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
Hi Nehir,
ReplyDeleteI went through your colorful Blog with differently painted scripts.I like the face style of it.Your presentation style is also impressive as you have shown the components of your Blog mentioning the phrases such as-delicious page,oral competence building softwares and sample project report. These are the guidance of your Blog.It is interesting.
Then you started to dig the hole in each mark categorizing them into three: What you did,what you learned and what you will do next in analytical way.As you have said, you felt pleased when you created your delicious page, somehow not satisfied with the materials provided.But I think those materials are very useful for us.It might be because of our situation in Nepal.All of them I found are informative. I found Miller' article best to suit our situation although she is not clear in the article about the degree of authenticity of materials.
I strongly agree with your thought about project report that provides us idea what is expected from us in term project. It is helpful for brainstorming.
your idea about the application is also straight forward.Of course,some of the websites are very expensive and don't create real environment.I strongly with you.However,I think our institute might manage for websites.And in my opinion every time we cannot create real environment in teaching and learning.It is very difficult to use. I think virtual learning is dominant in this age.It can work if we try. Let's try what will happen!
Best Regards
Harimaya
Hi Harimaya
ReplyDeleteThank you for your nice comment on my blog and reflection. As to the different colours for each title and part, I have a dominant visual intelligence and like it more when things are seperated into groups. I hope everybody finds it easier to follow my improvement and reflections this way.
You are right, sometimes I feel I am being too critical but cannot help saying what I think. This week's article did not satisfy me as much as last week's did. Anyway, in fact every single word is another brick in our improvement wall so I am very happy to be here with all aspects.
Thank you again for your comment.
Best, Nehir