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!

Week 4

This week has brought new knowledge, new ideas and practical advice. It started with reading as usual. I find the articles "Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction" by Jarek Krajka and "Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books" by Mei-Ya Liang very useful. The authors share some great ideas how to use technology for developing reading and writing skills and remind us to incorporate on-line lessons in the Curriculum.

Then I spent quite a lot of time searching for the sites which help build writing and reading skills. As I am teaching teenagers, I tried to find the sites suitable for their needs, age and interests. It wasn't easy because most sites were either for kids or for adults. I stopped at two sites: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com

and http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org. Both sites offer a variety of texts for reading with pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading activities, questions for discussion and writing tasks. The latter site also provides listening activities, video, games, exam parctice and a magazine for teens. I haven't had enough time to visit the sites offered by the other participants but I'm going to do it soon.

Next, I created a technology-enhanced lesson plan. In my lesson I used the site www.esl-lab.com. It was new for me as I had never used the Internet in class. Writing the plan helped me to analyse the actvities offered and understand how to deal with them. I chose the conversation "Exercise program" as these days the topic of my lessons is "Healthy lifestyle" and I intended to incorporate it in the curriculum. I was also able to create a google doc of my lesson which is very convenient for getting feedback, so I just posted the link to my google doc in Nicenet forum.

Another task was to describe the class I'm teaching, the problems it's experiencing and think how technology can help to solve these problems.  I find listening comprehension and pronunciation are the most problematic issue as we have lack of listening materials in our course books. Russian intonation affects their English speaking production. I started thinking how technology can help to deal with this problem. At the beginning of the course I was excited by the idea of creating a class blog, but now I understand this will help to improve my students' reading and writing skills, which is very useful, of course. But now I'm thinking on how I can use this blog or maybe find another technology to develop their listening skills. I would like to do a project which will expose authentic listening materials to students and will develop their listening skills as well as pronunciation. I'm thinking about a long term project for my students which could make them listen to authentic materials in class and at home in order to carry out this project step by step. 

I'm looking forward to Week 5 as I will have to decide on what technology to choose for my final project in order to solve the class problems . 

Week 3

They say time flies. It's true. I can't believe that Week 3 is behind. Robert was right that gradually our study would turn into routine. I'm not afraid of the assignments as I used to in the beginning. I feel I'm getting more computer and Internet literate. This course pushed me to give my students tasks to search the Net in the lesson which I never did before. One of the tasks was to find a quotation for their essay. They were so surprised and excited that they would use the Internet in the lesson. Then we faced the problem that the Internet worked slowly as we used Internet Explorer. My students suggested downloading Google Chrome and we did it. I felt so proud when I had to insert my e-mail address and password to finish the installation as I had my Google account! Now I understand that the Internet attracts teenagers and it can become my friend  in raising my students' motivation.

Looking back at this week, I could say I have learnt a lot.

First of all, I have read  the articles "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation" by Maria Grazia Busa and "The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills" by Julia Gong which made me put more attention to teaching pronunciation. I liked the idea of using "signal analysis software to teach intonation in discourse" described by Maria Grazia Busa.

Secondly, I have discovered so many useful sites for oral and aural activities, like www.esl-lab.com, www.trainyouraccent.com, www.esl-galaxy.com. I will definietly use them in my future job. I have already recommended www.esl-lab to my students who want to develop their listening skills at home.

The next step was to create my page on Delicious.com to Store Useful Links. I followed the instructions and fulfilled the assignment. I think it's a very good idea to have such a page for preparing for my lessons.

Finally, as my Project Task 2 I analysed the final project of a former participant,  Camelia Pagila from Romania. Her detailed work really impressed me and helped me to have a picture of what I am expected to do in the end. I have started thinking about creating my classes' blog. My next step is to define its contents.

This course is a good example of on-line learning and it opens new horisons for Englsh teaching.

Week 2

This week has been much harder than the previous one. Studying search engines was time consuming as I had to look through them thoroughly to find out the truth: to gooogle or not? The answer is: Yes, in most cases. Actually, I was surprised to learn that there are so many search engines and websites including search engines. For example, I discovered some useful ones like http://www.biography.com/ and http://www.gutenberg.org/.

The second thing I had to struggle with was writing the ABCD objectives. This theory is new for me and at first I didn't have a clear picture what to do, what to start with. This theory is quite general and I didn't know how to apply it for my class. Thankfully MengFeng and Elena were the first ones to post their objectives which helped me a lot. 

The next task was to describe my course and students for the Final Project. It wasn't difficult because I just described my work, my students' needs, the technology I have access to. I started to think about my final project. What do I want to do? What will my students accept? Will it make my lessons more effective? I have already told them that they would have to take part in the Internet project. They've got interested, though some of them worry about lack of time as they have a lot of homework to do in other subjects. I hope most of them will enjoy the project and we'll continue doing it after our course is over.

The last thing I have to do is to write this post. I think it's a good idea to reflect on what you have done. I understand that I have learnt a lot. Though, it's not the last one. Now I'm going to visit my dear colleauges' blogs. I'm in anticipation of good reading!

I'd like to thank all the visitors to my blog for their comments full of support and encouragement.

Week 1

Hello everyone!

It looks like I have coped with our first task. I can't say it was very easy as I have never created blogs. Actually, I have never created an e-mail account. The one I have used for many years was created by my husband. So, for me everything we are doing here is new and quite challenging. Thanks to Robert's clear instructions and help from some participants I managed to create my Google account and my blog step by step. To tell the truth, I visited several participants' blogs before creating mine to see what they have done. Their work impressed me a lot and encouraged to push forward. Of course it took me time to change the settings. I hope I have done everything correctly.  Also I faced some problems with finding the tabs as the lay-outs of the pages on my computer are different from the one ones in the instructions. Perhaps, I have a different version.

The next thing I'm going to do is to improve the design of my blog. I need to learn to add pages, links, files and other necessary things to make it more useful and convenient.

Now I'm feeling like a student who doesn't know the material of the lesson and maybe a bit at a loss but who is eager to enrich their knowledge. I think it's very useful for teachers to feel the way their students do. Then we can understand them and their feelings better and to look at the teaching process form the other side - the side of a learner. As for blogging, I have already started thinking how I will be able to use it in my work after the course finishes. Perhaps, it will be an extra way of communicating with my students when the lessons are over which will raise their motivation and interest in English. Great!

I'm looking forward to new discoveries.