, Web Searching, has a significant importance for me since it raised my awareness towards a tool that I have been using forever and it made me realize that I knew little about it or its endless possibilities. Until know, I thought that searching the internet for information on a search engine was a job done fairly easy as long as you wrote down the key words of the topic you were searching for. I also had some general information about the rules that you can apply when trying to specify the search or to do a more advanced one, for instance using quotation marks when searching for phrases instead of single words or adding filetype:pdf to get hits* accordingly to the file type specified, in this case PDF files (filetype:doc for hits including files in Microsoft Office Word, or filetype:ppt for Microsoft Power Point, etc). During this week’s exploration I came across numerous techniques which helped me do better searches and therefore find better results. By trying out different tips and rules to apply when searching for information on the internet will help me master this skill which in turn will save me time and will not only help me find other technological tools that can be used to facilitate learning, but it will also aide me in my work and daily life, it will help me find the right information, materials and answers.

Reading and reflecting about learning objectives reminded me of their importance, equipped me with further information about them and triggered me to research more in relation to this topic. The article on Writing Objectives by the Pennsylvania State University’s Teaching and Learning Office points out that writing a clear objective is important because it defines what the students will do and it provides a link between expectations, teaching and grading. Setting clear objectives facilitates learning since they help in organizing a lesson and the activities carried out which in turn contribute to students being more active and informed in regards to what they are expected to know and to what degree. As it is true that everytime a topic is tackled from a different perspective something new comes up, I received new information on how to write objectives using a very simple but well structured model, known as the ABCD method. (see below for more information on how this method works). I will start using this method because it is simple but well structured and it includes every important element of a clear, well written objective.

This week’s material has prompted me to look more into these topics and use the ideas for my daily work, and it has aroused my curiousity about the tools that we will work with during next week.

*hit: the result on the search engine that fit the criteria given 

You can find more information on Web Searching and Behavioral Learning Objectives on the following links:

Web Searching: http://pages.uoregon.edu/dhealey/techtips/june2009.html, Technology Tip of the Month by Deborah Healey.

Writing Objectives: http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/, by the Pennsylvania State University’s Teaching and Learning Office.

Until next time

Krenare