Week 9 - Project

So finally, a couple of hours ago I submitted my project by uploading it on our course wiki. I could have done it on Monday, but due to much work before me from Tuesday to Thursday I decided to it on Friday morning. Fortunately, I knew in advance that I would be free then.

From one point of view, I am relieved to have finished it, but on the other hand, I am thrilled to continue working on it. Even though I went through difficult times to manage it from home because of no personal touch with my students, it has turned out to be a very successful approach which enables my students to become responsible for their knowledge as well as to reflect on their work later on.

The group involved in the project is small, but very challenging. They were asked to write their diary posts - see Week 6 - Project Task #5, but they got bored so early! They started asking to write about things they want and in the third "diary post" some of them did not write what they did in English, but about the music they like, about the book they read or about films they watched. The most positive thing about it is that nobody refused to write their posts, they just wanted to change the topic. I consider this very encouraging.

We were supposed to use no more than 2 tools in the project but I had to use a bit more due to my absence from work. We have encountered so many tools I enjoyed that I have started implementing them when needed. I have already started contemplating what tools I might use and with what groups, but I am convinced that I am going to improve my teaching with the use of technology.

Thanks to this course I have got the opportunity to open new horizons and enrich methods I have used.

Week 9 - Learning Styles

This week started quite well because I had finished my project before it and just waited to upload it to our wiki. I needed some break so did not do my task about learning styles on Monday but left it for Wednesday night. 

I started with testing myself on edutopia to find out what my learning style is. Obviously, we studied learning styles before, but the distinction was a bit different. The styles were divided according to „senses“ to types of learners whose „senses“ prevail while acquiring knowledge, such as  visual, aural, kinesthetic or verbal. I always thought I was a visual type of a learner since I could remember things easier when I read them, colour-coded them, saw pictures or diagrams – all connected with my visual „photographic“ memory. However, when it came to the process of moving words from my passive to active vocabulary, it often happened that when I talked to a person in English, I realized that I had known the word before and when I liked it, I started using it.

After taking the test about my learning style I realized that I am „smart“ enough :-) to learn new things. Being a „victim“ of multiple intelligence with  5 out of 7 styles ranging from 58 to 75 also increases various inputs I use while teaching since subconsciously I have been trying to help students to find the easiest way for them to learn the language so that they can enjoy the whole process and are satisfied with their knowledge, skills and abilities. 

(From now on it is an updated copy of my Nicenet post so if you have read it, you may stop reading:-) 

Having learnt about my learning style and reading about different styles on that website,  I read the compulsory articles and learnt a bit more.  Then I went online to read what my colleagues wrote in discussion on Nicenet and realized that almost everything had been mentioned. I did not know how to write my post and contribute to the discussion so I commented on my colleagues's posts and expressed my opinion or feeling about them. 

I really liked Maria´s post which is very thorough and if I had not read the compulsory reading, after having read Maria´s post I would be able to understand everything. I absolutely agree with the quote by Felder „professors should strive for a balance of instructional methods...". 

Shuangru cited  "what educators do is to use a variety of teaching styles in class teaching," and I cannot agree more.

Margarita pointed out "It is quite imposible to get all your students pleased by the strategy which they learn more"“  This is something each teacher should be aware of.

Tuula wrote "to get the students' emotions involved in addition to their rational thinking."  Very important!

Rosmery mentioned 5Cs - "Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities"  

What is the learning of a foreign language about if not this?

Being aware of all mentioned above makes the use of technology crucial.  Involving emotions both positive and negative – by using videos, news, films, pictures, songs, musis online or offline – combination of visual, aural, verbal and to some extent kinesthetic if you let students move, dance or just simply move the mouse, helps students  remember, analyse, evaluate and create. 

What technology would work best? It depends on the students as well as the teacher. Mutual co-operation, sharing ideas and feelings, involving students´ interests and sparking intrinsinc motivation contributes to creating a positive atmosphere in which the students are not afraid of expressing their own opinion, making mistakes, but also they are able to ask for and demand the approach they feel might work for them. It is also interconnected with the interests and a personality of the teacher to enhance the quality of the teaching-learning process.

Knowing what learning styles prevail in the classroom will definitely help the teacher  focus on the majority and choose the most appropriate technology that appeals to most of the students. The change is life and the life is a change. 

Week 8 - Project Report Finished

I am proud to announce that I have just finished my project report. Earlier this week, on Monday particularly, I uploaded my project draft on Donna's wiki to have it assessed by my partners Tuula from Finland and Rosmery from Bolivia.

After having my project evaluated by Tuula, Rosmery might not have found the time to do it yet, I finished the project and its report. If Rosmery sends me something more to amend, I may do it tomorrow. I expect Donna to send us the template for the final report, I am going to copy and paste it!!!

Tuula's project is great in terms of its immediate preparedness to use in any classroom. Rosmery's project plan is very ambitious and useful for her and her colleagues.

I am really delighted to work with such experienced and skilled teachers like Tuula and Rosmery and their projects have open new horizons for my career. Thank you.

Week 8 - Project Draft + Online and Offline Tools

Unfortunately, this week has been quite busy and due to a project draft to be finished by Wednesday, there has not been enough time to explore all the different tools and exercises in details.

Pretty luckily, I was able to finish my draft on Monday and also check Tuula’s project and send her feedback so I could concentrate on this week task.

On Thursday I had some time to explore some of the tools and was amazed how many of them we were introduced to. They are all great but having registered to so many websites and keeping records of usernames and passwords has become too tiring. I have to admit that if I do not save it somewhere on my PC soon, I will forget all of them.

As for tools, I have already been familiar with, my number one is Hot Potatoes. I came across Hot Potatoes about 10 years ago and since then I would say that this software is one of the most advantageous tools a teacher can use because it may be used both online and offline so the Internet connection is not always necessary. I used to save the .htm files on my USB and before the lesson, I copied the files into each computer or the network administrator created a special drive for students, I copied it there and the students accessed it from each computer.  In addition, a teacher can create tailor-made lessons reflecting grammar and vocabulary of the course book. I have uploaded some Hot Potatoes files I made a couple of years ago for you to see on Donna’s wiki into Week 8 resources.

Another tool worth mentioning are Google Documents. Creating a Google Form has never been so easy. I enjoyed creating the forms so much that I am going to use them quite often when I feel that something should be improved or get some feedback on activities at school.  I also used Google Doc to prepare a record book of mistakes that my students made in their posts. The task was to go through the lines with mistakes and correct them. When they did it at home, it was quite ok, however, when I introduced it at the lesson – checking their “corrections”, my students realized that they might “tease” the others by deleting their corrections, making mistakes in others’ lines etc. so I was forced to threaten them by leaving the document as it was, without checking their corrections and explaining what mistakes they had made and of course, starting to assess their posts full of mistakes and give them appropriate mark.

After checking our Week 8 Resource Page on Donna’s wiki, I found out that William used Quizlet so I checked it. I was nicely surprised because it was the tool I had seen before in an English course of Masaryk’s University in Brno, The Faculty of the Arts. So I logged in and created flash cards for my students to prepare for the test on Gerund and Infinitive and sent the link to the exercise to them.

While going through various tools, I decided to improve my skills at managing an LMS Moodle I have at my disposal on our school server. I had created several courses for students to promote their autonomy, but mostly used the “passive” part of it – posting links to interesting articles, online dictionaries or online exercises.  I did not have enough time and strength to learn how to create tests there because it seemed too complicated. I am not saying that is not difficult, but it gives you opportunity to prepare questions and then you may create various test and set marking and a penalty mark and after the student takes the test, the result of it is sent to the marking book so the teacher does not have to evaluate it.  What teacher would not want a tool that evaluates prepared tests?

Finally, our Nicenet discussion about the use of these tools and exercises and their influence on promoting Learner Autonomy was due today. My colleagues expressed their opinion on the different tools and what constraints might be expected and how they might be overcome. Nobody has mentioned that Learner Autonomy happens mostly outside the classroom and therefore the need for a computer for each student in the class is not the issue to be solved. However, overuse of the tools might result in students’ indifference towards them and their purpose. So even though, I am IT positive and a one-computer teacher and a computer geek and an enthusiast of technology-related tools, I have to admit that the tools should be used wisely and to such an extent so that they fulfill their role and help both the students and the teacher to create a positive learning atmosphere, to learn with fun and to enjoy the use of language itself.

Now, I am pretty tired so I am going to sleep, but I am also looking forward to evaluating Rosmery’s project plan and making amendments on my own project.

Week 7 - Learner's Autonomy

Learner's Autonomy is the concept I came across in 2000 and since then I have been trying to use it in my teaching. Even though the articles of our compulsory reading were a bit too academic, I found what I was looking for in them. The most appealing idea of Autonomous Learner is 

"autonomy – "feeling free and volitional in one's actions" (Deci 1995, p.2) – is a basic human need. It is nourished by, and in turn nourishes, our intrinsic motivation, our proactive interest in the world around us"

http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/Elp_tt/Results/DM_layout/00_10/06/06%20Supplementary%20text.pdf

Unfortunately, in my opinion, in our country, regardless some of our educators, the Autonomy Learner is an idea of future. Even though teachers probably know what it is about, they have no power or willingness to  proceed with it. Moreover, our traditional classes are teacher-centred and the move towards student-centred ones is almost impossible. Teachers, parents and students are used to parroting, memorizing without understanding and they are not used to giving, contradicting or sharing their opinions. Apparently, this might have been caused by the previous regime in which nobody should step out of the line. 

Nevertheless, being a teacher who supports the Autonomous Learner is a challenging issue. There have been parents and students who have complained about my approach in terms of the requirements and assessment. They have not been able to understand that providing materials - with or without the use of technology, explaining grammar rules, setting vocabulary, giving hints or provoking discussions have been techniques used to encourage students to think. In addition, they have always waited to be told what to memorize, what to think, what opinions to present not to contradict those of the teacher and  when they have not been "satisfied", they have complained. You, as a teacher, have to explain and explain and withstand such protests and resistance.

Sparking attractiveness in language learning through the interests of learners seems to be one of the most effective way how to nourish our intrinsic motivation. As it has been mentioned in my previous posts, teachers should find out what their students like and  learn something about their interests themselves to understand what might help their students be involved. Most of my students are teenagers so I do read books they read, I watch films and series they watch, I try to listen to music they do. On the other hand, adults have either professional interests or hobbies to talk about so I have learnt about snowboarding, radioactive waste disposal or assembly of RC planes. Accepting such an approach leads us to our proactive interest in the world around us so we are not frozen in time and we are exposed to new challenges to improve our education. Everybody knows that the education does not end with a diploma.

Being responsible for your knowledge is the most important issue teachers should teach students. The pyramid below shows how I explain to my students that it depends on them what they will learn and how.

Week 6 - PowerPoint and Project Task #5

So this week it has been about making an interactive PowerPoint presentations and starting to implement a new technology-related tool.

Both topics seemed quite easy to me since I have used PowerPoint for several years and always tried to make it interactive. At about 4 years ago I moved to the interactive whiteboard software and almost gave up PowerPoint.  If I need to make some subject matters easier to understand for my students I always contemplate the advantages and disadvantages of PowerPoint and ActivInspire software and choose the one I find more beneficial for the purpose.

However, I uploaded one of my old „interactive“ PowerPoint presentations and made a new „interactive“ one. As for the process of making it, it was not difficult. Nevertheless, I had problems to choose the topic I would like to make it for not to do it just because I had to, but because I wanted to use it later. Since I made a lot of PowerPoint presentations for grammar rules, I chose to make 1 for the topic Crime and Punishment. I used recommended interactive tools, Jeopardy game, BlankPage, QuickWrite, Think-Pair-Share, ConcepTest, links to the Internet as well as a link to a document.

As for the project task#5, fortunately, I started implementing the technology-related tool as soon as I learnt about blogs. 2 weeks ago, I set the main and pernament task for my students to keep a diary of their work or „touch“ with English.  Their tasks looks as follows:

Dear students,

your MAIN and PERNAMENT task is to record your progress in English and the use of English in your daily life.

You are going to write at least 1 post on your blog a week to summarise 

• what you have done in English, 
• how much time you have spent doing sth in English,
• what you have learnt,
• if you have enjoyed what you have done or been doing,
• what you have not liked and why,
• what you think we should be doing.

The post is due every Sunday by 2 pm. Word limit is no less than 100 words.

The most important thing about the task is that I set it via the Internet, on our class wiki, and informed the students via email because I started my sick leave then. I was very surprised when I realised that almost half of them did their task. I commented on their posts and sent email to all of them with the names of those who had not done their work. I praised those who had. I gave them another deadline to finish their main task. Except 3 students out of 12, everybody else did it.

What I find challenging is that I have a student in this group, she is a model, and she is out of school for 2 months. I also sent her email and asked her to do the main task and she did! So this is another chance for students (and teachers!) who cannot be present at school to participate in classroom tasks.

This is the second week I have not been at school, still on a sick leave, but if possible, I check on my students and their work.  Only 4 people out of 11 (1 students asked to be moved to a „weaker“ group) have done their main task so far. I am going to send them email to remind them what their duties are and see how it works. However, it might be difficult for them to finish it today because in a half an hour our ice-hockey team is playing against Russia in the World Ice-Hockey Championship.

The most important issue I am facing is that I have to create a rubric for assessing their posts. I should think of deadlines, content, grammar and vocabulary but not to discourage them. I mean if the main purpose of the tool is make students do their homework and preparations regularly, I should focus on deadlines first and a content. Then when they are used to working, I may proceed to being a bit strict about grammar and vocabulary. I would like to discuss their mistakes at school, by displaying them via OHP and encouraging them to correct their posts or to keep a record of their mistakes in order to avoid them later.

WOW! I have just created a rubric for blog posts - every week diary posts. Huraaaaa.

Week 5 - WebQuest - Extra Credit

What did I get myself into again?  This week enables us to improve our grades and be awarded an extra credit if we try to create some kind of project on WebQuest.

Some of the teachers, the tutor Donna inclusive, 'have sung a beautiful song' about WebQuest so I have thought that I might improve my grades by having done it because I lost some points 2 weeks ago due to my comment on another discussion post missing.

Now, I am frustrated since I could have spent much more enjoyable time working on my final project rather than wait for ages for a Zunal time response and then to get the message 'User zunalco_mysql already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections.' Unbelievable! And I have not mentioned formatting which becomes a nightmare!

NEVER SAY NEVER! Although I understand this  saying, I dare to say I will never use Zunal again. 

To begin with, according to a WebQuest main website http://www.webquest.org/ 'a WebQuesst is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web.'  This even collaborative environment designed for teachers to provide students with step by step instructions and online resources as well as an evaluation rubric of the results of the project is a  designed website prepared for teachers with precise instructions what to do and how to do it and with a variety of 'templates' offered. Moreover, it contains evaluation rubric and other tools for assessment with clear instructions why it is necessary and what should be accomplished. Further information about advantages of using a WebQuest you can find here.

On the other hand, a WebQuest is compared to a lesson prepared with the use of  a piece of paper and pencil. I would recommend to stick to them instead of using web sites like Zunal.

As a notion behind WebQuest is a great idea of creating some kind of a lesson plan for a project-based learning which not a lot of teachers have idea what it should be like. WebQuest uses a simple structured lesson plan with clear divisions of its parts that guided both teachers and students.

My attempt to create a WebQuest is here http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=195705

I have to admit that it took me so much time to do this that if I were not on a sick leave, I would not have been able to do it due to a lack of time.

Week 5 - Still Not Over

The only thing I would like to mention is that the time is passing so quickly and we are being introduced to so many things, some new, some familiar that I feel this course should be longer than 10 weeks in order to learn and remember everything.

I would rename this course to the "prodigy course" or "course for geniuses" since we really must be geniuses to understand, learn and produce at the same time in such a short time. I am not complaining. I am enjoying regardless obstacles to overcome.  

I wish the course lasted longer because everything we have been offered so far is really invaluable. While reading about an alternative assessment, I got carried away by information provided on the website that I need more time to revise what I was taught while studying to become a teacher. I am particularly interested in teaching grammar since I teach it as a part of  the subject Language Skills so I need more time to go through it thoroughly. I am really looking forward to it as well as through teaching other skills and other teaching essentials.  

Week5 / Week 4 - Reading/Vocabulary and Mutli-skill Websites

Do not get confused, week 5 is an earlier post so if you want to read it, scroll down.

Even though, week 5 is now in progress, I can recall what I did at the beginning of week 4.

We were recommended some websites to browse dealing with reading, vocabulary or other skills. I was very pleased we were recommended websites I had known and used before since it means that what I have been doing so far is valuable and right. 

I have used BreakingNewsEnglish website before and was very satisfied with the outcomes of the lessons. As the task for week 4, I used the website again and I tried it immediately the next day with a real success. My "post-state examination" class got immersed in vocabulary and guessing exercises as well as listening to the news in both British and American English. They also enjoyed discussions about pass-thoughts replacing passwords and unanimously disagreed with the notion.

Not to bother you a lot, I enjoyed browsing the other websites, some of them familiar some of them not, and stored a lot of them in my delicious pages for further use.

Week 5 - Project-based Learning (PBL), assessment, rubrics

This week we were supposed to read an interesting article by Susan Gaer "Less Teaching, More Learning"  and best practises about how to implement PBL into our teaching. The projects described are not exactly useful in non-English speaking countries, but might be used as an idea what to do and how to do it.

A project is a "swear" word  among many teachers and parents in Slovakia. From my personal observation, teachers in our country have been forced to implement PBL into their teaching without proper knowledge, training or support. In many cases it has ended up as follows:

Case #1  primary school, age group 8-12, the topic and the outcome (usually poster with photos or pictures) is set without any guidelines what to follow, pupils "run wild" with the topic, parents are involved  - usually parents do the project, pupils read it

Case #2 primary school, age group 12-15, the topic and the outcome ( usually IT-based, MS PowerPoint most favourable), no guidelines, just the topic. Pupils go to wikipedia and copy and paste anything concerning the topic, then they read it in front of the class. MS PP is done as a "book" - everything is written there, pupils read it from the screen or directly from the display of OHP. No sources are provided - pupils are taught to plagiarise without any consequencies, they are even praised for the "copy and paste" job.

Case #3 secondary school, only enthusiastic teachers dare to ask students to do any projects :-)

On the other hand, there are many international and intercultural projects running in Europe that are founded by the European Union to unite member countries, to overcome predjudices, to become tolerant towards differences and odds and to keep nation's cultural diversity.

The one EU project, I was involved in in my previous school, was Electronic Curriculum - New Ways of Teaching and Speaking Foreign Languages. We enjoyed working on this project, even though the tool eJournal we used seemed too difficult for teachers to learn that it caused some delays and not exactly the appropriate use of the tool. It was much easier to make an MS PowerPoint presentation and upload it there than to "write an article" so most materials and projects must be downloaded if you want to see them. 

http://ejournal.eduprojects.net/linz2/index.php?output=FrontPage() 

I am amazed that the link functions :-) I have just checked if we used any kind of rubrics but realised that the article is not published. I even remember the password so I have logged in and found out that some websites that have been recommended to us in this course, we used 8 years ago and there are also some more. 

What we struggled with was a clear assessment of the project work. If we had had some knowledge of rubrics then, it would have been much easier. Using the rubric tool at http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ enables us to start and improve our assessment and implement an alternative assessment involving students as well. 

I have tried to create a general rubric for an oral examination of presenting certain topic (talk about....) and I am not sure if I succeeded. I need some training and perhaps a tutor. It is much simplier when I do it in my head, announce it to students and evaluate their performance. I always highlight a variety of grammar structures, the use of new recently acquired grammar structures and vocabulary, also the wide use of vocabulary and linking devices at an appropriate level (CEFR) in advance. Even though some students talk a lot, they tend to stick to their "safe" structures and vocabulary since they can express everything they want. This is a common problem that after reaching the certain level of understanding in L2 and basic communication, students are not willing to improve more because they are satisfied with what they know and do not understand our persistence to force them. Although we try to introduce something new to motivate them, they are usually so indifferent or they see "so much" effort behind it.

As the other tool we have been exposed to is WebQuest. I need a little time to explore what it offers, however, I am contemplating now what I may prepare for my conversation lessons next school year to integrate it and make students do their assignments. To be honest, even though I have been using LMS Moodle with all possible sources for  them to be prepared for our lessons, I failed this year. The students are not mature enough to become autonomous learners and I did not find the right tool to encourage them to understand, to observe, to think critically,  to analyse, to create their own opinions and views and express them. So they came to lessons unprepared, with no knowledge of the world around them, no opinions, no vocabulary, awful grammar. They expected me to "explain" the topic to them, perhaps provide them with some handouts to memorise and parrot the next lesson. They are not used to thinking!