Week 10 Reflections

Hello, everyone!

I'm looking at the title and I cannot believe that the time has passed and that we have come to the end of this wonderful course.
I will have nice memories and such a great experience from this course. Here, there have been nearly 30 people from all around the world sharing experiences and discussing together as if they have known each other for a long time.

I have learned a lot from this course, and it directed my teaching practice toward more innovative, interesting and useful teaching. I learned to expand my teaching resources by using the tools I had not known before. This will help me make my lessons better and be the first step toward my further education.

At the beginning of  the course, I was impressed seeing the wiki pages with our location on the world map. I had not created blog before, and this course showed me how to use this interesting tool. I will motivate my students to create it too. Then, creating Delicious page was another new thing for me. This proved as a good place to keep interesting pages. Another thing that is also great about this tool, is creating stacks and having tags for each page so you won't lose time searching for the page.
Nicenet is a great place for discussing and collaborating. It would be great if I could create it for the parents and students.
Alternative assessment is not the common way of assessing students although I saw them at Democracy classes at my school when the students compete by debating over some topics. I liked Rubistar and I will certainly use it.
Writing a project was also a new for me. I was a little bit afraid if I were going to do it right.
Webquest is a tool that is so great, but I haven't made mine. I will set this as a do-it-soon task.
I did a lot of reading and they were concerned not only with the technology tools, but also reminded us of pedagogy. The articles on multiple intelligences reminded me of the importance of knowing the students better and paying attention to their learning styles.

I will miss the tasks and discussions, and I can imagine me sitting at computer next week and logging in Nicenet. I will certainly miss it.

I'd like again to express respect for Jodi and Celeste for making this course worth attending and above all so educational.

As for my classmates, I hope we will stay in touch. Marija did a nice thing on facebook creating a group and sharing a photo of a hand with our names. Thank for the hand representing friendship :-)

Bojana

Week 9 Reflections

Hello, everyone

Here we are, nearly at the end of the course. We've been working hard all these weeks. As Vicky said, there is a feeling of melancholy...
As I am concerned, I have learned a lot during this course and I am very happy that I have been a part of Jodi and Celeste's team. All my classmates cooperated and helped each other suggesting their ideas and sharing their experiences.
And, as my teaching is concerned, this is a step toward more successful teaching. All the things I have learned I am going to put into the practice during the next school year.
We have done our final project reports. I tried to solve the problem of speaking as my students are concerned, but now I have learned a lot of better ways and technology tools so that this same problem will be treated differently in my future teaching.

As we have been doing on our final project reports, this week we have been discussing the learning styles and multiple intelligences. We all agree that the students learn in different ways and that paying attention to different types of students can help them improve their skills. Some learn better in group, the others prefer learning through solving problems individually and there are those who better learn visually. As my students are concerned there are a bit of every type among of them. The teacher has a main role in keeping balance and having a detailed lesson plan will prove to be a successful one.

Bojana

Week 8 Reflections

Hello, everyone

We have been through week 8. We are near the final project. Time flies...

This week was a busy one and above all very interesting. Our task was to create the draft of the project and revise it with the help of our partners. I had two partners, Olga and Roberta. I am very thankful that they check my project thoroughly and gave me the instructions and suggestions to make it better. I have to revise my draft and polish it until final day. As Poncho remarked: ''Look through it with fresh eyes!''

When the learning assignments for this week are concerned, the great surprise was Jeff who joined us on Nicenet and organized a webinar for all participants. He pointed out the main advantages of ANVILL ( a national virtual language learning). I didn't hear of ANVILL before. I think that ANVILL really supports distant education and allows teachers to practice with their students different skills. The students collaborate either by typing or speaking to each other, discuss different topics and have various text or sound materials at their disposal. I would like to use ANVILL in future, especially to improve oral presentation of my students, and I wish if our country pay more attention to this form of learning and teaching.

Beside ANVILL I also explored other  online tools for enhancing learning. They are all good and help improving different skills of the students. using these tools might bring good changes to teaching process. I will have my students create blogs and share their reflections on certain topics and their classes in general. Nicenet would be a great tool for practicing writing and giving different topics for discussion and monitoring their work. Certain constraints that constantly follows technology based learning are access to the Internet and support of head teachers. But, I hope that things will be better.

There were a lot of sites offering very interesting and useful exercises. I haven't explored them yet, because there are so many materials at our disposal. Certainly, I will have a lot of interesting activities for my student next school year. As the problem I tried to resolve during my project was the speaking I found very interesting activities at http://bogglesworldesl.com/. There are sheets in Word for practicing pronunciation of different vowels in English. Also, there are also a lot warm-up activities such as crosswords. 

Certainly, I learned a lot from this course. I only have to wait next school year and start making improvements and new technology based projects.

Enjoy the weekend!

 Bojana

Week 7 Reflections

Hello, everyone

This has been Week 7! We have done a great work this week.
Discussion was very interesting. It is great to hear different lesson plans when one computer is at disposal. Just like I wrote on Nicenet with a minimum technology a teacher can have well-organized teaching process. It's better to have one computer in function than to leave students without opportunity to learn this way. It is just one step toward advancing the ladder of teaching process. I think that I can improve my students' skills with a laptop and projector, it is certainly better than nothing. Of course, I would like to have more technology at my disposal but I hope that will get better too.
 Also, I viewed Susan Gaer's ideas and she offered a lot of interesting ideas concerning word and internet. I liked very much her projects and the one concerning food http://susangaer.com/studentprojects/food.htm is what I would like to do in future.





Task for this week was to make a lesson plan for one computer at the classroom. I presented the one I used with my students and it is very good and useful for the problem they have when the speaking and pronunciation are concerned. I downloaded the materials from the bbc ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/features/connected.shtml).
My classmates also share some great lesson plans that I would take into consideration in future.





This week, we also had the task to choose a partner for project draft. When my project is concerned I get panic from time to time. I learned and explored so many useful things and I don't know where to start from. Then, I read again Jodi's email saying ''As you’re working on your project, keep in mind that you are only trying to solve one problem.  Sure, there may be some secondary issues you hope will be addressed, but concentrate on one facet of the objectives, goals or administration that you want to work on.  Remember, too, that creating the “perfect” activity with “perfect” results  is not the purpose of the project.  The purpose is to address an issue or problem with a technology-based solution.''
 As I pointed out the problem of speaking, I focused on that issue during the course. Food lesson is also at our Class Book so topic At a restaurant seemed interesting to start from. My students will have finished Primary School by next Friday so we are almost done.  I hope everything would be fine!




Enjoy the weekend!


Bojana

Week 6 Reflections

Hello, everyone

Here we are, at the end of the sixth week. I have just read Marija's blog post and share her thoughts about how we will miss the course. I hope we will keep in touch.

This week was very interesting. Using Power Point is very interesting and useful. My students like it although they like everything that is new and interesting and involves technology. I showed them the presentation I had made and they liked it very much.

As I mentioned before, the problem I am trying to resolve is their speaking skills. I don't expect that it could be done quickly but I will use the tips and technology to make the first steps toward the solution.
 At the beginning of the course I thought of the topic concerning Food and Restaurant. I had already given them the task to explore the vocabulary concerning food and I will make a power point presentation. I suggested this site for vocabulary http://www.englishpage.com/vocabulary/interactivelesson4.html They will use this site at home because we do not have access to the internet. Here they have fill in gaps exercises concerning this topic.
There are 10 of them in the group. They will work together making menu by using Word and we will have it printed. When speaking is concerned their task is, with my help of course, to make dialogues for Restaurant. They will have roles as waiter, guests, chef etc.
So far, we have collected the vocabulary and some common expressions used at a restaurant.
I recommended listening to bbc  http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/general/expressenglish/2012/01/120130_ee_coffee_tea.shtml and they will use some phrases. They found an interesting restaurant sketch on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfhkuXuQ9eA
As a tool, I am considering of making webquest to have this project in one place. I have so many ideas, I don't know if I am going to succeed and sometimes I am in a panic... There are so many useful sites..

I will write more....

Week 5 - Reflections

Hello, everyone

We are half a way towards final project! Time passes by so quickly.

This has been very interesting week full of useful information.

I'll start reflecting on PBL - Project-based learning. When I read PBL task on Monday, I admit, that I wasn't really certain what it is about. First, I read Susan Gaer's article ''Less Teaching More Learning''. This article implicitly shows how a very motivated teacher can get the best out of their students. She sought the ways to make her students learn and be motivated to learn better. Step by step not even did they complete the task but they sought for more. 

There are some students in my class that are not good at all subjects at school and for them everything in the Class Book is difficult. In PBL a teacher could find some activity that they could do to give them opportunity to get a good mark.

I read the articles my classmates recommended and they help me understand PBL . I liked definitions such as: ''A project is defined as a long-term ( several weeks) activity that involves a variety of individual or cooperative tasks such as developing a research plan and questions, and implementing the plan through empirical or document research that includes collecting, analyzing and reporting data orally and/or in writing''. ( Becket, 2002, p54) 

PBL motivates both teachers and learners. To complete this kind of project it is necessary to choose starting point ( topic of the project) that would be interesting, useful and available for search to students.By doing this projects, students become aware of academic work. And they can be easily motivated and inspired to pursue a career or engage in activism that relates to the project they developed. ((http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning)

 As my students are concerned I' d like to choose a topic related to subject they are interested in, maybe history or geography or any other they want to study after Primary School. For me, to carry out a successful PBL the students have to be interested in the topic, then to prepare clear objectives, to check availability of technology that students can use.

 As Susan Gaer's article shows, her students were very motivated and step by step they asked for more and more. They are given goals and reward ( alternative assessment) and they move on.

As alternative assessment is concerned, I think that PBL experience is not complete without opportunities for students to receive quality feedback during and after their project work. When the project has been finished students can have clear picture of how they  have done and have opportunities to improve their work. 

I created my Rubric at http://rubistar.4teachers.org/. This is the first time I have made Rubrics. I like it very much and it' on my list for future usage. The students can assess each other and by rubrics they know what they need to work on more. 

 

I’ll certainly make PBL as a part of my teaching methods, but there are some limitations in my class.Internet, class books and lack of time are some issues I reflected about on Nicenet.

As I wrote last week, my students have problem with speaking, as they make grammar mistakes while they speak. I have to point out that when they have a dialogue to prepare for homework they do it very well. So, it implies that they need a lot of speaking practice. I discussed this on Nicenet.

I'd like to thank my classmates for suggesting useful links and discussing very thoroughly all the topics. 

Enjoy the weekend!

Bojana