Week 3 Comments on the course advance

Hi everybody reading me,

This week again has been productive for me.
Sometimes it's good to discover new websites given by our peers, check them and learn from them. I was really in a rut because many years ago I found good and useful websites and always recommended the same ones to my students.
Now this month I just completely changed and started recommending new websistes you guys posted and that I found really interesting. Thanks to all of you.

As soon as we finish this course, we have already decided that we will create a blog in our institute that at the beginning all our teachers will have to follow. The idea is to familiarize them with a new technology that they will have o implement into their classrooms.

This is a really great course.

Raphaël

Week 3

Hi everybody,

This week has been a busy week for me and that's the reason why I haven't been able to do all my homework quickly. Now for me this week again has been really interesting because even though I work with my laptop all the time, it's always good to re-explore the net with a special purpose and this is what I really like in this course.
I didn't know about the delicious.com website and I really liked to explore it because it's true that it is an easy way to get websites according to your needs. Sometimes I search the internet for something new but maybe because of the search words I type, I do not find anything new. Thanks to that website it makes my life easier because now looking for specific tags I can find websites I had never discovered before.
Looking for uses of technology for teaching was also interesting because sometimes you know some uses but when reading articles from experts it opens your mind. You discovere some uses that you had maybe never thought about.
Looking at some of the websites that were given I also discovered good activities even though I already knew some of the websites like for example ONESTOPENGLISH.
Of course it's time consuming to look for new activities through the net but it allows you to change your class routine and also gives you ideas for activities you can adapt according to your class level and age.

It was really an intersting week.

See you soon

Raphaël

Objectives and classrooms

Hi everybody,

Let’s talk a Little bit about the objective.

I think all our classes must have an objective, Here we oblige our teacher to have an everyday lesson plan and objective. When observing classes as coordinators, one of our objective is to check that what the teacher is doing correspond to the objective he or she is obliged to write on the board. This is to ensure a grade of quality to our institute. Students entering the class know what they are going to learn. Moreover, we check that our teacher have a correct wrap up activity at the end of their class to check if their students reached the objective otherwise they will have to remedy the situation by giving their students extra exercises or by repeating the class in order to make their students understand the lesson

Now to talk about what we are learning for the moment in this course, I must say that It first open completely my mind on how to use the web successfully in my classes. I am already thinking about opening different blogs for mu different groups. To be honest here the problem is that I never know which group I am going to teach the next month as we teach a month session. Now after this course and giving training to all our teachers, we could really change our teaching system and make our students much more technologically aware.
Including the internet in part of the grading could be one of the steps even though we already use it with the method we use (Longman-Pearson Topnotch and Summit).

Most of us noticed that our students have many weaknesses but sometimes it is hard to remedy them. Talking about the problems I found here, one of the first step we should take is to change the educational system in our student’s first language.

If you do not oblige your students to read in their first language what do you in a second language. I put my daughter in a private school which is bilingual and where they have to read a book every two month and sometimes every month. Now my daughter who is only 9 years old asks me to buy books because she loves reading. Every night we read a chapter.
Most of my students do not read anything. This could be considered as a school problem but the problem I have with them is that they do not know anything about anything. when we specific topics in our books, nobody is participating or nearly nobody because they do not know about the topic in their own language. Who is talking in the classroom, the TEACHER. This makes our classes different to what we expect. We try to promote much less teacher’s talk and much more students interaction meaning student- student or student teacher interaction but not only teacher- student interaction.

Another consequence of the lack of reading in our students is that when writing they are really poor in ideas as well in vocabulary. Another problem I am dealing with is that students are not accustomed to studying. They start studying a few minutes before the test or only think that what they have heard in the classroom is enough. Wrong!
Most of the students here think that only by being in the classroom is enough to pass. Wrong!
Another problem we are dealing with is that many students just attend classes to get their certificate because it is mandatory in all universities here to have a second language certificate to graduate but the students have no interest in knowing another language. This is sometimes frustrating for someone like me who wants his or her students to learn something

I would like to hear about your student’s interest in your classroom. Do you have the same problem? How do you deal with it.
Now I have also to remind you that I am a foreigner in the country where I live. I am also completely different from the culture I live in. I do not complain, I love where I live but I see some problems that I am not accustomed to and I would like to solve them. No culture is better than another, but sometimes you can try to do something to make it better.

Waiting for you comments

Faithfully yours,

Raphaël




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Learning and improving

Hi everybody,

After a few days surfing the net, I can say that I learned a lot about how to blog and how to create a blog.
I am presently visiting all your blogs and I am trying to find some stuffs I would like to use in my blog.
In my opinion, a blog must include two things:
First, an attractive topic or theme.
Second, it must have something attractive or out-of-the-coomon. Nice colors, pictures, etc.
What is your opinion on how to create an attractive blog?

I am still thinking about how to introduce some animated gifs on my blog
If you can help me, please you are welcome

See you all soon.

Raphaël

WEEK 1 First day on the blog

Hi everybody,

I have just create my new blog today and I have already learn something. Luba noticed I create my blog but in Spanish. I look for some ways to arrange it without creatin a new one. I found out that it was possible to change at leat some of the headlines retyping them in the language you want.
I am stll looking forward to change the look of my blog adding more new stuffs.
Keep on visiting my blog and give your comments. I am soon going to visit all your blogs.

Thanks a lot

Raphaël draft 1/12/10 by Raphaël Delete

WEEK 1 second day of blogging

Hi everybody,

This is my second day on my blog. I have just modified a few details on it and I would like to change the template.
I am already thinking about a few projects for my classes and I think there are many options and that my students will like them.
At work, we are already using the internet with our students because the books we use (from PEARSON LONGMAN- Topnotch and Summit) require our students to send their homework to their respective teachers during the month. They have different assignments per unit and must send them to their teachers as it is a percentage of their final score.
I will continue searching all the options the blogger.com provides.

See you soon

Raphaël