Week 10

I can't believe that tomorrow is the last day of our course. These ten weeks have been very intensive and they have changed my life. I have become a modern teacher of the era of technology. I feel proud and excited.

In my view, all the topics of the course were important and all the tools we were introduced to were relevant. Most of all, I was amazed by WebQuests, ANVILL, Wallwisher, Rubrics, Interactive PPT, Blogger. But I'm going to study and try many other Internet wonders in my work. Now I feel that after I have opened this door together with my students, we will move farther and farther exploring the web.

I also liked the way we were led to our final project report, step by step. It was a good example how we should lead our students in their project work.    

Now I'd like to give a short outlook of my learning experience and my feelings during these 10 weeks.

Week 1. Creating the blog. A blog? Me? Can I do it? Wow! I did it!

Week 2. Search englines. Not GOOGLE? How many!!!

              ABCD objectives. What's this? A hard nut to crack. I need to read more.

Week 3. Aural / Oral skill-building websites. Fantastic! Useful!

              Creating Delicious page. What a good idea! Yummy!

Week 4. Reading / Writing skill-building websites. Useful again.
             Creating a technology-enhanced lesson plan. The Internet in class? The first try ... and quite successful. How could I do without it before?

Week 5. Project-based learning and WebQuests. I adore WebQuests! I must make a WebQuest in my final project.

               Rubrics and alternative assessment. Great! Students can assess themselves!

Week 6. Creating student-centered learning. Discussion boards and LMS - super!

               Interactive PPT. It's like making a puzzle. I like it! So do the students!

Week 7. Learner atonomy. One-computer classroom. Good tips!

               Wallwisher. I'm so charmed that want to make it immediately!    
                                   (http://padlet.com/wall/t79i90xyaq)

               Implementing a technology-related change. A bit nervous. Excited. Exhausted.

Week 8. ANVILL. How does it work? I want to try it. Wow! It's a treasure!

               Creating an online exercise. Hot potatoes - super!

               Draft report. I need to concentrate. It's important.

Week 9. Learning styles. More useful tips and things to think over.

               Final project report. Hope I managed to improve it.

Week 10. I'm sad.

Good-bye!

Week 9

This week was very productive. I countinued carrying out my technology-based project. After analysing the first results I had to make some changes in the project such as changing the deadlines for the WebQuest tasks, drawing students' attention to some rubric points, making discussion questions more specific to check students’ listening comprehension skills. 

At the beginning of the week I read some articles and other participants' posts on learner intelligences. I learnt a lot of theoretical and practical things, how technology could help us to address to different learning styles. It helped me to look at my project and at using technological tools in a new way. I realised that technology offers a lot of opportunities for students with different types of intelligence to learn English most effectively. And we, teachers, should take advantage of it while planning our lessons.

Another thing I worked on was improving my final project report. I'm grateful to Robert and my partner Yubaraj for their useful recommendations which helped me to complete my work. I uploaded the report on our class wiki.

I got the first feedback from my students.I created a post on the classes’ blogs in which I asked them to share their thoughts on the changes that technology had brought to their English lessons and to the process of learning English in general. 94% think positively about the new change and would like to continue using technology for learning English. So, in the future I will definitely keep on using the Internet and computer technologies in my lessons. I have only touched a small part of them and I'm going to try many more things technology offers. I 'm so excited! 

Also I answered the questions of the survey related to the course evaluation. I was sincere while giving my answers and I really think this course deserves the highest grade. 
 

Week 8

Another very intensive week is coming to an end.

At first, I had to write a draft version of my final project report and send it to my partner, Yubaraj. Actually, it was quite time consuming in spite of the fact that we had been led to it step by step for several weeks. I used some final projects of past years' participants as an example and I tried to answer the questions stated in the project report template. I realised it was not complete when I finished, but I was lacking in time. I uploaded my draft version on our class wiki in my team's work place.

Then I read my partner's draft report, downloaded the checklist for peer review template and wrote my review with some comments and advice. I hope they will be useful for Yubaraj. While I was checking his draft report, I was able to look critically at my own report and I worked out what I needed to do to improve it. Now I'm looking forward to getting my partner's comments to have the whole picture.

This week has made another discovery for me - ANVILL. This virtual language lab is a real wonder. It gives a lot of opportunities for developing listening, speaking, writing skills, for practising pronunciation and reading aloud. At first, it looked a bit complicated but then, with the help of Jeff Magoto, this week's guest, and his clear explanations and demonstrations I managed to work out how to use ANVILL. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to join the webinar about ANVILL but I'm going to watch its recording soon. 

Another task was to create an online course site or an exercise to use online or offline. I decided to try to use ANVILL and create my video course. In my ANVILL course students have to do the three tasks: to watch the episode, to do the quiz and to record a short summary with the help of Voiceboards. I was amazed by the way it worked.You can make either video or audio recording. It allows having the recordings and the quiz results of all the students doing the course. It's a very convenient, easy to use and effective language toolbox. Students can do the tasks at home at their own speed and the teacher has the opportunity to listen to each student. In the future, I am going  to add more lessons to the course. You can see my video course here: https://anvill.uoregon.edu/anvill2/node/43344

Also I used the Hot Potatoes software and created a crossword on the topic "Family" for my Grade 9 students and uploaded it on the Internet.  I have been using Hot Potatoes for a year but I have never uploaded my documents on the net. I usually made HTML documents to use in our language laboratory for practising new vocabulary and grammar, reading comprehension or for testing. It's a very convenient tool which allows you to make exercises based on the material you are teaching. You can see it here: http://uk3.hotpotatoes.net/ex/98589/PUAZATBQ.php

And, of course, I continued my work on implementing new technologies in my lessons. I have made several changes in the project after getting the first results. I hope this project will help students to improve their language skills and encourage their autonomy.

Week 7

Wow! It has been a great week. First, I discovered many ideas for using one computer in a classroom, such as a strategy when a computer is used as one of the "stations" described by Glori Chaika in her article "How to Thrive - Not Just Survive - in a One-Computer Classroom". She gives some useful tips how to organize students' work posting a schedule, drawing Popsicle sticks and establishing color-coded groups. Also I liked Robert's idea with recording students' voices for practicing pronunciation and speaking. What impressed me most was a wallwisher. I find it a very attractive and convenient tool for creative group work. Besides class projects, a wallwisher can be used for many purposes, for example, as a class greeting card with wishes, music, pictures for someone who has a birthday or celebrates some special event. I added an URL about learner autonomy to our class wallwisher and was able to get some good ideas, schemes, articles shared by the other participants. I was even encouraged to create my own wallwisher for my 6th graders where I'm going to place their stories and organize a contest on the best story. I have already  placed one story of the girl who has sent me her story first. You can see it here:  http://padlet.com/wall/t79i90xyaq.

This week we have made an important step towards our final project report - we have found partners for peer reading. I'm going to cooperate with Young&Yummy Yubaraj. I'm sure it will be very productive cooperation. I hope we'll be able to exchange some useful advice on our projects and improve our work.   There must be something 'delicious' in Yubaraj's project :)

And, last but not least. I have launched my project. Hooray! On Monday I introduced the project to my students. We looked through the pages of the Web Quest http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=183877 where they got the task, asked questions about the process and evaluation rubric. It was new for them. They were excited and worried a bit at the same time. More excited than worried, of course. On Thursday when we had a class in the language lab students created their class blogs and google accounts. I am teaching three classes of Grade 9, each class created their own blog and chose their blog moderator who knows the password and who can make changes in the blog. I know the password, too. We wrote two posts: one post about extreme sports which is part of the webquest and students have to write their comments by Sunday midnight. Another post is "Ideas for the blog" where students can share their ideas how to make the blog more interesting and effective. They can start new posts according to their interests, for example, about music and discuss them.  I see that it works! Some students have already written their comments, the blog moderators have changed the layout, added pictures, videos, posts. Tomorrow we are going to discuss the topic of extreme sports in the lesson. I hope that blog discussion will help them to organize their thoughts, to pick some ideas from others and be more confident speakers. I'm looking forward to getting first results. But actually, I have already got my first result: this project has raised my students' interest and now they are speaking English in a real life situation. I believe this blog will help them to express and realize themselves and it will live long.

You can see the blogs here:
http://englishfun9b.blogspot.com/
practicemakesperfect9v.blogspot.com/
http://englishandinternetform9a.blogspot.com/

Project Task #5

The final task this week was Project Task #5 - to start implementing technology-related change in my lessons.  As my final project I decided to create a web quest which will help students develop their listening skills. I have made the web quest "Health and sport" on www.zunal.com  - http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=183877. It took a lot of time to organise my thoughts and materials, so I'm going to introduce my web quest to students tomorrow. I have also created Rubrics which is new both for me and my students. It will help students to evaluate themselves and show them the criteria of their mark. I think it will be very useful for them to predict their results and to improve their performance. Moreover, it will help me to assess their work more objectively. 

I'm planning to carry out the project for three weeks. Each week students watch the recommended videos on a subtopic, then they have to comment on their class blog and discuss the topic in class. Their posts on the class blog will help them prepare for class discussions, to organize their thoughts and make them feel more confident. In his comment on my project Robert gave me a great idea for the final product for my students. And I would like to use it. As the final project students will make video interviews with imaginary sports stars about sport and healthy lifestyle and upload them on www.schoolyoutube.com. I think it will be both educational and fun for them.

So, my next step is to launch the web quest and create the class blog. I'm going to do it tomorrow in class as I'm teaching in the classroom with the Internet access. I aslo need to edit and compleet some parts of the web quests such as conclusion and teacher page. I'm looking forward to implementing this new technology in my lessons. Hope students will appreciate my efforts.

Week 6

In my view, this week has been more intensive than the previous ones. I have learnt many new things for teaching large classes and engaging students into the teaching process. For example, Interactive Power Point Presentation. I used to make PPT for my lessons but I never used hyperlinks and other interactive elements. It took me some time to work out how to implement them, but in the end, I managed to do it. The URL is http://www.slideshare.net/tatsianaseurukova/australia-quiz2.

Another way to make students more engaged is using a discussion board which can serve as a trampoline for their oral discussion in class. For example, Nicenet - a simple LMS or "Learning Management System." Two more complicated LMS are Blackboard and Moodle. All of them put a student in the centre of the teaching process. 

I also discovered another interesting teaching method  - Flipping classroom.  (http://www.techsmith.com/flipped-classroom.html.) The idea is that students learn new material at home, working on the Internet and then having practice in class. In my opinion, it is worth using for developing reading, listening and speaking skills when students read or listen some material at home and then discuss it in class. As for introducing new grammar and vocabulary, I would prefer a traditional classroom where a teacher can see students' eyes, answer their questions and prevent misunderstanding and mispronunciation of the new language that can happen while learning it on their own at home. 

Tatsiana

Week 5

I can't believe that half  the course is behind. Time flies... But very effectively!
This week was devoted to Project Based Learning and alternative assessment. I used PBL partly in my teaching before, but I have learnt a lot of new things. For example, I got really excited by WebQuests. I find them motivating and challenging. Students get directions and then they choose follow these directions at their own pace, trying to solve some problem and fulfill the task.

WebQuests impressed me so much, that I decided to make a WebQuest as my final project. The aim of my project is to help students develop their listening skills. In this quest students will have to do different tasks based on authentic listening materials. They will get links to interviews, news, stories, videos, etc. On each stage students will a listening-comprehension task which will lead to a classroom discussion as a post-listening activity. As their final project, they will need to use the information they got at all the stages and their own experience and create something like a short movie.

The new thing I got to know this week was Rubrics. Rubrics can help students to understand how their work will be evaluated and how they can achieve the highest result. They can evaluate themselves and each other as well. I created my Rubric using http://rubistar.4teachers.org/. It was not very hard. First I looked through various existing rubrics, then I used a template, choose the categories which I find appropriate for evaluating listening and speaking and changed some of the offered criteria. I'm glad I will be able to use rubrics in my WebQuest. It will be new for me and my students and I think rubrics will help them to perform more effectively and it will be easier for themselves and for me to assess their projects.

An adventure is ahead!