Survey

I am going on practicing the teachings of our webcourse...

As I noted before, my students came together and wrote their webquest final product in the classroom. This happened last Friday.

I am now working on the last touches. Yesterday, I sent a 10-item- questionnaire to my students through Surveymonkey, today a few responses have come. Out of six students, 5 of them checked the option questioning the effectivity of webtools in increasing motivation as agree and strongly agree, which is a desired attitude.

Next week, fall term is closing and I am planning to administer an open-ended questionnaire in Turkish this time. SurveyMonkey is an effective tool, but limiting the survey with 10 questions leaves lots of blanks between the lines . Therefore, I intend to fill in those blanks with a set of open-ended questions investigating the strengths and weaknesses of the course, materials and the interactive webtools employed.

Autonomous Learners ???

Today....
I asked my students what they would think about an opportunity to increase their course grade- the class average is really low and I want them to improve that.This is an elective course and a failing grade is not something desired -
The class was full of murmuring, some asked if I was planning to assign an easy task, or give a simple quiz or else.I told them my intention was to administer a vocabulary quiz which would take up 15-20 % of the general grade.This time some even dared to say "why don't we decide after seeing the quiz results ????"
-I was going to prepare an exam for 41 students, copy them, distribute them, grade them and then if they didn't feel satisfied.....I was not going to do anything but put them away !!!
Then one of them said "Teacher please don't ask but do what you think is good for us"
It was the moment I remembered what I had forgotten in search of encouraging learner autonomy : I was the authority; noone but only I (!!)..... was able to decide for them better than themselves. How could they know what was good for them ???
I love my job :)

PROMISES

I remember promising to write here regularly and keep the track of things I am doing in my classes.However, after the course finished, unfortunately, I didn't feel intrinsically motivated to even visit the site.Today I am here to keep my promise.
What have I been doing since the course finished?
I have finished checking the exam papers and uploaded the grades into the system. It's worth mentioning here because the otomotion system is going through its infancy in my institution and it's been a hard job to download the system and create all the classes I teach and distribute the students, finally entering their grades. Thanks to our webcourse, I have improved my IT skills now :) I was able to do them all with no further assistance :)
I was plannnig to assign a webquest task to my students, and I have already initiated it. Next Friday, my students will gather in the class and with all their notes and printed out materials, sit together and write their articles.I changed the final product into an in-class activity since there was no time for drafting and I didn't just want to be given perfectly written articles at the end. At least, as a class activity I will be able to see how seriously they take it; they will also be able to share their ideas and even help each other. I don't want it to be a frightening writing experience. Instead, I want it to be an enjoyable learning experience.
There is a saying after all "learning is what is left after we forget what we are taught at school" :)

WEEK 10

This week's post is to evaluate our course details...There are some question to lead the way towards better evaluation.

What topics were most successful?

It is really hard for me to rank the topics we have covered as I have benefited from all almost equally. But I can say Online Tools for Enhancing Learning and Learning Styles and Technology were the ones that may go to the first place. The discussions about learning styles especially caused some new ideas, and research topics to flourish in my mind, which I find very exciting.

Which tools will you use in your classes?

I will definitely use virtual classes like Nicenet, Wikispaces and hopefully Anvill.

Webquests and interactive exercise maker Hot Potatoes are already among my favorites.

I need to improve myself in interactive powerpoint presentations. They are no doubt one of the best learning facilitators.

I have been a blogger for three years. I am planning to use it for educational purposes from now on.

What other tools might we have covered or would you suggest that we could have looked at?

Actually, as this is my first time I have been exposed to such technological, interactive, online tools I cannot recommend any other tools.

It's been so motivating to reflect on my own learning in this course. The experience has helped me better understand myself as a learner and teacher respectively.

Thanks a lot Donna for providing such a task, and my colleagues for sharing this journey with me and making it more meaningful.

this is not a goodbye note for me . I am planning to keep this site to share my future teaching experiences and technological implications with you and some others out there who might find this blog interesting.

Wishing the Best to all of you.

Sebnem

Week 9

It is hard to believe but there is just one week left for our course to finish.Time really flies, especially if you're dealing with something you mostly enjoy. Now .... Just a mixture of feelings... as we always have in the eve of all good-byes...

Week 9 has been the least demanding week for me as I was almost done with my project report last week. So I was able to concentrate on last-minute details, spelling and some other mechanics of it with no rush.

In fact, this week's discussion topic is one of the most interesting of all we have covered so far for me since I always find Gardner's way of classfying intelligences as something which brought fairness and rightness to the land of education, thinking all those poor students smashed under the wheels of the traditional tyranny of the IQ.

The Road Not Taken

I remembered this poem while adding some details to my report and thinking about "change" , aiming to put change in practice is like choosing the "less travelled road", I think, by challenging the established systems in our institutions, and in our own teaching we all choose that less travelled road. then the poem is for all courageous hearts. wishing you all the best sebnem "Road at Chantilly" by Paul Cézanne

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that, the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine.

Week 8

Not surprisingly, I have found this week rather demanding. We're nearing the end of the course and busy with giving our project reports their final form. Peer reviews are absolutely alleviating the problems related to our projects. I can't express how thankful I am to Dragana and Chandy for their valuable recommendations and also modelling with their own reports. Most of my concerns have disappeared, and my misunderstandings clarified.

As for the task of this week, I have prepared an interactive multiple-choice test by using hotpotatoes and I just loved it. Becuase such a task is new for me I had to spend minutes on even the simplist detail but the final product made me forget how I suffered :)

All these online tools and Anvill are just amazing and mesmerizing. I wish I could manage to employ them skillfully soon and add variety into my classes, increase student motivation and foster learner autonomy.

Bye for now

and wish you luck with your project reports

week 7

This week has been a new experience for me because I've tried to follow the discussions far away from my home and the comfort it provides for my studies. Having no internet connection in my family house, I've had to spend time in internet cafes and tried to focus on the readings assigned sitting amongst a group of noisy teenagers crazy about computer games :) anyway I was able to catch up with the class in the end.

"Learner Autonomy" marked our nicenet discussions. In the readings what I most liked was the fact that learner autonomy is multi-factorial, requires time, training and teacher assistance to develop. What is more, teacher autonomy and learner autonomy go hand in hand, and absence of teacher autonomy brings about negative consequences in terms of learner autonomy. That is, there is a powerful organic link between the two.

We also read about how to deal with "one computer classrooms". We've been learning about various net tools to employ in our classes, assuming that the classes are equipped with a computer for each student or easy access of internet for all students. Then what are we gonna do if these are all absent and the teacher is alone with only one computer for all, which is actually the case in my institution and many others.?For this reason, the readings were rather enlightening.

For the project, we were asked to find a partner to evaluate our projects. I think the activity fits into the nature of this course very well. After discussing alternative assessment, and engaging students it is our turn now to practice group work, and learn from each other. I have always liked putting myself into my students' shoes so it's going to be a really instructive experience, which feels exciting as well. I can't wait to see the comments of my two valuable colleagues.

Wishing you all the best

Sebnem

Week 6

It's just the second day but I am poured with lots of new information already. I am collecting bits and pieces from each source and trying to draw the complete picture of what is ahead. We are in the second half of the course, it feels like countdown has started. This means project dealine is nearing. Although I was really confused about which class to choose, which new tool to implement at the beginning, things found their own path. Now I see, I am already halfway through the project. I still have two groups, and two different nicenet virtual classes. the first group (elementary level) has already sent their first posts and the second one is on the way. All of the 10 students are participating actively. In the second group (intermediate level), 3 students out of 12 have sent their first posts. In our next meeting, I will be informing them about the weight (20 %) of these activities in the midterm . Hopefully, they will start taking the activities seriously. This integration of nicenet activities and formal examination does not intend to put students in a disadvantageous position,all will be able to do the task on paper. but the ones who are used to them from the nicenet will be just more comfortable in the exam. I am planning to give a place to the webquest I have created in the final exam. the final outcome of the webquest will be graded and the score will be added to their final exam score.(like 70 + 30 points) Right now, this is just an intention though. From the posts they are writing I can sense the joy they get from writing to me and make it visible for their friends. at the end of the term, I am planning to have some feedback about this application through a questionnaire and an informal class-discussion. That's all about the project.

I see this week's task a challange as I am not used to preparing powerpoint presentations. Hope things will go well.

Best

Sebnem

About Week 5

Last week was full of various gains again. the discussion topic "Alternative Assessment" was my favorite as it was my reasearch topic for the master's thesis. So , I could find several opportunities to polish my background knowledge and of course added a lot new perspectives thanks to the contribution of my colleagues and hot Nicenet discussions.

The pearl of last week's though was preparing a webquest for me. I had heard a lot about them, tried to use a few but not created one by myself before. I like the principles behind this tool a lot. Promoting research, creating a fictional environment, developing student autonomy, changing the face of research in general, which is associated with usually tiresome surfing among the resources and producing a typical paper only. Even though much of the work was done by Zunal.com webquest template , and it is still like a draft, I felt very proud of the outcome :)

WEEK 5

After checking week 5's tasks at Wiki, I have decided to start with reflections on week 4, which I find, let me say, a less demanding activity on my part, because I have been constantly contemplating about my teaching practices since the beginning of this course, so this page is just a vehicle to make what I conceptualize concrete. And there is another reason why I chose to begin this week with this post , because I think there is no better way or method than self-reflection to signify the core of "alternative assessment" , which is the focus of our class this week. No, of course this post is not the place to dig into "alternative assessment", not now, not yet. but instead a self-evaluation of the previous week.

Here it goes....

Week 4 was abundant in various materials to read and experiment with while teaching "reading and writing". especially Krajka's article was a window opening to a big garden of CALL practices, which broadened my horizons and opened my eyes to the effectivity of computerized reading materials through the reference articles it provided.

Lesson planing with a technology template turned out to be a fruitful task even though I didn't feel very proud of it after completing as I thought we had to limit the scope of the lesson with the materials on the recommended websites, and prepared it in the light of such a perception. but later I noticed that all of you felt free in choosing what to teach for this lesson. A little bit of misunderstanding but a sufficient outcome at the end, that's the consoling , thanks to Donna's constructive comments on myABCD objectives :)

As for the project task though, I may have messed it up ! :) I changed my project group then described a new group and their needs but could not focus on one specific problem to solve...

just thought far too generally. Thank God Donna understood me well again.

then....let me say ...week 4 was a real learning experience for me... how nice to be a student again , of a merciful instructor :) and how lucky.. to be surrounded by that many experienced colleague-classmates...

wish you all a very very productive week

Best

Sebnem

The pearl

This week most of us have found the same pearl :) I guess: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ .

Actually, I liked this site a lot because it has almost everything I'd like to see in an online material.

1.up-to-date news stories shortened, and simplified

2.have a taped version of the story

3. miscellaneous post reading activities

4. recycling vocabulary practice

5.discussion questions to be used both for oral or written practice

I have already used one of the stories in my class. And to be honest, I decided to use the story spontaneously, our class discussion brought us there ...the story was about "Wall Street Occupation" and for the first time, with an online material, I had a great class without any preparation beforehand.

Later, I decided to use this site with one of my project classes. I had already created a Nicenet class for my project. But I was having difficulty finding discussion topics for the students. Now, what I am doing is that I assigned them to read one news story and at least answer 2 of the following discussion questions provided on the site after the comprehension exercises on our conferencing board on the Nicenet. I'll see what will happen this this time...because none of them answered my first question before :(

Aren't students the same everwhere, their characteristics are free of location, time and space :) I believe.

WEEK 4

For two weeks, I've been swimming in the ocean of websources, but I cannot say I've been scubadiving , I might have been floating only on the surface. Nevertheless, I have added many a source to my existing sourcebank and even started to use them in my classes, which provided variety and naturally increased student motivation. The focus of last week's classes was to use CALL in teaching listening, speaking and pronunciation. The articles were of great value as unfortunately I do very often ignore "teaching pronunciation", these articles made me think about this neglected area of my teaching practices and informed me about the practical ways CALL provides us with to facilitate this skill. Even though I do not expect my students to have perfect English pronunciation (does such a thing exist? which English? ), I am glad that now I am equipped with lots of reference websites to offer my students who really want to improve their pronunciation skills. The article about using authentic materials to improve listening skills provided me with really fresh ideas, inspiring. Before scrutunizing recommended websites I didn't know that there were that many short videos for classroom purposes, and that we can even write quizzes for such videos.
After collecting all these sources, there was an urgent need for an internet organizer.Thanks to delicious.com, I do not need to worry about how to find my most frequently used pages on a different computer, Ican reach them anywhere, anytime.
I feel having spent last week productively, and remembering how to organize my time while dealing with these numerous tasks to accomplish because I haven't had to use this skill of mine much :) since the end of my postgraduation studies
Wish you all the Best for this week
sebnem

Reflections on week 2

Before registering the webskills class, my sole concern was to deal with something new,something I didn't devote time before professionally. I was not full of expectations, just excited about being a student again and meeting colleagues from different parts of the world. Even though I have been using web tools (accepting student essays through e-mail, messaging with students about the lessons through yahoogroups, etc.) in my classes for along time, frequent use of webtools such as blogs, or virtual classrooms have never been at the top of my what-to-do list, partly because I do not prefer to devote much time to my students out of class as they occupy a huge place in my life during the day :)and I have already papers to check or lessons to prepare at home.Honestly, I am one of those teachers who value her personal space and time out of school.
However, things have changed a great deal since the beginning of this course (still at school though not out of it :) Because of the sources we are provided with and all the new ideas flying around I feel a lot more motivated to teach than before now. And this energy blossoming within me is surely penetrating all my classroom practices. My laptop is always on during the classhour and a webpage is reflected on the wall waiting to be introduced to the students as a complementary activity to what they are reading as their course material. One of the biggest problems we have in the very first weeks of the term is students coming to class with no books or notebooks at all. This might be a real handicap for the teacher. But with the help of websources students can read from a reflected page on the wall, watch a video, look at the pictures, etc. and talk and write... Therefore, the lesson can still be taught. I am grateful as this course reminds me of such opportunities that the web has and encourages me to use them.
In addition to these, I have found the task of objective writing as much important since it highlights the importance of deciding on the final outcome that we expect from our students. Otherwise, our teaching is like a journey under the candlelight with no destination to reach.
Last but not least, this course is a really valuable experience for me because I can learn about different teaching contexts,ranging from very privileged ones to the deprived ones. There is a a lot to appreciate and learn from all these contexts.
Now,I need to do some readings.
wish you a "productive" week :)

Academic Word List

Hello everyone,
Now that this week's main topic is web research and useful sites, I'd like to share a site with you, believing that you'll find it absolutely beneficial.As we all know, vocabulary development is vital in language learning and unfortunately a big obstacle for the students. In fact the situation is harder if these students are preparing for a nation-wide or international level English test and have a limited time ahead. I mean 3 or 6 months. they need a vocabulary material which will introduce them at least 80% of words they may encounter in such exams.
www.englishvocabularyexercises.com/AWL/ is the place where I send such students of mine.Here they learn most frequent academic words and have the opportunity to practice them as the site provides a definition of each word, its pronunciation, how it is used in a sentence and 18 interactive exercise for each sublist, which makes our digital natives more pleased. There are 10 sublists, each consisting of 60 words -only in list 10 there are 30. In the follow-up exercises, the students are tested not only on the exact word in the list but its derived form as well,like analyze-analysis. So they learn and practice 570 x 3 words at the same time.
For the teachers who'dlike to expand on these lists there two more sites /www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvocab/awlhighlighter.htm ------- /www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvocab/awlgapmaker.htm to prepare your own exercises or to highlight academic words students encounter in any passage they read.
I have been using this site for almost 7 years in my exam preparation classes. And I can say my students feel very lucky because in their limited preparation time they don't have to deal with multiple vocabulary sources but just one and it contributes a great deal to their achievement.
Hope you 'll find it useful and practical as much as I do.

After the web search

For those who have read my post on the nicenet about the websearch and got interested in the last site I recommended "SweetSearch", it would be quite time-saving to watch this slide show first and then dig into the site if still interested.
Hope you find it informative

Social Studies Class: Integrating the Web & Technology

View more presentations from SweetSearch

About Week 1

The first week of the course was quite "hectic" for me, opening a blog, writing comments, checking the nicenet discussions, trying to follow the tasks from both nicenet, wiki and sometimes google sites, and checking my mailbox to see if there is something from Donna, and then checking the week1y assignments again worrying about something forgotten plus the usual lesson planning for the school and "extracurricular activities" for a full-time energetic 4 year-old little monster:) at home. To be honest, even though I am good at multitasking, this is actually not what I prefer to have in mylife. Such a rush absorbs all my energy, leaving a terrible headache behind. So the first thing I learned from last week is an urgent imrovement in my organizational skills.
Having not dealt much with academic studies since the end of my master's education, last week was also a kind of polishing my knowledge concerning the content area. Again, I have started to question my classroom implementations, instructions and assessment methods. For a week, I have been thinking about the ways to improve my classes and to integrate technology. I find such a beginning very fruitful and have already increased my expectations from this course.
As for comments and discussions, the best thing is to be able to communicate the same language equipped with common terminology and ideas with people from all around the world. Each day I can see there is a lot we can learn from each other. For example, today, I have read Bin's project work plans and already excited about his classroom implementations because LARGE classes are a problem at my university, and his project is inspirational for my work setting as well.
This is how I feel about the first week. What about you?

FLOW

hello
hope you enjoy this video

To begin with

Hello everyone
I am really excited about typing my first post as the requirement of the online webskills couse.
As a blogger for quite some time, I can say that what really attracts me about blogging is the opportunity it gives to reflect on even unimportant daily encounters, and make it possible to turn these small details of the day into an "experience".
One of the main benefits of keeping a teaching blog then is to dig into what is going on in our classes, and evaluate it with a critical point of view.
Now, I think it would be appropriate to go on with introducing my working environemnt and the classes I will be teaching this term because it is a nice coincidence that today is not only the beginning of our course but also the Fall Term at my university.
If you have read my message on the Nicenet , you must already know I am university instructor at Akdeniz University, a state university located in Antalya-Turkey, . I am a member of the School of Foreign Languages. This term I will be teaching ESP to the students of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, third and fourth year students. Even though the classes may sound enjoyable and challenging, the challenges are far from the nature of the course itself but mainly about the class sizes, heterogenous language level of the students, slow or inadequate internet connection.For this reason I am really wondering about to what extent I can apply what I will be learning in our webskills course.so this is going to be quite an experimental term for me.
Finally, I would like to say that it is a great thrill for me to be able to communicate with you all from here and I am looking forward to reading your comments.
Nice day