WEEK 10

Dear All,

This is our last week, yet I would like to be in touch with all of you of course. I am so sorry for not having been active enough for the last couple of weeks because of my trips abroad and school work.

This week is another extraordinary week not only for me but also all Turkish people. You might have heard the things going on here. I just want to share it with you briefly.

We have been protesting against the Turkish government since 28 May 2013. At the beginning, there were just a few protestors who were against the government that aimed to demolish the only park, GEZİ PARK, in Taksim, one of the busiest places in Taksim. The trees in the park were torn down, and people started to assemble in the park. They were so innocent that they just wanted to protect the park because they did not want another shopping mall.

However, the police were so harsh and cruel that they chased the crowd with cannon vehicles and pepper spray. Gradually, the number of protestors multiplied. The government banned the media from spreading the news. They went event futher and they blocked the roads and cancelled public transportations.

Not only in Gezi Park, but also all around İstanbul, people from different backgrounds, political parties, and regious came together and started to protest. Unfortunately, the police were harsher than before. They chased the unarmed protestors by panzers, tanks, tear gas, pepper spray, orange spray, and plastic bullets. Many people were run over, injured, and some lost their eyes. Some animals, and people were poisioned and died.

Many people, restaurants, institutions and hospitals offer help for the ones who are in need. Still there are voluntary nurses and doctors helping everyone and sharing their contact numbers via twitter and facebook.

At the moment, not in İstanbul but in many cities in Turkey, people are on the alert.  Turkish people living abroad such as in Canada, England, the USA, and the like are protesting, too. We are all doing our best for freedom and democracy.

I guess this picture explains everything. I am so sorry for bothering you....

As for the weekly assignment, Robert wanted us to compare two models; State of Washington: Tiers of Technology Integration and University of Southern Florida: The Technology Integration Matrix to assess our own teaching usage in the class.

 The Matrix of State of Washington: Tiers of Technology Integration consists of 3 tiers.

Tier 1: Teacher Focus on Productivity
Tier 2: Instructional Presentation and Student Productivity
Tier 3: Powerful Student-Centered 21st Century Learning Environment

I mostly use tier 1 type of activities. That is, I make use of online resources to get information for my lessons, I prepare my lessons and save them for the future reference, keep students' progress, be in touch with my students via e-mails, facebook, and the like.

I have gradually started using activities from tier 2 like delivering poweroint presentations, and tier 3 such as creating online resources.

University of Southern Florida: The Technology Integration Matrix states the levels of technology integration into the curriculum. Those levels are 

Entry : Mostly, I am the only one actively using technology while presenting someting.
Adoption : If I have a lab hour, at the very beginning, I am the one who controls the type of technology and how it is used. The students are more active , but as a teacher I regulate activities.
Adaptation : This time, I dont guide my students step by step. I let my students choose their technology tools among the ones I provide if I have a lab hour.
Infusion : When there is a student project like a presentation, I guide my students
Transformation : I provide online activities and encourage my students to use technology.

Obviously, I have not integrated technology into my curriculum much so far. I am plannimg to design my curriculum and inform my students at the very beginnining of the term, so we will be actively involved in technology.

Some Advice to Future Participants

Dear Future Participants,

Congratulations! You will never ever regret having taken this course.

You will have the opportunity to meet lots of colleagues all around the world and exchange ideas.

The most crucial thing is that you need to sort out time for the course.

Do not expect lectures from your tutor, probably Robert. He does guide you and help you when you are in need of course, but he mostly encourages you to try and explore new things.

You will definitely need a PC/laptop and the internet connection.

Robert will always send you a reminder which will be ending with '....Oregon time'. It is easy to follow weekly discussions and assignments because he opens a different thread for each one.

You are more than welcome if you do research on the given subject and refer to various resources apart from the provided ones.

If you keep a diary, write your reflections or write the weekly summary on your blog, later on you can refer to them.

Trials and errors are invaluable. It is you who can only know what is best for your class, so try some online sources before asking your students to practice them.

Have a nice journey!
Best
Hacer



WEEK 9

Dear All!

We are in the middle of the 9th week. I came home yesterday evening feeling exhausted. When I was away, I though I had the chance to fill in my basket with lots of good things to share with my colleagues, so I was excited. However, since I arrived this morning, I have only heard bad things. I need to plan ahead....

 

Well, let's focus on Week 9 Discussion: Technology and Learning Styles first. Robert wanted us to share our ideas about ways that we could use technology to address a variety of learning styles.

Below is Jurgia's summary, which can be used for different types of learners:

Learners	Activities
Active	Divide class into three groups. Give the task to walk around the school and take some pictures with tablets on topics “Spring”, “Pollution” and “Surroundings” and write a post on class blog
Reflective	Write a blog “Class notes”
Sensing	Carry out the survey “How much time do you spend for your English homework?” and send by email to your classmates
Intuitive	Search for information about “Tigers’ eating habits”. Make the  presentation for the class expressing your opinion
Visual	Make the PowerPoint presentation on topic “Cats in Lithuania”
Verbal	Record the oral presentation on topic “Dogs in Lithuania”
Sequential	Give the tasks of conjugation of the verb to be, then with Present Continuous Tense prepared with Hot Potatoes
Global	Read the ebook and answer the questions

 

Riyadh paid importance to some activities considering the importance of Multiple Intelligence.

Below is Kayyum's reflection on the article entitled 'LEARNING STYLES AND STRATEGIES' by Richard M. Felder and Barbara A. Soloman

Types of Learners	Fact about them	Tips for them
I-ACTIVE LEARNERS	1-Active learners tend to like group work. 2-Active learners learn by doing something. 3-Sitting through lectures is very hard for active learners.	1-Study in a group . 2-Explain topics to each other.
II-REFLECTIVE LEARNERS	Reflective learners prefer to think before doing.	1-Pause while studying to review what you have read. 2-Think of possible questions or applications. 3-Write short summaries of readings.
III-SENSING LEARNERS	1-Sensing learners tend to like learning facts. 2-They often like solving problems by well-established methods. 3-They don't like tested on material that has not been explicitly covered in class. 4-They tend to be patient with details. 5-They are good at memorizing facts. 6-They are good doing hands-on (laboratory) work . 7-They are practical and careful . 8-They don't like courses that have no apparent connection to the real world.	1-Ask your instructor for specific examples of concepts and procedures. 2-Discuss with friends or classmates.try to find examples in books.
IV-INTUITIVE LEARNERS	1-Intuitive learners often prefer discovering possibilities. 2-They learners like innovation and dislike repetition. 3-They dislike exams on material outside what has been taught. 4-They may are be better at grasping new concepts. 5-They are comfortable mathematical formulations. 6-They tend to work faster.	1-Ask your instructor for interpretations. 2-Take time to read the entire question before you start answering.
V-VISUAL LEARNERS	1-most people are visual learners. 2-Visual learners remember best what they see.	1-Try to find diagrams, sketches, schematics, photographs, flow charts. 2-Ask for videotapes or CD-ROM . 3-Prepare a concept map. 4-Color-code your notes with a highlighter .
VI-VERBAL LEARNERS	1-Verbal learners get more out of words. 2-Students get many chances of listening to lectures daily.	1-Write summaries or outlines of course material. 2-Work in groups.
VII-SEQUENTIAL LEARNERS	1-Sequential learners tend to gain understanding step by step. 2-They tend to follow logical paths . 3-They know a lot about specific aspects of a subject.	1-Ask the instructor to fill in the skipped steps. 2-Arrange the lecture material in logical order. 3-Relate your new topic to things you already know.
VIII-GLOBAL LEARNERS	1-Global learners tend to learn in large jumps. 2-They may be able to solve complex problems quickly. 3-They know some about various subjects.	1-Skim through the entire chapter berore going to class. 2-Immerse yourself in individual subjects also.

I went over my draft project and completed it. I would appreciate it if you could post your comments. Here is my Final Project.

Final project hacer from hacersivil13

WEEK 8

Dear All,

This week was quite unusual. I had to fly to Poland for a meeting. I was in my office since 23:30 on Friday to complete the previous week's assignments. Then, I was ready to go... Being in Poland was a great experience. I met great colleagues over there. Meanwhile, Polish people are so kind and helpful. First, I went to Biyalistok Technical University and we had a chance to observe classes and meet new people as well as introduce our university. We met some Turkish students by chance, they were all happy being there.  We also had the opportunity to see two amazing cities; Krakow and Warsaw. I went emotional when I learnt once more how Polish and Jewish people had suffered....
If  you visit Krakow, you should definitely see The Historical Museum of the City of Krakow Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory

During our visit, I had no internet connection, which worried me a lot. Our colleagues kindly gave their laptops, yet I was unable to download anything due to restriction. I had to write my draft at a nice cafeteria and now I am writing at the airport since I am about to fly to Cyprus.

Still, I do feel proud of myself because I have completed my assignments.

As soon as I arrived in Istanbul, I took another plane to Cyprus to attend another meeting, which was also invaluable. There I had the chance to have a look at different points of view both as a teacher and as a part of administrator and increase my networking by means of some academic and social meetings.

As for the discussion topics of the week, Robert wanted us to think about the follwing questions after after exploring some of the different tools and exercises.

how could using these tools promote learner autonomy,

what are the constraints that would make it difficult to use these tools, and

how will you overcome them?

To be able to answer those questions, our reading list and applications were a great help. Besides, our classmates' sharings were invaluable, which are available at Nicenet.

Robert also wanted  us to create an online couse site or an exercise.

I created a competition, for which I prepared restatement, word formation, tense revision and reading for main idea types of questions for my adult students who are Pre-Intermediate-Intermediate level of students. This is a class competition, will activate their schemata since it is a revision activity and it is for fun.

Phrasal verbs activity  aims to remind students phrasal verbs but I guess I forgot to save it :(
Passive Quiz activity is like a revision activity after learning passive voice.
Relative Clause cross word activity  is good for vocabulary revision.

My classmates' exercises and activities are also very hepful.  For instance; Said's Hot Potatoe exercise, Jurgita's flasscards , Julio's Poster, and Belal's class blog are all great.

We were also required to prepare our first draft for the peer-reading activity. Then, of course, we needed  to give comments on our partner's work, using the appropriate peer review checklist available on the Projects page.

I had to complete my assignments at cafeterias and airport... 

WEEK 7

Dear All,

It is the 7th week. Isn't it unbelievable? After the course, I will be missing my friends' invaluable posts, Robert's reminders, everyone's comments... Time flies away very quickly. Besides, I literally kill time just as I did yesterday.

When I went home at around 6 pm, I thought taking a nap would refresh me. There was a concert on the school campus, where I live, but I decided not to go to be able to focus on my weekly assignments. I turned on TV and my computer, I picked the reading tasks and all of a sudden I fell asleep. after a 13-hour short nap, my alarm clock crazily rang to wake me up. If it was possible, it would pull me out of the sofa and drag me on the floor until it was sure that I was awake.

I will cross my finger and hope that I will do my best for this week.

LEARNER AUTONOMY

Let's start the weekly discussion with Robert's question 'What could you do to encourage greater autonomy in students, with and without technology?'

I read 'What is Learner Autonomy and How Can It Be Fostered?' by Dimitros Thanasaoulas, ' Learner autonomy: drawing together the threads of self-assessment, goal-setting and reflection' by David Little, and 'Learner Autonomy' by Richard Smith.

They all agree that learner autonomy is acquired either by natural means or by formal learning. Thus, teachers should be a helping hand by

- using L2
- involving students in activities
- helping students to set their own targets
- requiring students to keep a written record of their learning
- engaging them in regular evaluation of their own progress.

As a results, learner involvement, learner reflection, and target language use can be encouraged.

At this point, multiple intelligence comes to my mind. As you may know, by means of integrating various activities, we may cater to our learners' needs.
In her article, 'Two Activities for Fostering Autonomous Learning', Galina Kavaliauskiene  describes two activities.

• In one activity the teacher lets a student answer a question. If the answer is correct that particular student has the right to ask a question to his/her peer. If not, the teacher chooses a different student to answer. Alternatively, the teacher may prepare different versions of a progress test and ask students to swap their paper with their peers after the exam. Then they evaluate their peers' paper.
• In the other activity, students are asked to prepare a test for their peers.

In each case, before students hand out the paper and tests, the teacher should check them to make sure that there are no mistakes.

I believe that first of all we, teacher, should teach students to take thier own learning responsibility. Only after that we can talk about learner authonomy. For instance, most of my students are not aware of their skills, needs, knowledge, goals, or achievement. In this respect, we can put the blame on our education system, but still the problem is not sorted out.

PEER READING

This week Robert wanted us to find a partner for the peer-reading. It is like asking someone to dance.in the ballroom.:)
Ryadh picked me and hope he will not regret it....

 

PADLET/WALLWHISHER

Inspired by my classmate Kayyum's Padlet, I prepared my Padlet about your country. Please upload images, videos, or texts.

Created with Padlet

ONE COMPUTER OPTIONS

 

 

 

I mostly use my computer for various reasons as mentioned in the article '7 Categories of Classroom Computer Use', which are



Administrative tool: I mostly use it to keep my students' grades- the one described in the article seems practical but I couldnt activate View, to do research, and to communicate with both students and other teachers.


Presentation tool: I present some materials like graphs, PPPs, videos, etc and when my students are needed to give a presentation, they are allowed to use the computer.

Communication station: The labtobs are not available in the classroom, so students can just use the computers available in the computer lab when they need.

Keypals is seems great but seems more suitable for teenagers.

Information station: During the class hour, the labtops can be used for this purpose.

Publishing tool: Preparing such kind of actitivites are usually assignments after school.

Learning center: Some software p

rograms to drill and practice some skills are awailable in the computer lab.


Simulation center: Unfortunately we dont use it for this purpose.

As you may know, we should not totally trust technology, so sometimes when there is a possible power cut for instance, we need to have a B plan.

In such cases, I usually download the video clip, audio or podcast if I think I may lose it, or print out some pages to hand out in the class for a probable power cut.

In the article WebWhacker is suggested, yet you need to pay for it.

I believe that if we are required to pay for everything such as WebWhacker, SurveyMonkey, HyperStudio, Ning we cannot get the most out of technology. For instance, once I created class Ning, which was very practical, but now you need to pay for it. It is not a high amount of money but if you pay for the good, useful softwares in total it is costly indeed.

 

WEEK 6

 

 

 

 “ Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.”  Chinese proverb

 

 

 

Dear All,

 



Well, it is such a hectic time of the term. Students are getting out of the conrol so are the teachers. Aftera busy week with lots of meeting, I am back sleepy... They say it is because of the spring, but I do not want to put the blame on the season. I definitely need  time to have a rest. I am looking forward to the weekend when I will meet my 11-year old niece and 4-year old nephew. This Sunday is the Mother's Day and they are so impatient to choose a present for their mum. I am planning to take them to the Galata Tower to show them the view. Hope it will be an unforgottable day for them.

As for the weekly assignments, Robert wanted us to use at least two articles about applying technology into large classes.  Though we were taught what the ideal classroom conditions are, just few of us are lucky to have those conditions. Especially the number of students in our classess is quite far away from being the ideal.

In their article- Teaching Large Classes II – Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students-, Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw outline some drawback of large classes, some of which are lack of motivation, lack of motivation, and inadequate facilities. Yet, things are beyond our control, and we need to teach those large classes.

They briefly state how students involvement and their being active learners are important.

In 'Using Technology in Teaching Large Classes' from the University of Oregon's Teaching Effectiveness Program (TEP), TEP provides some sources of information to apply technology in large classrooms.

1- Online Assessment: TEP recommends Blackboard, which provides immediate feedback since scores are logged into the online Grade Center, and Respondus, which enables exams to be printed or published to an online learning system.

 

2- Improving Lectures with Technology: TEP warns us against a possible threat so that we could take some precautions to avoid a likely technology-related inconvenience.

3- Course Site: TEP recommends that we should check other course sites while preparing ours.

4- Enriching Discussion with Technology: TEP states that students' involvement is important, so we need to encourage them to provide responses. We should also make sure that everyone remark upon a students' response.

Both In 'Best Practices in Presenting with PowerPoint' from the UO's Teaching Effectiveness Program, and in 'Creating Interactive PowerPoint Presentations for Teachers and Students' by Drs. Terry & Cathy Cavanaugh from Florida Center for Instructional Technology, some tips are given while preparing a power point presentation, which reminds me of PechaKutca- a Japanese word- means a kind of presentation method in which each one of 20 slides is presented in 20 seconds- 6 minutes and 40 seconds in total. Though I have never tried it myself, I first became the withness of it  in 2009  TESOL  Greece. It was awsome.
Here is an example. Hope you enjoy it.

I do believe that as long as we make it clear enough for our students, they will get used to technology integrated lessons. For instance if they are required to follow their online assignments, pacing and scores, they will after a while will find it easy.

In addition, I do like power point presentations useful to some extend because sometimes the speaker just reads the slides, sometimes it is more than colorful etc. We should also warn students before asking them how to keep their presentation simple but informative, yet not boring.

Apart from the power point presentations, I can recommend http://prezi.com.

I tried to do my best for a good interactive presentation. I guess I need to practice more because I do not really think that it is interactive enough. I found some very helpful videos in the internet. One is called Making Powerpoint Interactive  and the other is called Action Buttons:



 

 

In spite of  all these explanations in addition to Kayyum's, still I couldnt prepare the one I had expected. On the other hand, my classmates are amazing. They are incredibly professional.

My primative presentation is available on Robert's wiki:)

 

WEEK 5

 

Dear All,

It is Monday, yet I  am already exhausted. There are so many online assignments apart from the regular workload.

I am going to İzmir for an accreditation  meeting.  The School of Foreign Languages in Turkey are interested in quality in education, and we have an annual meeting with school directors/representatives. Last year,  the school representatives with accreditation experience were appointed to a committee. I am one of the committee members trying to do our best. We are altogether  4 colleagues from different universities with sort of similar experience. We aim to set up a national accreditation body. The group dynamic is high and everyone is so eager to offer/try something. We are about to finalize our 'To Do' list, and in this respect, the standards, sub-committess, draft regulations, and organizational chart are ready. We will present our work to the other representatives sometime in October.

What are we going to to this week?

1-  Rubrics, project-based learning (PBL) and WebQuests. 

I found   the NCLRC's Web site so informative in terms of some tips of language teaching as well as lesson plans.

I briefly tried to answer Robert's questions:

1- How can PBL be used to help motivate students more?

In her article, Suzan Gear mentioned about her experience. Briefly, she decided to use a project-based curriculum. She guided her students to find out what they needed, and they came up with an idea of writing the recipies they inherited orally from the previous generations. Students brought the ingredients and while cooking they learnt and made use of the terms how ho measure them. Meanwhile they wrote down the recepies and made a cookbook. See more of her projects here.

Such kinds of personal involvements result in a product created/made mostly by students. Thus, it is more collaborative and fun. Besides, it improves the self-motivation.


2- How can PBL be incorporated with technology in your class - or alternatively what limitations are
there to using PBL in your class?

A drama activity incorporated with technology might be helpful. Students can be provided some online scripts and they vote for them. They they watch the original play online and act it out.

Of course there are some limitations. It is hard to find a drama play with a suitable level. Besides, the number of characters and students is another issue. Moreover, some students do not really feel confident in front of the public, which might be discouraging. Yet, they can help backstage.

3- What is the role of rubrics and/or alternative assessment within PBL?

Alternative assessment is performance based by means of which student can evaluate their learning and learn from the evaluation process. It is ,thus, based on authentic task and it focuses on real-life communication. Since students' involvement is important, they need rubrics and checklists to evaluate themselves and their peers.

4- How can PBL, rubrics and/or alternative assessment be used to promote independent learning?

As stated above PBL requires students' involvement.

As for the rubrics and checklists, first teachers should use checklists and rubrics themselves and then students should get familiar with them to begin to assess their and their peers' performance and provide feedback.

Students become independent learners when they are able to assess heir own performance and recognize what they need. Thus, they need to set SMART goals; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Trackable.

In addition to SMART goals, they need guided practice with assessment tools. Checklist and rubrics are important in this respects. Yet, they need to be guided more to be more aware of their metacognitive and task-based strategies:

-   Metacognitive strategies ; planning, managing thier own learning, monitoring themselves while working on a task , and evaluationg themselves after completing a task, and
-   Task-Based strategies;
•   using what they know (using their background knowledge, making inferences, making predictions, personalization, transfaring from L1 or other languages, paraphrasing),
•   using their imagination (using an image, using real objects),
•   using their organizational skills (applying a rule, categorizing words, using visuals, summarizing, and focusing on key words
•   using variety of resources (using reference books , dictionaries, etc, working with others, and using their inner resources)

According to the article 'Motivate Learners', students need to know that different language skills evolve in different amount of time, and knowing a language means comprehension and communiction by means of the target language.

Apart from those, portofios are important since they are graded over time and systematic.

To sum up, PBL, rubrics and checklists all keep students alert and make them compare themselves to others.

2- Creating our rubric

Here is my rubric for compare & contrast essay. I used RubiStar, which makes it so easy while preparing your own rubric.

3- A technology-related change or potential "solution" to my class

Like many of you, my students are exam oriented and mostly, they just mind exam scores. Since my new group is adult learners and they are supposed to be teachers of different fields such as maths, management, and architecture, I am able to apply different activities in spite of thier being crazy about scores.

Unfortunately, due to my work load, I have to share my class with a colleague and will be able to see them every other week. I do not want to quit teaching them since I have the chance to use new things I am learning here with them.

I talked to my colleague and I requested him to remind my online tasks to students when I am absent.

Well, I have already opened a class blog, and I started to inform them what to do. Sometimes they request some spelling, speaking or listening activities, so I post such kinds of activities to cater for their needs.

I hope they will actively make use of the blog, so in the near future I am planning to make them prepare a presentation and evaluate each other based on the rubric I will create.

As Robert mentioned

- my project problem: lack of time with my students,

- my solution : building a class blog to stay in touch and keep students working on assignments.

4- Creating a WebQuest:   A  sample of WebQuest and a sample of PBL

 
Robert provided great examples of a PLB at http://susangaer.com/studentprojects/ and a WebQuest s at http://www.webquest.org/search/index.php.

Zunal and QuestGarden are amazing to prepare our own WebQuests. I used Zunal to prepare my WebGuest on a reading class. Here is my lesson plan. Meanwhile, I am so impressed by my friends' lesson plans....

WEEK 4

Dear All,

Today, 23rd April, is a very special day in my country because it is the National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. It is a present given by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, to children. He believed that children are our future and they deserve the best. Thus, this special day is celebrated together with guest children all around the world.

HAPPY CHILDREN'S DAY

It is almost the end of academic year. We have only one more month , so both faculty and students are impatiently looking forward to the summer holiday. It is getting warmer and warmer everyday, which is one of the reasons why students are so sleepy in the class but so hyperactive outside.



As for the course, I am trying to do my best to complete my assignments. I have already learnt lots of things. Since I am not used to working at my pace, it is another challange for me.

Our  first task was reading articles about ways to use computers to enhance the teaching of reading, writing, and vocabulary.  I read the following articles;

1- 'Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-Book' by Mei-Ya Liang.
He provides books for extensive reading and asks students to rank the books based on some criteria. Students skim the books and vote for them

2- 'Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension' by Andreea I. Constantinescu.

She states that vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension are interrelated. By means of L1 literacy, a reader can make use of top-down (comprehension is achieved by using background knowledge and making predictions) and bottom-up (fundamental basics of letter and sound recognition), strategies and activate his/her schemata. In this respect, vocabulary knowledge is important in reading proficiency. She adds that teachers should be aware of the benefits of technology integrated lessons.

Among the multi-skill websites,  I chose http://a4esl.org, which offers grammar exercises focusing on a grammar item at a time, I designed the following ABCD objective:

A: 15 Adult students at Intermediate level
B: Students are required to use grammar correctly
C: http://a4esl.org/, where each exercise focuses on a specific grammar point such as subject/verb agreement, participles, and the like.
D: Students are required to be 99% correct since the grammar questions in the national exam are challenging

As for the project step, Robert requested us to focus on a problem in our lesson   that we could overcome by means of technology.

I think my students are good at grammar. They know grammar rules by heart. However, they have the lack of ability to put their knowledge into practice.

I may set up a class wiki so that they can be more productive and aware of both their and each other's performance.

The final task of the week is to prepare a technology enhanced lesson plan. Robet wanted us to use his temple. I checked Baltimore County Public Schools Office of Instructional Technology website, which is an amazing school interms of technology. I makes use of many tools such as Wordle, Voki, VoiceThread, Edmodo, and the like.

Sorting out some time and reading my friends' lesson plans, I recognized that my first plan actullay was primative. Though the updated version is not amazing, I belive it is far much better. Here is my lesson plan. I thought BombayTV is interesting to evaluate students' tense knowledge. I also suggested  animato for a slide show and pimpampum if my students are short of pictures.

My colleague Abdouse from Senegal has a great idea. He making use of survey monkey is able to give instant feedback to his students, which I will think of.
  

WEEK 3

 

There are so many things to do this week. Yet, I am trying to do my best to do the assignments and to check some classmates' blogs. It is almost impossible for me to read everthing of course. What I have recognized that some friends are so descriptive and creative on their blog posts. I am, on the other hand, more plain in the language. I mean I usually post our tasks and my study. I like it when people reflect their personality indeed. I wish I were more like them. I don't think that it is because of the time factor. Everybody is busy and has to deal with multi-tasks at a time. It is more about personality...

1- This week's  discussion topic is about CALL and Oral/Aural Skills.

I started reading the assigned articles first.

Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials by Lindsey Miller

In her article Lindsey Miller states that among the receptive and productive skills, listening has been given the least importance , and thought that it cannot be taught but developed by learners’ own endevours. That is why, not much research has been conducted until recently. She, thus, using authentic materials, suggests pre- (a warm –up activity to activate the learners’ schemata), while-(focusing on specific listening skills), and post listening  (extended discussion) steps to develop listening skills.

It is easy to obtain authentic listening materials from the radio stations (verbal clues), TV channels/ videos (both verbal and non-verbal clues), and the internet/CD-ROM (online help with glossaries and scripts).

Miller and Flowerdew compared academic listening textbooks and authentic lectures in 1997, and they outlined the differences.

New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation by Maria Busa

In this article the importance of CALL applications, by means of which learners learn at heir own pace, and CAPT systems , which provide learners with private, stress-free practice with individualized and instantaneous feedback on pronunciation are mentioned.

As stated in the article, pronuciation has positive impact on  one’s self confidence and social interaction. Yet, it is not so easy to apply prosodic patterns in L2 because of inadequate materials, and teachers’ lack of interest. Still, in spite of the advanced technology, teachers are considered best correctors.

The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills by Julia Gong

By means of CALL, it is now more possible to for language learners to use their interactive skills. Two aspects of spoken language competence are mechanical aspect and meaningful aspect (Pennington, 1995). CALL in mechanical aspect is mainly pronunciation drills. Learners now are able to record their voice, and it can be evaluated by the computer. Though it has advantages in terms of repetitive feauture and stress free environment, it is still not know to what extend deviation from the model is acceptable. As for the meaningful aspect, the computer is able to offer anly a micro-world where learners practice the target language, which means they work on computers but talk to them.
Based on Witt and Young (2000) research, a computerr based pronunciation scoring system is possible to give right feedback on a student's phonetic segments.
In short, teachers should pay attention to pros and cons while employing CALL in their classroom settings.

Some Techniques for Teaching Pronunciation by David F. Falton

In his article, he states that pronunciation is given the least importance among the language skills mainly due to teachers' lack of phonetics knowledge. Besides, L1 is a big hurdle in some languages like Arabic and Spanish.
Falton recommends some activities/exercises that he himself has appied in his lessons and found invaluable. As an example, he wrote nine words each starting with 'P' and ending with 'T'. He numbered those words which included long and short vowels. He asked the students to listen to one of those words and found which one they heard. His main purpose was to check whether students got confused short vowels with long ones or not. Then he presented more words and asked them to number those words.
Another excersise was a picture drawing exercise. He gave the instructions, and some students due to their L1 drew something totally different. As a result, the students had fun and laughed at themselves.
I agree with Falton that such activities increase self-awareness. 

I have had the chance to go over the following web pages, which makes me feel like each one of them is a pandora's box waiting for us to be explored.

Randall's Cyber Listening Lab is an amazing listening resource with lots of everday conversations with adult and children's voice. It also provides easy, medium, and difficult levels of audio and audio-visual tasks and quizzes with tapescripts for various topics and purposes.

Listening Real English Video provides graded videos with captions. Students have the chance to listen to a word and record their voice.

http://www.onestopenglish.com  has so many categories such as Business, ESP, ESOL, and the like.  Contolled speaking, miscellaneous worksheets, storrytelling, discussion, pronunciation, and role-play- where authors suggest some activities- are among graded speaking lesson plans. This website also have a thread which includes popular, commented, and e-mailed articles, activities, or lesson plans.

http://esl.about.com  offers graded conversation lesson plans in ESL, EFL and business English.

http://www.esl-galaxy.com/speaking.html has ESL and EFL games, worksheets, videos and lesson plans for young learners. Those communicative activities can be adaptable for young adults and and suitable for speaking and writing.

Robert’s site is an invaluable resource in terms of the variety of links such as segmentals, supra-segmantals,  speeach and accent, videos, recording on- line, software, conferences, journals, organizations, links to researchers, links to research oriented articles geared towards general audiences,  links to general accent articles,  and links to metalinks.

I had already watched and uploaded German Coast Guard and   Pink Panther Hamburger, which are distinctive examples of misuderstanding, into my blog before I came across them here. To be honest, I am so impressed by Accent Amy Walker. The actress is gifted.

Vocaroo  is easy to record  your voice.
 
Sounds of English Links provides sites with listening activities, authentic materials and sites for pronunciation.

Word stress exercises at http://davidbrett.uniss.it/phonology/ is especially useful for  non-native student teachers.

Larry Ferlazzo recommends the best sites to practice speaking English on his blog. Larry's blog on its own is outstanding for the ones who would like to gain practical ideas since he himself has drilled many of them.

2- Project

We are required to read one of the reports from past Webskills classes before doing our project to 'get the big picture'.  We need to post the following details:
 

• name the author, country and quickly review the teaching context
• summarize what the person did in his/her project, and
• discuss what you liked about the project.

In this respect,  I read the project report prepared by Nadina Nicolici from Romania.

I chose this report because  while quickly scrolling up and down and skimming the sample final projects page, I saw that she conducted the project at a technical high school. I thought we sort of share students from a similar profile.

To be honest, I am so impressed by her amazing study. Each stage in the project is well-designed and she closely monitored her students after she collected detailed information about them to see their individual differences.

She was aware of her constraints. For instance, diversity of students' language level was the most important factor. On the other hand, self-motivated students with computer knowledge was a great help that she focused on.

She set the course goals and to avoid a stereotyped lesson plan, she used her knowledge and created a classroom blog and wiki to interact with them outside the class. Thus, She integrated traditional classroom applications with technology, so she did not have to depend on books, chalk and blakboard only.  She chose the book English Portfolio by Oxford University since she aimed to teach both receptive and productive skills. Accordingly, she carefully picked activities that would be helpful for the students to express themselves with ease in their daily life.

The students' reflections were positive since they were all satisfied in spite of the limited time.

I got the feeling that as a teacher she stated to feel more content and self-confident.

Though I found the study challenging,her study has inspired me.

3- Task: Delicious

We need to create our Delicious account to bookmark our favourite websites and reach them anywhere.Though I have tried to explore a social bookmarking Delicious, I guess I need to sort out more time to make use of it. I also learnt that Diigo is another social bookmarking site that I might have a look at.

Well, it is obviously not as hard as I thought. I have already bookmarked some of my favourite sites. My address is https://delicious.com/hacersivil13. 

As many of us have experienced, I kept writing the web addresses that I found important, but it was never ever practical for me since most of the time while jotting down the addresses I made spelling mistakes, sometimes I lost my notebook or simply notes. Though I tried to add up them to my favourites, it was a big loss when my computer crashed. Luckily, I will not lose those valuable sites at all.