Week 7 Learner Autonomy and the One-computer Classroom

 Hello Everybody

The topic for our week  discussion was Learner autonomy and After reading some information about this . It is quite rewarding to understand How we as  teachers could help our students to be more confident and get greater autonomy. The fist aspect mentioned and according to the constructivism  is to help or guide our students in a way they can discover their own knowledge by exploring, experiencing things by themselves  and being active participants in their own learning process Providing them some  guidelines or acting as a facilitator we can let them to set goals, material, tasks and methods so that they can recognize the best way to reach new  knowledge.

To get an effective self-directed learning. It is really important to take into account some learning  strategies like the cognitive and metacognitive strategies  . With the purpose of enhancing  learning students can use repetition translation, use of dictionaries, note taking deduction,, contextualization, inferencing and asking questions for clarification. The metacognitive strategies  on the other hand are skills used for planning, monitoring and evaluating the learning process It means the way as they learn something. Using these strategies they can ask themselves questions to get ideas about their performance and with this they can have the opportunity to  change goals or reflect about their learning.

As teacher a good way to motivate students to be more autonomous is to start working with activities and rubrics where after finishing any exercise and checking it they can understand and recognize things they did well and errors they made in this way they will start reflecting about their performance and getting aware about aspects they need to improve.

 

This week we also reflected about some strategies to take into account while designing  a one computer classroom lesson. It is really important to consider that there are many activities we can deal in a classroom using only a computer and a projector. With the purpose of practicing  some topics (simple past, prepositions and vocabulary) we have studied on the last 2 units  my plan was designed to work with some crossword puzzles from the web. Using a computer and the projector I will introduce the activity to the whole class. For this activity I will form groups of 6 people, each group has to read the across and down guidelines and enter letter to complete the crosswords puzzles boxes. The groups with a 100 % of accuracy will be the winners.

Referring to the activities of my project this week has been quite difficult to work in because of the carnival holiday in my country and some cultural programs at school. I only saw my students on Thursday when I could guide them to form groups and chose a topic  for the oral presentation  (touristic places in Ecuador)For the presentation  they  will investigate the information they need and they will be expected to speak, introduce the topic and  answer  the audience questions. I really hope to start with the oral presentation next Tuesday.

Vilma

Week 6 Creating Students Centered Classes and Interactive Power Point

Hello Everybody

I ‘d like to start telling my experience during week six . This week our topic was creating students centered classes and Interactive Power point. With all the links and the information provided by our instructor Janine at http://tep.uoregon.edu/resources/largeclasses/usingtechnology.html  I could identify many useful techniques to use in small and large classes. It is important to consider that when we have   large classes 45 student in a classroom; it is sometimes a hard work to deal with every students and  make them work individually,  so in this case is very convenient to apply new techniques that allow students  to replace the traditional ways of learning. The idea of integrating technology is to encourage students and engage them to be part of their own learning process.
Cooperative work, the use of a blackboard for assessment and keeping students engaged in lectures are techniques that give students the opportunity to participate in groups and involve them  in an active construction of knowledge. Creating  a supportive environment could also help to get an active participation in learning process. I consider really interesting the he use of a blackboard for assessment  It help as an efficient tool to  test  students performance , provide automatic results and feedback It also save teacher grading time.

On the other hand I consider really important the use of power point presentation in our classes. I have found many tips to transform traditional presentation into interactive presentation. Using some action buttons, pictures, visual animations, sounds and other features we can create great interactive presentation to work with in large classes. I found also some templates we can use to create multiple-choice quizzes according to our needs. I made use of it to create a multiple choice quiz with the idea of practicing Information question and the use of the auxiliaries do/does. First I wrote some question, then I wrote the answers, I hid the ansnwers; when the students click during the test  If the answer is right the students will get a well done and if the answer is wrong the student will get a try again.

Referring to the  this week It  was quite rewarding I started asking my students for  their emails and for those who didn’t have one I asked them to create one, so they already have one, and in this they had to send  me an email telling me the importance to have an email and for what  they could use it. Then the second step was show them using a projector some sites to practice listening, and writing skills. I introduced them Randall’s Lab,  elllo and ellusions. com   and I explained them the importance of them and how they  can use  these tools to improve their  English learning inside and outside classroom  .  We tried in class  a listening exercise and the task was  get into the site again and explore their features and tools it offers,  Using this information we will have  next class a discussion about it .

Week 5 PBL (project-based learning), WebQuest and rubrics

Hello Everybody

I have to say that this week has been quite rewarding. New resources and tools have appeared to be added to my technology based curriculum, which I have considered very useful  to use with students inside and outside classroom.

This week we have started checking PBL Project based learning, which is an extraordinary way to allow our students use English with authentic tasks and in real situations. This kind of project let students demonstrate what they  can really do with English thought a variety of activities which requires research, creativity, and self preparation, and at the time they will develop cooperative skills while working in groups and sharing new knowledge with their partners and teacher. With these projects the students have the opportunity to solve challenging problems and taking into account the different learning styles they could engage in meaningful and appropriately tasks designed specifically for them.

As a second point, I have checked alternative assessment. This topic I liked a lot because I understood that through checklists and rubrics we can find an extraordinary way to evaluate students progress in comprehension, use and production of the English Language. Checklists and Rubrics as part of the alternative assessment give many alternatives to evaluate authentic task in students and as teacher we can observe and give a veritable value to what they are be able to do using  English . It also allow to have an idea about straight and weaknesses students have  and how we can set feedback to enhance their learning process.

Finally I have designed some activities which I will do as a technology related change in my class. With the idea of developing meaningful tasks related with the four skills I have considered blogs, Randall's lab, key pals and  a web quest  to address to some of the issues my students face in and outside the classroom. Looking forward to get a good and a positive acceptance of my students, I will try these online resources as a part of my project  in the fallowing two weeks.

Best,

Vilma

Week 4 Developing reading and writing skills

This week has been very rewarding. First because I found out new ways to develop writing and reading skill . After reading all the links provided at http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krajka-WritingUsingNet.html from Adam Mickiewicz University.I Could see that there is a lot of kind of resources to use with our students on the web like for example the use of e-mails and key pals to enhance writing could be a very interesting way to motivate our students to find friends and chat with other people from all over the world using the English Language to express real situations .I could also find some sites to improve reading and how we can guide students to develop thinking skill thought analyzing online materials, reading books and also checking some sites where we can find different topics to read, talk about and even make a comment and give opinions about. This topics include news, cultures, sports, education and technology and could be widely discussed.

Checking the multi-skills web sites. I could find many which can be perfectly used with students in classroom. They allow us to practice grammar, vocabulary acquisitions, games, quizzes question and answers and thousand of topics to improve listening, reading and writing skills. I really liked this site from Lauri's website at http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/ I also found interesting to use this site http://a4esl.org/ which has very useful exercises for all levels.

I also learned how to Create a technology-enhanced lesson plan following the template provided. I have never tried to create a lesson plan in this way so it was new for me and I consider it is quite summarized and set specific aspects to threat while creating a lesson plan.

Finally a had to post again some information about the class with which I work and I could also talk about some issues that I have in my learning environment. I know I have to consider these issues to find solutions and to apply in the future in the English learning process with my students.