Week 3.
This week was full of delicious tasks. I have learned about various social bookmarking sites and created my own page on Delicious. Having all my favourite sites in one place and being able to access them any time I need them is very convenient. What is of special value about Delicious is that you can search within this site and see what other users have and are ready to share. Saving to Delicious is simple and user-friendly.
Every week we are offered some useful material to read and analyse. I try to read every article given for consideration and explore every site mentioned. It is time consuming, but incredibly rewarding.
This week's topic for discussion was aural/oral skill-building. It goes without saying that good listening and comprehension skills are vital for successful communication and these skills should be developed through authentic materials. I was excited to find some great sites specially created for those who learn Business English. For example:
http://australianetwork.com/businessenglish/
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/business-and-work
Little by little, step by step we are preparing for our final project and this week we were to read some sample projects and comment on them. I find this task very useful as I had the opportunity to have the whole picture of what I am expected to do in my project.
I am grateful to my colleagues for their interesting and pithy comments as I constantly learn something new from them. And I am not just saying that. I really mean it!
Friday, January 27, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Week 2. We are on the way
We continue our journey and every moment of it is full of discoveries. This week we were given the task to try different search engines in order to find the best one which would satisfy our information needs. Before this very week I fully relied on Google but now I possess a valuable and reliable list of search engines and portals tried by my colleagues and myself knowing some strong and weak points of many of them. I would definitely recommend my students and colleagues iSEEK for educational purposes; AskJeeves.com and DuckDuckGo.com as fast,reliable and useful search engines both for academic and class search. Twurdy is just indispensable to help you find the text of the precise level of difficulty to meet your students' needs.
Another interesting and important task for this week was to share a learning objective for a class done in ABCD style (where "A" is for audience, "B" is for behaviour, "C" for conditions and "D" for degree of mastery needed). As Dr. Bob Kizlik points out: "Properly constructed learning objectives are about the evidence of learning; they specify what behavior a student must demonstrate or perform in order for a teacher to infer that learning took place." (http://www.adprima.com/objectives.htm). Good learning objective should be thoroughly thought over and clearly formulated. It is the core of any lesson.
I also made a small step to the final project by describing the course that would benefit from incorporating online tools and resources into teaching/learning process.
There is a good proverb: "Two heads are better than one" and I would like to mention that our productive collaboration this week demonstrated the essence of it vividly.
Another interesting and important task for this week was to share a learning objective for a class done in ABCD style (where "A" is for audience, "B" is for behaviour, "C" for conditions and "D" for degree of mastery needed). As Dr. Bob Kizlik points out: "Properly constructed learning objectives are about the evidence of learning; they specify what behavior a student must demonstrate or perform in order for a teacher to infer that learning took place." (http://www.adprima.com/objectives.htm). Good learning objective should be thoroughly thought over and clearly formulated. It is the core of any lesson.
I also made a small step to the final project by describing the course that would benefit from incorporating online tools and resources into teaching/learning process.
There is a good proverb: "Two heads are better than one" and I would like to mention that our productive collaboration this week demonstrated the essence of it vividly.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Week 1. Starting the journey to the WonderWEB
Week 1. Reflections.
I have just started my 10 weeks' journey to WonderWEB. Hundreds of places will be visited, a lot of discoveries will be made and a great number of materials will be studied and analyzed. It's all there on our route-map (the schedule).
This week I was shown the way to Conferencing on Nicenet where I was really pleased to meet the members of our group. We were given precise instructions how to get to our next place of destination - blogger.com and to create a blog. That is where amazing things started to happen. I spent quite a lot of time on choosing a templete, the layout, trying different colours.And I am not still sure about the design of my blog. I feel I will change something a little bit later.
I was impressed by the tremendous potential of a blog as olnine tool for learning and teaching English.
Nearly every lesson I offer my students a quotation connected with the topic we are working on and I ask them to comment on it. There are some shy students and there are those who always seem to dominate. So, by posting a quotation on a blog and by asking everyone to make their comments, read the comments of other students and be ready to discuss the ideas expressed, could really help to resolve this problem.
Project work can benefit from the class blog greatly, too. Students can share their ideas and findings on a blog. I can observe how the process goes, give advice or help if there is such a necessity.
Blog is a great online tool for developng students' writing skills, taking into consideration the limited number of hours for practical classes. I can post guidelines how to write the indroduction, the body of the paper, the conclusion; direct them to useful websites. By the way, I have found an article "Process writing and the Inetrnet: Blogs and Ning Networks in the Classroom" (Isabela Villas Boas) full of great ideas.
http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/11-49-2/49_2_4_boas.pdf
So, I have started gathering the seeds of knowledge in WonderWEB. It is thrilling!
I have just started my 10 weeks' journey to WonderWEB. Hundreds of places will be visited, a lot of discoveries will be made and a great number of materials will be studied and analyzed. It's all there on our route-map (the schedule).
This week I was shown the way to Conferencing on Nicenet where I was really pleased to meet the members of our group. We were given precise instructions how to get to our next place of destination - blogger.com and to create a blog. That is where amazing things started to happen. I spent quite a lot of time on choosing a templete, the layout, trying different colours.And I am not still sure about the design of my blog. I feel I will change something a little bit later.
I was impressed by the tremendous potential of a blog as olnine tool for learning and teaching English.
Nearly every lesson I offer my students a quotation connected with the topic we are working on and I ask them to comment on it. There are some shy students and there are those who always seem to dominate. So, by posting a quotation on a blog and by asking everyone to make their comments, read the comments of other students and be ready to discuss the ideas expressed, could really help to resolve this problem.
Project work can benefit from the class blog greatly, too. Students can share their ideas and findings on a blog. I can observe how the process goes, give advice or help if there is such a necessity.
Blog is a great online tool for developng students' writing skills, taking into consideration the limited number of hours for practical classes. I can post guidelines how to write the indroduction, the body of the paper, the conclusion; direct them to useful websites. By the way, I have found an article "Process writing and the Inetrnet: Blogs and Ning Networks in the Classroom" (Isabela Villas Boas) full of great ideas.
http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/docs/11-49-2/49_2_4_boas.pdf
So, I have started gathering the seeds of knowledge in WonderWEB. It is thrilling!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)