Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 5: The theory has been put into practice!

Well..! Here we are… week 5!

            It has been really nice to get to know all the people I have had the chance to know and talk to up to now…! I think this experience is taking my teaching methods and skills to some other higher level that definitely is being notice in my work place!

            My students have been saying that the things I have practiced with them are great and they feel more close to and comfortable with my classes! I have been practicing many of the things that I have learnt up to now. The latest thing I used in my classes is the rubrics from:

 http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=NewRubric&module=Rubistar

this site has given me an amazing tool to help my students be more comfortable with what they do in class and the criteria I use to evaluate them. The fact that they know what to expect from themselves is just nice and RUBRICS has helped me doing that!

WebQuest at:

http://www.zunal.com/

is also another great tool that I am still trying to manage, so my students can have another technological tool to use and have fun with while learning! What can be better from that! This WebQuest is helping me solve the concern I expressed in one of my posts about the need that I have to find some help to keep track of my students.. I think this is another benefit WebQuest could give me, since the activities I can do with them when they are outside the classroom are countless.

            Since every week is very different to and a lot more interesting than the one before, I cannot wait to see what’s there for us in this next 6^th week!

We’re getting close to the end! WOW!

Teacher Henry from Venezuela.

Week 4: Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Technology, The ultimate classroom tool!

Well, another week gone!

            This has been a more relaxed week as it has been very interesting! I had the chance to see myself as a learner and “fill my students’ shoes”! It was very interesting the whole process of the creation of the “TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LESSON PLAN”. I have to confess that it was not easy, but after a lot of reflection I think I managed well at the end!

            I would like t encourage my classmates to take a look of the sites I suggested for this super technological class of mine and the way I will use them with my students. I thought about this class related to “ADVERTISING” and I set all the activities around that idea and topic. The interesting thing is that at the end I thought about this long-term project, which is the creation of a video, advertising an either existing or non-existing (yet) product. I explained a bit about how the students could organize their ideas and I gave them this great site that could help in the process of the creation:

http://www.howcast.com/videos/201980-How-To-Make-a-Storyboard

http://accad.osu.edu/womenandtech/Storyboard%20Resource/

            In these sites the students can find information about how to create their storyboard, which they may include in the process of the creation of their advertisement. It is nice, and could also be used for other activities, depending on the creativity of every teacher, and after all, that’s what teachers mostly are… very creative!

            During this week, I also had the chance of reflecting in the concerns I have with my teaching in the classroom. It was very interesting to talk about those problems to myself while I was writing the post. Now, I think that the ideas to solve those concerns I have, will be more interesting than the problem itself! I would like to receive some comments on that, it’s going to be very interesting the path that I will follow when trying to find the technological tool that will help me in solving this problem!

Well, as I said before… Another week gone! Can’t wait for the assignments of the next one!

I will see you later!

Teacher Henry from Venezuela.

Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 3: A great deal of reading, a great deal of learning!

(3^rd part)

            This past weeks I have been through a lot of “mental exercise”, and I am very sure that most of the “Webskills” participants, if not all of them, have been through the same thing too.

            Anyways, I have to admit that this very active week has been the perfect scenario for me to learn many new things and update myself with many details that for sure are going to make my teaching experience a lot nicer and so my students’!

            For starters, this new tool has been so great for me, it has been my personal discovery and close experience with “Del.icio.us”, which is simply “Delicious”! I did not know about the existence of this amazing website, and I am very sorry for that!, and this is definitely another part of my work that is going to make my life a lot much easier! I have to say that this help I am receiving once more from technology and internet is going to facilitate more the communication between me and my students..!

            Sometimes I want my students and co-workers to see very nice things from the web that I find when planning or preparing a class, and even though I give them the links, it is very difficult to tell them exact information that I want them to see. This is going to be now a lot easier with http://www.delicious.com/ . After all this “surfing” I have been doing in the net, I found also another nice tool that I would like to incorporate to my browser, and if any other “Webskills” participant wants to use it later on, it would be very interesting now that we know this bookmarking technology. I am talking about http://www.diigo.com/, and I have to say that the “transition” from Delicious to Diigo is really interesting! There are some nice options and features Diigo offers plus the Delicious ones, and they definitely, in my very personal opinion, extend the Delicious experience.

            I would also like to mention the interesting knowledge I am acquiring from the sample projects from the course website. This is a great path already walked by the prior “Webskills” participants. It has been very nice to start thinking about the possible projects I can develop throughout this course. I have to say, on the other hand, that these participants have set a very high standard with their projects, and it is going to be a very interesting challenge to create a new, interesting and different project.

            Finally, after this week, I have been thinking about the Aural/Oral Skills and the whole universe of characteristics that need to be taken into account in order to, first, learn them and understand them, and second, make them work for you as a tool to be used for the learning-teaching experience in and outside the classroom.

Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 3: Some listening reflections!

(2nd part)

 

After all the reading and very helpful, interesting and extensive material involved in this third week of the “Webskills” course, I would like to mention this particular extract I found while reading, which lead me to some reflections:

"Listening exercises are most effective if they are constructed round a task. That is to say, the students are required to do something in response to what they hear that will demonstrate their understanding." Ur (1984:25).

             The very best quality of a teacher is the ability of giving his or her students the best information in a way that they won't miss a thing, leading them to assimilate and learn for life. Besides the performance of the teacher in front of their students, for them to have an adequate learning process, it is also very important that teachers have the proper material while teaching the aspect of the language they want to teach.

             Teachers can use the exact material they need in their classes only after studying and evaluating closely the needs of their students which is not easy but definitely not impossible either. I think many teachers, including myself, go through the fact that we have to use the material that is somehow imposed by the workplace, and this material can be sometimes very aligned to the factual needs of our students, and some other times this material has to suffer some modifications in order to serve the best to the participants inside the classroom.

            Most of the time, the students that I teach practice with books that are based on content; in the classes the students review a lesson or module which is oriented to a specific topic generally of social interest, everything they read in the lesson is inspired in that topic, and the grammar or vocabulary they have to learn is implicit in the activities the book uses to introduce and present this topic.

             Teaching with material that is based on content is really useful for students; they find the idea of learning English using the language they sometimes see in other contexts like TV, internet and/or movies really interesting. Sometimes the books present topics that are taken from real everyday news which make the learners become interested while learning the language.

             The use of authentic material or material that is based on content also has its cons that teachers have to take into consideration. Material about topics that are very fashionable in a moment could not be very interesting for the students when those topics are not very fashionable any more. In such case, the teacher has to be aware of this, and replace that material for new and fresh content, which requires extra time and work.

             Another challenge that teachers face when they use books based on content comes up when their students are limited to the hour of class to practice their English. The authentic material or material based on content generally changes very fast throughout the book, making it harder for students to easily remember the grammar or vocabulary when they are also limited of practice time.

             Once I have, or any teacher has managed to cope with the cons and taken advantage of the pros of the material mentioned before is when we all have to try and find new sources of material to use. A field that has been proven to be of great interest to most of the students is that related to technology. It would be nice to find more "techno active" material in more schools and institutions where English is taught; this could be either material that involves topics related to technology or material that is taught through technological devices. I think this would make the students more active and interested in English, even those who have low motivation or for whom English is a bit harder than the rest. Of course, teachers have to be aware of the fact that some students may be a bit more advanced in their knowledge of technology use, in this case, teachers have to give an extra effort in learning and then in teaching, and students have to be able to let the English learning process set place in their everyday life.

             These first weeks of the “Webskills” course, specifically the third one in which we are and it’s about to end, has given me some things to think about and conclude after the readings and material involved in it, since it has been very helpful to improve the way we see and teach listening in the classrooms. First of all, it is always very important to identify some possible sources of listening material so we can be up-to-date with the topics we use to teach. It is also very important for teachers to understand two things: first, there are different types of listening for the variety of listeners there can be in a classroom, and second, it is necessary to evaluate the pros and cons of the listening material that is going to be used in class, especially if it is material based on content or authentic material, in such cases teachers have to apply different techniques for the also different listening genres. Last but not least, technology, multimedia, video and any other kind of device related to new resource for teaching should be very welcomed in an English learning class to offer students the opportunity of achieving their goal, which is learning English, using tools that are more common and appealing for them.

Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 3: Some listening reflections!

(1st part)

                I consider myself a true admirer of the legacy that we, the new teachers, have received from these great “thinkers” that have been there before us settling priceless role models, which are helpful for any teacher who enjoys growing up as a professional and having things to think about.

Let’s take for example what Mr. H. Douglas Brown said once:

"Listening comprehension is not only the process of sending and receiving sounds, but also the interactive and conscious process to send and transmit the message to the brain which will influence in the process of communication". (H. Douglas Brown: 1994)

              In the process of learning a new language, there is not such an "only way" to make learners understand an issue being the subject of an explanation. When teaching, there is not even a definite way to do it correctly. Teachers have an immeasurable amount of techniques and strategies that can be applied in any educational context, and it is in the teachers' hands to choose the appropriate task/way that relates to their students' needs in order to make them learn any lesson effectively or to help them improve any skill.

               Among the four skills involved in the process of learning a new language, English in this case, the one that gives students extra hard work is the listening comprehension. They, at different levels, find listening activities particularly difficult to manage and understand. Teachers need to pay special attention to the three stages of a listening lesson so that students can make the most out of any listening lesson they are intended to work with.

               This process that H. Douglas Brown refers to in the lines above, requires constant practice and properly guided listening activities, which lead the teacher to follow and complete these so-called three stages of the listening activities that will help students learn for good everything discussed in any listening session.

              The stages of listening lessons are very simple, the first part of any listening has to be the pre-listening stage, which sets students into the topic, preparing them and motivating them for the audio material they are going to hear. There is a second stage done during the listening in which students are asked to complete some tasks while they are listening to the audio being introduced, and finally there is a post-listening stage. In this stage, the teacher and the students work together trying to extend everything learnt from the audio material by using various activities, for example: drawing possible conclusions, comparing personal experiences to the situation heard in the material and/or discussing opinions among others.

               These three sections that any listening class should have, work very well together, and it would be very difficult to give more importance to one of them specifically. Now, I think that every teacher in their classroom should be very emphatic on the post-listening stage. This part of the listening provides extra work and practice in and even outside the classroom, which makes learning a complete process.

              The activities that a teacher could do to work on the post-listening stage have an unlimited reach, for example, if the students are asked to give opinions or draw conclusions using the vocabulary given in the listening, once they start talking it could become a completely different entire class. These activities could also work as motivation for the students when they see the language flowing naturally in a kind of realistic situation.

               On the other hand, post-listening activities are great for those students that are used to practice only in class. Students who think this way, are more likely to forget most of what they learn from listenings and then have weak foundations when further topics related in grammar come up. Teachers have to motivate their students to complete activities after the listening class, either in the classroom or at home, things like giving opinions, paraphrasing, giving different endings to a story and/or re-telling a story are good to practice after a listening class, having students to think of these activities as a good way to "think outside the box", which would develop creativity and fix knowledge a lot better in the students' minds.

Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 2: One week more! As the expectations, knowledge has grown a lot!

The ABCD Method to write objectives.

Search Engines with educational purposes.

Wow!

     This has been such a nice week… And it came to an end!!!

     Hello bloggers! Welcome once more to this space for technology and education to be together!!!

     This second week of the Webskills has been very active for me! I have used things that I had not used for a long time; I suddenly remembered why they are so good in my opinion!

     Donna, our tutor, suggested something that is going to be part of my classes for a long long time:

http://www.noodletools.com/

     I think that we, teachers, can find a great deal of very valuable educational information, 100% useful for many activities in the teaching-learning process! As I said in one of my posts on Nicenet (which is, by the way, another great tool for discussion!), the amount of activities teachers and students can obtain from http://www.noodletools.com/ is as numerous as the teachers and students creativity itself!

      Take for example http://www.sweetsearch.com/, which is a nice search engine for students and an on-line tool that I have not been using that much lately. This is a very helpful site for those moments when teachers have those ideas in their minds about topics to use in their classes but then those ideas are not very clear, http://www.sweetsearch.com/ will give you some possible path that could be followed so that your search is a lot more productive!

     Another thing I enjoyed a lot during this week was the increase in the communication among the “classmates” in the Webskills! It has been great to have this very professional group of people with that diverse cultural background helping you when you are “stuck” in an idea!

     This topic on the ABCD method was the one I received more help from my “classmates”! I think, at least for me, it was not very easy to understand and manage, but after some help and a lot of reading I think I finally made it! Let’s wait for the grades…! Jajaja!

     I am looking forward to having next week assignments and start working on them! I really hope that the two or three comments I left on Nicenet can be of help for someone with the same concerns I have and had!

     Please leave your comment! It is definitely valuable for me!

See you in class!

Teacher Henry from Venezuela.

  

Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web

Week 1: My blogging experience.

The tools, countless, diverse, very useful! The aim, only one: taking education to the next level!!!

Hello every one! Welcome to this educational blog, created to be part of a growing community which is working in pro of the expansion of the use of technology in the teaching-learning process.

First of all, I am honored to be part of this on-line course! I hope I can improve the strategies I use and the skills I have to teach my EFL students, using technology as a friendly tool in this teaching-learning process.

This reflective blog is intended to be the weekly report of this journey I am taking through the 10-week “Building Teacher Skills through the Interactive Web” program. This is the very first week and I feel a bit overwhelmed and intimidated as I see many things I would like to take advantage of and I hope I can manage it all! (I guess this could be my first reflective thought!)

I have used this technology tool in the classroom with a group of students and it was an amazing experience:

·         I had the opportunity to share with my students in another context different to the one of the classroom.

·         My students felt part of something that was very educational and also very nice to work with, on-line activities.

·         We all, my students and I, expanded and enriched our personal beliefs! We found ourselves creating these educationally oriented essays and writings with so much passion, that we had the chance to show what was in our minds and also read what was in others.

Well, I feel part of all of that again, but this time I am in the student’s side, and I love having that point of view now.

I guess so many people feel intimidated or somehow afraid of using something that they do not know and see for the first time, blogs for example, that they leave it aside and maybe never try it, but as writer and philosopher Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “knowledge is the antidote to fear”, so the best option is to try!

Some teachers are only a few clicks away from this great tool that the internet offers to anybody wanting to establish a different link with others, letting those others learn, clear doubts, or simply have fun or relax!

I hope this reflective blog can be somehow helpful for somebody, as I hope it will be for me in organizing my ideas through this “webskills” course.

Feel free to leave comments and become a follower of this blog and share your ideas and opinions!

Regards,

Teacher Henry from Venezuela.