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?