Week 8 A time saver and a mistake saver.

This week I did an overview of our web course while I was thinking about what to do for the weekly task. The idea of creating an online course or site seemed very appealing, but I had to reject it. Firstly, as the course project I am doing an online class at Nicenet. Secondly, a website or an online course created when most of the term has already passed wouldn’t find a practical application at this point of time. So, as usual I have decided to create something which I can try right now in the middle of the term heading towards its end.

I discovered a very nice time-saving tool, such as Free Word Search Maker. I think it took me less than 5 minutes to create an exercise that will be fun and challenge for all the students in class, the weaker and stronger ones. Such tools for educators easily become a habit, and I am sure this one will also do.

It was an interesting experience for me receiving a peer feedback from my fellow course participant. It will certainly help me to focus on the weak areas while I will be writing my final version. I often also encourage students to get their group-mates to read essays and other works before they hand them in to me. Now, having done that myself I am pretty sure that it's a smart step to do, because as we say it in our language “one head is good, but two are better”.

Week 7 Technology and Autonomy go hand in hand

I have been actively involved in using technology in class since June last year, and since that time the question of learner autonomy has been very relevant for me. It’s in the nature of technology to generate activities that relieve the teacher of so much work, transforming them from a master into a helper and a guide and make a learner more autonomous and active.

As for the one computer classroom lesson plan, I did this task the easiest way. I took the upcoming Tuesday class and thought where and how I could use one computer classroom ideas in it. It turned out to be quite simple, even very simple (KISS), but for the first foothold I guess it’s quite enough for me.

As for my project, I can see that the students are doing very well, I haven’t managed to read all their Nicenet posts yet, because the deadline was just an hour and ten minutes ago, but I can see that most of them responded actively to the assignment, having left more peer comments than it was mandatory for full credit.

Week 6 The change

In my previous post I mentioned that I would like to use Nicenet to make change in one of my English classes. I will post the assignment on a weekly basis supplemented by corresponding links (dictionaries, corpora, videos, podcasts etc). I will also develop a grading rubric for their posts which takes account of content and a linguistic aspect individually.

The students are expected to post at least twice, one post being their response to the assignment, another the comment to the post of their group-mate. The first assignment will be posted next week, the posts are due till the end of the week. I’d like to experiment with assignment emphasising their variety. I assume that all students have access to home Internet.

I believe that supplementing regular conventional classes with a weekly written assignment on the Nicenet will help the students to focus on what they say and how they say it. When giving oral responses in class most students translate in their minds from their mother tongue to English forgetting about relevant grammar, vocabulary, speech patterns etc. There’s the teacher in class whom they can always ask if they are not sure “how to say it”, while in the online classroom the teacher only announces the assignment and “listens” to their replies. The students have all the resources available plus the time to think carefully, which they usually lack in class. I don’t want to try to kill a lot of birds with one stone, but I do hope that this activity will have a “carryover” to their oral speech, and using corpora, English-English dictionaries, choosing proper vocabulary and keeping in mind grammar rules will get into the students’ regular practice.

Week 5 The very peak of the course

This week I realized that half of the course has already passed, so many materials have been processed that I start to lose track of all new web and technology based tools we are learning. Since I am here for them, I have decided to open up a document where I compile all the useful information and links I’d like to use further. I also need it because I am going to attend TESOL Ukraine International Conference where I’d like to disseminate some of the knowledge and skills I gained adding my personal experience.

When reflecting upon technology related change for one of my classes, it occurred to me that I can also use Nicenet. I wrote about it in my post on Nicenet, but later I started to wonder if it’s technically possible or maybe there are some other alternative websites where I can register and start up my own online class. We have been using Nicenet for 5 weeks, and I see it as a very valuable tool.

I had interesting experience with creating rubrics. I first generated t automatically with the help of the internet resource given by Robert. At first sight it seemed to me quite a viable one, but on reading and analyzing it I had to make changes to suit my particular needs. However, if short of time this can also be a very helpful tool.