Week 10: Reflection on the course

Hi everybody,

That’s it. We did it. It was a really great course for me because it was not full theory.
We had to read but afterwards we could put in practice what we had learned. I enjoyed creating my blog and web quest as they will not be discarded afterwards but I will continue using blogs to introduce those activities we have learned in this 10-week program.
The delicious.com account I created is something I found really useful, even though I got some problems lately to update it. Many times I found interesting and useful websites, wrote the URL down on a piece of paper and then…… lost it. Sometimes you go back easily to them but many times you can’t find them anymore. I can open it anywhere and retrieve some websites I need or I want to share with someone.
The Rubric we had to create was also something that even if I spent some time to make it up, it is something that I think most of us needed at work because the ones we were using were obsolete or to complex to be used easily.
Finally, the last part of the course were I start working with the Hot Potatoes software and the TOOLSFOREDUCATORS was the best as I found out that I could easily create a lot of extra material for my classes or even ask my students to be part of it by asking them to create some material and try it in class.
I t was a great course.
Thank you Sandra, Deborah and our guest moderators.
Raphaël

Week 9: Task: Create online course site or exercise

Hi everybody,

This was really a wonderful activity. I was really interested in knowing how to create a class as we have been using for the past 9 weeks and now I know. This was so simple that I asked Sandra if we would be able to continue using the NICENET.ORG after the course because I see many ways to use this website for my students but also for the in-training of our teachers. I thought it could replace some of our training workshops where we ask our teachers to come on their free time on Saturdays at a specific time to attend our workshops. This could be also very useful for our new teachers. We could ask them to enroll in one course we prepare only in order to train them with basic things we want them to apply in their classes as for example techniques, analyzing the learning styles, creating on-line activities, etc.
I also enjoyed last night the HOT POTATO software at http://hotpot.uvic.ca/.
I downloaded it as indicated and started creating a cloze to try the program. My fears were, after reading the instructions, how to save it so everybody could use it. I read that I could save it in HTML but I don't have any website so I just tried and save it as a *.zip file. I tried it and it worked.
I just commented some of my fellow coordinators about that software and they really want to know more about it as it is really powerful to create cloze, etc.
I will continue creating different exercises as I would like to have a full e-teaching course for my high intermediate 9.


Really great.

Raphaël

Week 9: On-line Tools for Enhancing Learning

Hi everybody,

I must say that I really enjoyed trying all those programs given in the http://www.toolsforeducators.com/. I really had fun and found some that would be really useful at least for the groups I am teaching.
I found the Free Word Search Maker at http://www.toolsforeducators.com/wordsearch/ really good for all level as you can prepare it according to the topic you are studying with your groups and I am sure most of your students will enjoy it because they will be willing to find all the words. Moreover, if you use it as a contest for a warm up or wrap up activity, it will for sure wake up the sleepy ones.
I also enjoy the Game Board Maker at http://www.toolsforeducators.com/boardgames/
as it is also useful for warm up activities to keep your students occupied, wake them up and at the same time it changes their mind.
I think the Free Crossword Maker at http://www.toolsforeducators.com/crossword/
is the best activity to make your students more autonomous as they must create the complete exercise and then they can test it with their classmates.
The Bingo Maker at http://www.toolsforeducators.com/bingo/ and the Free Maze Maker at http://www.toolsforeducators.com/mazes/ are also good activities to change your student's mind by doing something different.
The Reading and Spelling at http://www.toolsforeducators.com/spelling is really nice to review vocabulary and the Free Writing, Spelling, and Tracing worksheet at http://www.toolsforeducators.com/writing/ is okay but I would use it more for lower level as I expect my students in high level to write much more and about give topics.
The Certificate Maker at http://www.123certificates.com/ and the GUEST TOOLS at http://www.timesaversforteachers.com/ are great to improve our students' creativity.


I must really say that I enjoyed this activity and it opened my eyes on the possibilities some websites offer to teachers and students.

Thanks for reading my comments.

See you soon

Raphaël

Week 8: One computer class

Hi everybody,

I found this activity really interesting because for sure this the reality of most of us. At work we have a laboratory but it is accessible to public so during normal class hours not all the computers are available for one class. In each classroom we have one computer only. So this activity was perfect to think about new activities to use in class.
This is also something we emphasize during our monthly workshops. Teachers are shown during those workshop how to use a computer in class as our workshops are organized in small groups in the same classes.
We have also to take into account taht the computer is not only for teacher's use but students also can be given the oportunity to use it or for presentations or also by organizing activities were the students can use the computer to answer questions or quizzes.


See you soon

Raphaël

Week 8: Learner autonomy

Hi everybody,

It was again a busy week for me as we started another month session. I tried the best I could to catch up on my task, homework and project but I will have to continue late tonight and tomorrow to be on time.
For my project, I am already busy with it because I have until next week to finish it and as I am working on a one-month session I started with that on the first day of class (two days ago) and I had to dedicate most of my time to have my final project ready to test it during the few days before the end of this course in order to have real results and comments for my final project.

Making students independent and autonomous to learn is important and mostly to make them understand that it is important for them. As I mentioned in my post, many students here come to class and expect the teacher to teach them everything. They think that by just sitting in a classroom they will learn everything. This is wrong and it is our task to make them aware of that and also to show them the way to become autonomous.
You do not become an autonomous learner just because you decided it. Someone has to show the learner how to do that, and this is our job as facilitator. I think that sometimes teachers think that if they give their learners all what they need to become autonomous, they will loose their job. I saw that in my career (merchant marine). Some officers were reluctant to teach others what they knew for fear of losing their promotion or that other were promoted before them. Wrong.
There will always be a job for teacher but we have to adapt to the new techniques, technology and so on. Classes in the future will be completely different to what they were 30 or 50 years ago but a teacher will always be necessary to show the way.

Also by making our students more autonomous could be beneficial as we will get more prepared students with a better background and it will make our classes for sure more active, productive and interesting, for both the teacher and the students.

I tried many different ways to show my students how to become more independant and autonomous by visiting different websites on the net but few of them were motivated. So this activities helped me learn more techniques that I will try and see how helpful they could be for my students.

See you soon

Raphaël

Week 7 Power point activity

Hi everybody,

I posted my power point on my wiki. It is called MYSTERIES.
I really enjoy creating power point activities as I find them attractive and useful for students. Power points are less boring than just reading texbooks activities. They also allow us to mix different techniques and mix at the same time different learning techniques that are nor always taken into account in the textbooks or are not so attractive.
There is nothing better than illustratring what you are talking about.

Raphaël

Week 7: Use of Power Point in class.

Hi everybody,

This was a real brainstorming activity.
Many teachers I work with find the use of Power Point activities wonderful but they do not analyze the impact they have on students. As mentioned in some of the reading materials, the use of technology can be really productive but what is important is how it is used.
This week, I had a good experience of the wrong use of technology. One of our teachers asked for an overhead projector for his class. He was given the material but when checked over the activity he was developing in his class, I was puzzled. First the teacher asked for the overhead projector in order to play a movie.
The movie was more than the class time. When asked (during the class) about his lesson plan, he could not present any because he had not clear objective for his class, except passing an hour an an half watching a movie, eating popcorn and drinking softdrinks. The movie had nothing to see with any topics studied during the month. It was subtitled and for a basic level group (6 months of English).
First more than an hour and an half of video is unconceivable.
I try to find videos of three to four minutes maximum.
If you play a video, it is to reach the target language not to play it with subtitles (students just read in their language).
If you do not have post activities with a specific objevtive as for example to check their comprehension by asking specific questions, or by asking a summary (in this case a 6-month English group with a one and an half hour of video seems an impossible mission), or by asking about opinions, etc.

I do not overuse the PPT in class but when I feel it will be worth and have a good impact on my students then I use it. My PPT sessions do not last for hours. Ten minutes or maximum fifteen. After that, I know that I do not get my full student's attention.
I you use technology like PPT, first think abou the goal or objevtive, relate it to what is seen in class and try to mix different learning styles in the same activity.

Waiting for your comments

Raphaël

Week 7: Technology in large classes

Hi readers,

It was again a challenge this week because in my case I have never taught large classes.
In my opinion it is anti-pedagogic to teach groups of more than 25 students as it is a real challenge to try to reach all students. In large groups, you find all kinds of learners and it is not easy to sastify all of them.
Now after reading the material that was provided, I saw some ways to reach all my students but I still have some doubts about how successful it could be until I have the opportunity to be in that situation.(Maybe you can send me some of your own experiences)
I know that in our institute we do not plan to increase the number of students per class. On the contrary, we would like to reduce it to 20 which would be wonderful.
I just remember many years ago when I started teaching English for a National University here in Peru and I was in charge of the Grammar groups. I had to teach groups of up to 35 students in classrooms without any technology ( a portable radio- cassette player). Those classes were really boring and just a monologue. The classroom was so small that it was really impossible to have any interaction in groups, nor any kinds of real student-centered class. I was the only one talking and the students were listening to me.
Another problem was that workshops were scarce and of really poor quality. Just thinking about how I was teaching at that time, I feel shame.

Now that where I work we are fitted with a lot of technology in our classrooms, I see that slowly my dreams come true. The only thing we have to take into account is that not all teachers adapt quickly to technology and that we should organize workshops for them in order to ensure they can adapt and use the new technology properly.
This is our duty to share with our colleagues our new knowledge and help them.


Thanks for your comments.

Raphaël

Rubric week 6

Hi everybody again,

This was a really useful activity for me.
I searched the net for as many rubrics that I could, analyzed them and started thinking about one that could be useful for me and everyone else doing the same kind of activity.
It has already been a long time that we talked at work about preparing standard rubrics for different skills so that all our teachers would use the same system in order to get the same results. Finally this course gave me the opportunity to start it at once and as I got nice comments on what I did and also I found really good rubrics you all posted. All these rubrics you created will help us a lot to make this job faster than we thought.

Thanks to you all.

Raphaël

WEEK 6: Reading on Enhancing Learning

Hi everybody,

Thanks for the nice comments I received on my post, I really appreciate.
This was also an interesting topic. It took me some time before delivering my post as I wanted really to read about it, think about all the possibilities and check my texbooks in order to really find a good use of technology for different activities we have in our books.
This course is so interesting that today we (coordinators) were presenting a workshop to our respective groups of teachers (in- training workshop) and I had to refer to all what I have learned so far in this course. Our workshop was on integrated skills. As I already mentioned in previous posts, we are going to organize workshops for our teachers to open their eyes on own useful technology can be to improve and make their classes more attractive and interesting to students.

See you soon

Raphaël

Week 6: Learning styles

Hi everybody,

This is already week 6 which means that time is running short before our final project. I try to make up some time to work on our weekly tasks and also think about my final project. This week is again interesting. The learning styles were as some of you mentioned not new for most of us but I found it really interesting to refresh my mind on those different styles because we sometimes forget that we are not all the same and that we should not only take into account the learning styles we like but also the ones our students like. Not all our students like the way we want to teach them and this is really important. Just imagine that you attend a workshop and the trainer is a traditional teacher just reading his lecture to the audience and that's all. If you are an active learner who at the same time is a visual learner, you will just get bored, fell frustrated or maybe fall asleep. So we have to keep in mind that what we do in our classrooms must be for our students and not only for us because we like it that way.

Great topic that makes us reflect on our way of teaching.

Thanks and see you soon.

Raphaël

WEB QUEST

Hi readers,

I have just finished posting my last task. It was a great week again. As I mentioned before, I had never heard about Web Quest Zunal. Yesterday night, I started looking for all the possibilities it offered me and I finally created a simulation of what I think could be a useful one for the group I designed it.
All these new possibilities to use the internet to improve our students skills are really interesting. It will take me some time to develop different programs as I am teaching different levels each month which makes it difficult to me. I will have to slowly develop activities for each level I am teaching and also try them (as nobody is perfect). It will be a try and error. I am an optimistic and I think that I should be able to develop e-activities for most of my groups this year.

See you soon

Raphaël

Week 5: WEB QUEST ZUNAL

HI everyone,

Some others comments on the WEB QUEST ZUNAL.
I opened my account and surfed a little bit. It looks really interesting and I found a good use for one project of high intermediate group I am teaching.
I should try it but as I am still learning the different possibilities as well as I am updating my delicious account, soI think I will try to first analyze all my options using maybe a combination of Delicious.com and Web quest ZUNAL before starting it with my group. As teachers, we should first be in control of the technology we use before starting using it with our students.
Waiting for next month before trying it seems to be a wise decision. AsI am working with a month session, it is not a big deal.

See you soon

Raphaël

Week 5: Another wonderful week

Hi readers,

This week again has been interesting and productive. I have learned about a learning style I didn't know about: PBL.
I was already using technology my way but I had never heard of PBL. I found it really intersting. It opened my eyes on some problems I had when assigning presentations to my students. They were coming up with presentations they sometimes didn't understand themselves because they were just copying something form anywhere in the interent and presenting it to the class. Now by assigning and guiding them intelligently I think it will be much better, much more productive and also my students will learn much more form their presentations.

I think PBL is a good choice to improve our students skills.

See you soon.

Raphaël