WEEK 6 - REFLECTION

Only four more weeks left, time really flies !

What I did

Just as the previous weeks, I read quite many sources on engaging students especially in large classes, interactivity and interactive lessons and powerpoints, and tips for powerpoint presentations. After reading all these, I shared my thoughts on nicenet about large classes and activities to engage students , then I shared my opinion on powerpoint presentation and created my own interactive powerpoint presentation, which was for revising parts of a house.

What I learned

Out of the sources on engaging the students, I learned that there is much more than we already do to engage students and handle crowded classes. I learned that I was right in beliving in the power of collaboration and group work.
Out of the articles on powerpoint presentations, I learned a few useful tips to improve my presentations such as hiding the pointer.
Out of the sources on interactive powerpoint presentations, I learned a few more action buttons.

How can I apply

This week's topic, discussion and task have been directly related to our lessons and this week was great in improving what I already use in my classes. So there is not much new that I can apply in my classes but there is a lot that will help me apply all these much better.

Thank you Webskills and Dear Donna and Jodi for all your contributions. I love to be here.

Best, Nehir

WEEK-5 REFLECTION

Incredible, we are half-way. The fifth week with loads of gaining.

What I did

Firstly I read and watched some sources on rubrics, project-based learning and WebQuests and shared my opinion on nicenet and read about my classmates precios ideas. Following this, I went on with my project task, which was describing a technology-related change or potential solution for my project class and the issue in that class. I tried to explain why I think it will be useful in resolving the issue. Then, reading the sources provided by dear Donna, I had a look at RubiStar, which I fell in love with :) I registered and created a rubric for a persuasive essay with the topic " Human Cloning is Wrong." I found RubiStar extremely handy.
Finally, Donna had offered extra points for the ones who created a webquest. I did not have enough time for that as it is more difficult for me now to spend time on the net due to the expected baby and radiation. However, I registered ans started to create my webquest and the url is http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=108498 but it is not completed yet.

What I learned

I learned that there is no end to the things that I will learn. Firstly I learned webquests and had the opportunity to see a few samples. I think a webquest will definitely appeal to my students but it should be well planned and interesting. Therefore, enough time spent on it, it would be a great tool to motivate the students.
I learned that rubrics really work in evaluation and the students should be given the chance to see the rubric to see where they get or lose points. I read about the four types of rubrics, two of which were new to me: - Primary trait rubrics and Multitrait rubrics. I understood that I should spend more time on rubrics as it is really serious in evaluation.

How can I apply in class

This week I discovered new and very nice tools to use with my students. RubiStar will be my life long partner as long as I teach, it is obvious. I look forward to sharing with my coleagues here.

Secondly, I will complete my webquest as soon as possible and in the coming academic year I will ask my students to carry out the project. Though not definite, it will be about different learning styles, as it will be beneficial not only for the students but also for the teachers to get to know the students more in terms of multiple intelligences.

This week I am mostly interested in the webquest and I really want to apply it as soon as possible.

That's all for this week. Thank you Donna for this fruity week and thank you friends for your inspiring ideas.

WEEK-4 REFLECTION

WHAT A TOUGH WEEK IT HAS BEEN!!!

Thanks God this is the end of week 4, which has been really difficult for me. Two journeys and staying in houses that have no access to net and a piece of great news : I started the course on my own but I will continue with my baby inside :) Now it is much more difficult to type as I try to be at least 30cms away from the computer to protect the cute guest against electro magnetic frequency waves. Anyway, below is the summary of this week:

What I did:

As usual we were asked to read and comment on a few articles such as "Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction" by Jarek Krajka and "Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books" by Mei-Ya Liang. They were really useful and we were given some great urls to explore and I really loved some of them especially http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/. The others are also good but I love keeping my students up to date as much as possible and this website provides us with newspapers from all over the world, which is great.

Secondly, we were asked to write about some issues, problems or concerns we have for our project- class--ones that technology might help solve. We described the class and students, discussed an issue. The issue I talked about was regarding motivation and class discussions.

Finally, we were asked to Prepare a technology-enhanced lesson plan and as I worked heavily on writing last year, I designed a lesson for story-writing. I tried to integrate technology into my lesson letting the students see the short film of the story they are expected to write.



What I learned
I once more learned that writing a lesson plan is no easy at all. I am really hopeless at doing this.
I learned that there wait great websites and sources for us,language teachers; we should just explore explore and explore not to be BURN OUT teachers as Jeremy Harmer states.
I learned that life is full of surprises :)



How can I apply these in my classes
OUt of this week, my biggest treasure is a few more great websites and I can use these in my classes in various ways. As for my favorite website this week http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/ I can assign them pages weekly and give them general knowledge quizes every friday, which improves them in two aspects.

When it comes to the lesson plan, I don't think I will have a lesson plan for each lesson. In my school we aren't asked to do this and to tell the truth this makes me relieved.



Yes, that's all for Week 4, which was another great week here in this course with a lovely instructor and lovely colleagues.

Best, Nehir

WEEK 3 - REFLECTION

This third week has been another fruitful week with delicious page, oral competence building soft wares and sample project report.

WHAT I DID

To begin with, we created a delicious page to keep track of our favourite websites and sharing them with others, which is great not for teachers but for everyone. I can’t believe how I have never heard of it. I created my delicious page and shared my URL on nice net and wiki.

Then, we read articles regarding softwares to improve oral skills and especially pronunciation. However, I was not so convinced by those mechanical tools but I was certainly impressed by the meaningful dimension of those softwares. I am strongly for computer tools to improve our students’ productive skills but in meaningful environments.

Finally for this week, which was not as tiring as last week, we read a few sample project final reports by previous participants of this course and commented on one of them. I read the project prepared by Tendouinde Bruno Nikiema from Burkina Faso and I gave my opinion on nice net.

WHAT I LEARNED

As I mentioned above, this has been another fruitful week of the course. I was delighted to discover “delicious” and similar sites and felt relieved and more confident about the websites that I needed in the past and will need in the future. Another great thing is that I have the URLs of my classmates, who are highly experienced teachers. This will help me a lot to have the list of English teachers’ favourite sites.

I can’t tell the articles on using technology to improve oral skills taught me much. Of course we have something to learn out of every single word in these searches but I did not feel so improved by this week’s material. Or I was not so motivated maybe.

When it comes to sample project report; it set a great light into the project I will work on. Now, it is clearer in my mind what is expected from me in terms of the project. Having a model always works and motivates people to do better. This sample report by Tendouinde Bruno Nikiema helped me a lot.

HOW CAN I APPLY THESE IN MY SCHOOL

First of all, I will talk about “delicious” to my students, I can even start a competition : “The one with the longest list will win ….. at the end of each month.” Of course all the sites recorded on the page will be about ESL or online learning or English newspapers or everything that will help them in the language learning process.

I am not thinking of applying one of the softwares mentioned in the article in my classes for several reasons:

1. Most of them are quite expensive

2. I am not sure whether pronunciation should be emphasized so much

3. They don’t create a natural and realistic environment

And finally, I can apply what I learned from the report in my project. As I said before, having a model makes things clearer in my mind and I hope I can make use of this information.

Another great week, I feel I will feel abandoned the moment the course ends.

Nehir

WEEK 2- Reflection

Feeling as if I made progress from Breakthrough to Waystage Module ( A1 to A2) One module for each week: it makes proficiency in using technology, hopefully.

What I did this week:

The first thing my class mates and I did this week was the search discussion. It was great to discover http://www.noodletools.com/ on which we found a long list of search engines. We all looked at the list and tried a few of the search engines that we liked and searched for a topic that we chose. (My topic was Bologna Process) Beside noodletools, we were given some tips for the sake of a good search using search engines. We were provided "Technology Tip of the Month, June, 2009: Better Web Searching" by Deborah Healey. I read each tip very carefully as search is a big and important part of my life. This document taught me very simple but handy tips and I liked the idea of using some signs with the key words.

The second thing we did in Week 2 was our task, which was writing a learning objective using ABCD model. We were asked to describe one of our classes and share a learning objective for that class on Nicenet. The most interesting part of this task was that Donna told us that this objective would be something that we would share with our students as well. Of course it took me some time to get what exactly ABCD model was as it was the first time I had heard of it. I studied the purpose, function and types of learning objectives. Beside the reading document Donna provided us, I searched more on ABCD model and found a clear presentation of it on https://oct.sfsu.edu/design/outcomes/index.html

As well as ABCD model, I read the documents including information about Bloom's Taxonomy, which I already know, appreciate and strongly agree with.

As Donna commented on my ABCD objective writing task, I did it well and she appreciated the way I gave the background of my students and she found it useful. Thank you Donna, my dear encouraging teacher :)

Last but not least for this week, we my classmates ignited the wick for the final project, which is of great importance. The first step was not so hard but coming with an idea for the project is not easy at all. As my 3rd task this week I gave information on the following topics:

1. The population of the class
   


2. The setting of the classroom
   


3. The technology available
   


4. The goal of the project
   


5. The students' needs

These are what I have done so far this week. Now I realise Donna really makes us work hard :) , which is good. I really benefit from this course and I will tell about what I learned while doing all these in a minute.

What I learned this week:

Fulfilling all the assignments above was not so easy actually but they were all very formative. As I mentioned in the subtitle under the main title "WEEK 2- Reflection", I feel myself improved even it two weeks.

This week, not only the tasks by Donna but also the posts by my classmates taught me quite much. Here is the list of my acquisitions:

1.Out of search discussion:

• How you search is as important as where you search.


• Web is incredibly large, which is difficult to deal with and I still think that this is a kind of Data Pollution. Finding the correct data takes time but sharings by EFL teachers from different parts of the world (my dear experienced classmates) makes our hard work easier.

2. Out of ABCD Objective Writing:

• Writing objectives are almost as difficult as giving the lesson.



• ABCD Model for writing objectives is really handy, clear and to the point with a description of Audience, Behavior, Condition and Degree.



• We should write observable, measurable (by both quantitive and qualitative criteria) and unambiguous objectives which are clearly written and specific. Above all, what we write as a learning objective must be result-oriented with a degree.



• It is not easy to write the behavior part as it includes cognitive, psycho motor, affective and interpersonal domains.

3. Out of Bloom's Taxonomy:

Bloom's Taxonomy is worth spending a lot of time on it and there is much more to learn about it. The only thing I knew about Taxonomy was the Lower and Higher Order Thinking skills and the sub categories-remembering to creating- but now I see that in the Technology Domain there is a lot more to discover. However, I need more time to work on it so I won't write about mu acquisitions about the technology domain of Taxonomy.

4. Out of the first step of the final project:

• If I am thinking of running a project with a class, there are several things that I should take into account. These are written above in orange, so I won't repeat them. In my writing lessons, I always tell my students to leave a topic if they cannot come up with any ideas due to lack of world knowledge on it. I have detected a similarity between essay or paragraph outlining and project planning. If the requirements cannot be supplied, leave the project.

5. Out of Kamal's post about the project:

There lives a group of people called Dalits, also called out caste or untouchables and I felt really sorry for them. I respected Kamal more and more owing to the holy effort he pays in the Access program.

6. Out of Donna's approach.

I should be more patient and tolerant towards my students, just as Donna is towards us. I see it really works. She never discourages and makes me more enthusiastic. An ideal teacher. Thank you Donna.

How can I apply what I learned in my classes:

1. I can teach my students the tips I have learned and assign them a search homework, write it on their blogs and comment on each others'. We may also vote for the best search engine once a month and choose the best ten to use for the next search task.

2. Abcd model is primarily something for us, the teachers, but sharing it with students will make everything clearer in their view. We can start each day or lesson with a fun activity to share the objective with them. For example;
We can write one word of the objective on plastic plates. One plate for each word. Then we can jumble the words, I mean the plates. Each student gets a plate, they stand in a circle and try to make a meaningful sentence, which is actually the objective of the day. So that they understand what they are expected to achieve in the end very well as they spend time on the sentence.

That is all for Week 2. I hope we all do well with the next week's tasks.

Greetings,

Nehir