PBL and WebQuest Week 5

This week 5 I have learned that “the project-based learning approach creates a "constructivist" learning environment in which students construct their own knowledge. Whereas in the “old school" model the teacher was the task master -- in the "new school" model the teacher becomes the facilitator”.  Yes, I confirmed my theory!  I was navigating through the different websites and I found the information in the URL http://www.globalschoolnet.org/Web/pbl/whatis.htm .  I learned how all age students can develop more confidence in their ability to learn English incluiding the ones that can be resistant to learn it.

 We  need to convert the learning experience in something meaninful. We always are going to start form  our objective related with our student’s needs. I was very moved to read the story of Susan Gaer when she developed a PBL with their inmigrants students. She helped them to document traditonal recepies from their countries. She impacted a learning objective and a historic momentum. Why? Because I am sure that there where not documentation for the mayority of those recepies before of that project.

The usage of PBL has with it the opportunity to apply alternative assessment in to the classroom. That opened for me the oportunity to create  a rubric using an online tool.

Also, for the URL http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/chat/chat015.shtml I learned that “A WebQuest is built around an engaging and doable task that elicits higher order thinking of some kind. It's about doing something with information. The thinking can be creative or critical, and involve problem solving, judgment, analysis, or synthesis. The task has to be more than simply answering questions or regurgitating what's on the screen. Ideally, the task is a scaled down version of something that adults do on the job, outside school walls.” Here is when a teacher need to find the task that is going to lead to thinking about the web content.

Our multidisciplinary touch can make the WebQuest a real display of cooperative learning strategies.

I learned that a great WebQuest is one that through creating situations or tasks can make students to develop a strong dependence on one another.

PBL, Alternative Assessments, Rubrics

There is no better way to strengthen our students’ confidence in their skills in L2 than providing them with the resources that are going to make them successful. This is one of the most powerful ways of motivation.  When using a rubric we are letting our students know what we are expecting from them at the end of an assigned task.  We are also teaching them how quality matters, and how they are going to be evaluated based on that.  As the URL http://health.usf.edu/publichealth/eta/Rubric_Tutorial/default.htm with the topic Creating a Rubric: Tutorial says, “Rubrics identify the specific elements an instructor uses to differentiate between the qualities of performances. i.e. it helps the student answer the question ‘why did I get a point taken off?’”

This is very common with the students.  Even I experienced that situation with low grades on my blog during the first two weeks. Fortunately, it did not take long for me to realize that I was missing something from the rubric to achieve five out of five on my posts.

Alternative assessments also provide learners the opportunities to reflect on both linguistic development and their learning process. The main point for students to learn language is communication for meaningful purposes. The students can demonstrate things learned and they take responsibility because they are self directed.  Alternative assessments either are in the form of a checklist or a rubric, providing students the opportunity to display progress to the school, community, and family members.

Reading, Writting and Becoming more Tech Skilled

This week 4 I’ve studied and analyzed several articles and websites to promote writing and reading skills. I’ve used many websites that develop multiple skills using attractive media and the amount of websites seems endless. Also, I researched about the ebooks and the way teachers can get the most of them while teaching a second language.

I’ve learned that cooperative learning promotes on our students effective instruction of thinking skills and also creativity.  From the authors Trokeloshvili and Jost in their article "The Internet and Foreign Language Instruction: Practice and Discussion "I’ve learned that we can create tasks and made our students participate in discussions via intranet system, and with the purpose of learning, those task are going to help them “use the internet for general research”. However everything should be based in student’s needs and in our goals. It was interesting for me to find how online writing instruction can use the same three stages that the formal reading, writing and listening I learned during the past weeks, Pre Stage, While-Stage and Post Stage.

While creating a Technology Enhanced Lesson Plan I’ve learned how the web shouldn’t be used all the time either just the web material during our classes. This lesson plans should be developed to achieve more than a core objective but as a technology one also. Furthermore, enriched lesson plans with the components from the web should deliver outstanding student’s outcomes.

When I was reading the project task from the other teachers, I realized that it was not easy just to focus on one issue. Educators are always dealing with all sorts of hard situations apart from teaching. Even if we have differences in our circumstances, we are so very similar in what we think and want to achieve. Most of us have to deal with populations that are not feeling the necessity to speak English outside of the classroom until they see that it can interfere with their future. The time the students or schools dedicate to learn or teach a L2 is not enough.  It is clear for us as teachers that students fall behind on making a connection between their English learning and their everyday lives. As professors, we see that students are afraid to make mistakes due to low confidence. This can easily be built by seeing their words published on a class website.

I can believe week 5 is almost here!

Thank you,

Aida

Reading Nadina's Project Report

Reading the project report let me see how I can create my own report too. I was really impressed by the excellent work the author Nadina Nicolici did.

She really transformed her class adding technology. I was not surprised how her students were enchanted with the idea of using the internet and computers to learn.

That idea is like an invitation for them to take an outdoor class. They love different scenarios.

The hard part was to make them understand how important the internet is to satisfy their own academic needs and convince them it is not just to socialize.

Now I want to create a wiki or a website and an interactive presentation for my class too.

I look forward for the week 4!

A Delicious Week 3!

This third week was full of surprises for me. I gained a lot of knowledge and practice using different websites that develop Oral/Aural skills. I was impressed by the serious research I found on the article “The pedagogy-technology interface in Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training” by A. Neri, C. Cucchiarini, H. Strik and L. Boves. Where I learned how important is “the relationship between pedagogy and technology” if teachers use “Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) courseware” in their classes. 

I read how students can benefit from learning a second language in “a private, stress-free environment” using this software. Also I realize how convenient the Automatic Speech Recognition technology is for delivering instantaneous and individualized feedback to the students besides the fact that students can practice English at their own pace.

One of the best things of this article is that I learned about many CALL options to use with my students.

I feelt the necessity to do a brief research to see which systems are currently the most used. I found this link with an interesting comparison between the best rated products on 2012: http://esl-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ . To my surprise the first place was the brand Auralog with “Tell me More English” and it was not the most expensive either.

I remember that years ago, I used to pay high monthly tuitions to be enrolled in an English school with a lab with one of those impressive software.

Now besides the CALL systems, the students and teachers can use many free resources available using internet and our personal computer. This is what I found very convenient from this third week.

“Another system that simulates a real-world, game-like learning setting is the Microworld” L. Boves. I found this interesting article where describe how this system had been used to in children education.  http://www.courses.unt.edu/Ennis-Cole/articles/a27.pdf

I like the fact that I can advice parents to use this links or systems at home with their children or with themselves. I always have parents asking me: How can I study at home to learn English and help my children too? This is a great way to do it.

Also the experience with Delicious was really satisfactory. Now I can forget about creating a list (using word processor) of websites I consulted during the month. I actually can just upload them to my Delicious page, create the labels and share it with my colleagues! It sounds so easy to say it now, after I was struggling at the beginning when I was creating my page.

Without a doubt, all those links are going to help me teach English better to my students. Don’t you think?

Second Week

What this second week has left for me, is an enormous list of resources and experiences. Using new search engines that I did not even know those existed before, was exciting. Also I really enjoyed creating objectives with the ABCD model. How convenient and clear it was!

The fact that I could see all the rich answers of my fellow teachers is just a wonderful experience for me. I am enchanted with the strong desire they have of sharing knowledge and help every one of us to succeed during this class. They really raise the team morale! I feel much more motivated to give more and more.

I want to start my third week now!

Delicious is coming and I can wait to find out what it is and how I can apply it on my class project.

Week tree here I am!

Getting Started-First Week

I am really excited with this online class!

First of all I want to mention that when I received the notice of acceptance for this class I was out of town and I did not have my personal computer with me during those days.  On Saturday night coming back from touristic activities, I stopped by the hotel’s business center to use a computer. When I opened the email with the acceptance notice, I was so happy that I could not believe it!  I woke up Monday morning and I went downstairs again to use the computer and I even changed my plans of tourism for that day to get started with the class.

For me, getting to know the people involved in the class and having the first contact with my instructor was essential. I started to navigate through the main website, reading the objectives per week and understanding how this class was going to work. It was a great experience.

I am really impressed with all my online classmates and very honored to be part of this class. Also I am having a lot of fun creating this my first teacher blog. It is very interesting to use the blog as a journal. I just do not want to stop writing. I wish my students can experience the same effect to be motivated to develop their second language writing skills.