Tuesday, June 8, 2010

WEEK 10: FINAL REFLECTION

Time flies so fast since we have been participating in this course in April until now. It seems like we have just begun but it is the week 10 now and it is the final week for us. This is my first time to participate online course. Every week I found everything new for me and my teaching. From the first week task, Blogs in ESL classrooms by using www.blogger.com took plenty of time during my summer vacation. I was confusing while I was doing it and I did not know how to create it before. I took the time to learn and tried to create it and now I think I get use to of it but I am still not good in creating it. I went through my classmates’ blog and found they are interesting. Most of them know how to build their blog more interesting and good in technology. On the week 2, we had a discussion about search engines and ABCD Model for writing objectives. I found NoodleTools.com is very interesting and a lot more for searching engines to help me find wonderful academic things online. They are easier and more options to do. I have thought that Google is a magic website to search for anything I want to know but now my eyes are opened widely and gained lot of website to search. ABCD(Audience-Behavior-Condition-Degree) model in writing objectives. It helped me manage my lesson by setting the good objective to focus on and make it is clear on what I want students to learn. On week 3 and 4, we had a discussion in using technology to enhance the four skills. During the two weeks I got many excellent websites to integrate into my class for teaching all four skills. They are available for me as a teacher of English and it’s easy to prepare before class. Unfortunately, I lost all assignments on week 5 because of my trip. I couldn’t find the internet connection and have a discussion on Nicenet. The task and discussion on week 5 are really interesting so, I went through my friends’ WebQuests and I tried to read more information and learn more how to create WebQuests. I think it meets many conditions for language learning which including social interaction, authentic tasks, and learner autonomy. I will try to do it some other time after finishing this course. I am really interested in using it with my students in the future. On week 6, I have read about multiple intelligences and learning styles from Gardner’s. Yes, it helps me understand my students’ learning style and know how to offer them lesson. In addition, effective teaching and learning language cannot be successful without assessment and this week helped my teaching convenient by using Rubistar for setting the assessment criteria. Then I have learned about Interactive PowerPoint. I found it is really cool to create Jeopardy game and make PowerPoint more interactive. For the task of one-computer classroom is really suitable for my context. I usually use my laptop and overhead projector to teach my students in class. I have gained lots of models from my classmates from this task. They are very wonderful and useful to adapt to my teaching.
Overall, week 9 is really synthesis and really practical for us to put everything which we have learned from the first week to create our week 9 task, creating class sites and making exercises with online tools. I think week 9 is the most useful topics and excellent week for me. Moreover, project report promoted to practice of what we have learned about in this course. It is our outcome from this course. Actually, every topic is really useful and practical. I can say that all I have learned are new for my knowledge. I can apply those wonderful websites and topics to my training and my research in the near future. They are really excellent!

Well, many thanks to my professor to provide this wonderful course and my classmates to share those excellent ideas on Nicenet. I do develop my skill in using technology and integrating into my class and I am very happy to participate in this course with all of you. I think everyone is thinking the same thing as mine in sharing and setting a training course for our colleagues and others teacher who are interested in integrating technology in their classrooms. Not everyone will get the great opportunity like us to participate in this course but they will have a chance to learn from us. I hope I will get some advice from my classmates here if I need some help to doing so in the future after this course ends.


Regards,
Garunyawun

Saturday, June 5, 2010

WEEK 9: Online tools for enhancing learning&Create an online course site or an exercise to use online or offline

Week 9: Almost done!

Being in this course for 9 weeks makes me realize of the reason why I took this course even I am not much good at technology. I thought I would get new experience and gain more knowledge about it. How lucky I am to have chance to learn from our classmates and our professor. Everything we have learned from this course since the first week until now week 9(nearly end) is new and really useful for my language teaching. I was thinking about sharing the knowledge from this course to my colleagues at the school and other teachers of English in my area. Webquests, Noodle, delicious, blogger, interactive power point and all useful websites for English teachers are available on the Internet which we can apply and choose the appropriate ones to our lessons. It is easy and very convenient to integrate technology into classroom. Deborah provided many wonderful links and things for us here.
This week our professor assigned us to use different tools and implement to create the lesson with the technology and Nicenet, Blogger, Google site all are free and simple to use for promotion, discussion and assignments online for our students. Even the first time was not easy but I just keep trying then I found that it is not so difficult to create the class online or post the assignments. The websites which are useful for teacher of English suggested applying this week are really wonderful. I found http://www.toolsforeducators.com/ for making exercises online to print out. The tools for educators - word search, bingo, crossword puzzles, and board games: Personal Educational Press - flash cards, bingo games, matching, multiple choice exercises to print out: http://www.educationalpress.org/index.asp and Easy Test Maker (paper tests): http://www.easytestmaker.com/default.aspx for helping my life easier in writing test because I can insert new question from the list, True/False, Multiple Choice, Short Answer, Matching or Fill in the black then just click the question format I want to add. I got www.123listening.com from Ruslana. It is very useful for practicing listening skill. There are worksheets and audio materials about different topics that are suitable my students’ level. And here are the lists provided for E-Teacher Scholarship program by my professor, Deborah.
Make exercises to use online or offline on a computer or to print out
• Hot Potatoes - download this program at http://hotpot.uvic.ca/ to use it on your computer. It's easy to use and lets you create matching, cloze, scrambled sentence, and multiple choice exercises and crossword puzzles. You can get help online or download this how-to PDF.
• See some interesting exercises at http://eolf.univ-fcomte.fr/index.php?page=technically-interesting-hot-potatoes-pages
• Xword Puzzle Generator - create crosswords to save and use on a computer or print out: http://www.edict.com.hk/xword/generator/
Make exercises online to use online:
• Web Poster Wizard - free website for teachers and students to use as part of a course. It uses a very plain format, but it's very easy to create something with text, one graphic, and links on each of 4 pages: http://wizard.4teachers.org/
• SMILE- a variety of web-based activity generators. Requires a free registration. The application here are quite interesting, but they take more time to learn to do. http://clear.msu.edu/teaching/online/mimea/smile/v2/index.php
They are all great! and worth learning!

Best,
Garunyawun

Monday, May 24, 2010

Week 7: A Large Class & Interactive Power Point

Week 7 is over again and I have learned two interesting things in my teaching. Teaching in a large class is one of challenging thing to do as a teacher. I can’t imagine how I can manage my lesson if I have 200 students. Yes, I don’t think I can have an interactive with my students and I think it will be one way communication in class that is only me to the students. Well, it is good for me that the large class I have only about 85 students in one hour. This week showed how to integrate technology into classroom and help classroom more interactive. Using interactive power point helps teacher a lot in their classroom. As for me I know how to create it in a simple way and I just have known that it is much more to play with it and help my lesson not boring. I learned about Jeopardy Games from this site http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgPO-agnnMk ( I am still trying to do it) and this site for using PowerPoint to make an interactive story http://www.microsoft.com/education/story.aspx . The Top 10 Slide Tips - basic information about making a better presentation from this site http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html

Even though I don’t teach in a large class but technology and tools I have learned this week is really benefit for teaching English in a small class as well.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

WEEK 6: Multiple Intelligences & Learning Styles, Alternative Assessment and Rubric

Finally, the end of week 6 is coming and luckily I have done all my assignments and also have time to work on my blog. This week I have read about multiple intelligences and learning styles from Gardner’s. I think I have studied it long time ago when I was in the university. Honestly, I did not pay much attention to set or prepare the lesson for students learning style. What I did is focusing on the learning objectives and what techniques I used to help students achieve the goal of learning but I forgot focusing on learning styles. So it seems new to me and I realize that if I know my students’ style, it would help me understand and prepare the activities for them better than before. Having read the article about multiple intelligences from Gardner at http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic68.htm that classified learners’ style into Verbal-Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical, Visual/Spatial, Bodily/Kinesthetic, Musical/Rhythmic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Naturalist and Existentialist. To apply technology in different ways in which suitable for learners’ style, teachers should know how to prepare activities promote their students’ learning. And also the article by Barbara A. Soloman and Richard M. Felder (index of learning style) at http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html and
http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/styles.htm
(Learning Styles and Strategies). I gained a lot for my teaching. Yes, it is important to address learning strategies which students learn in many styles depend on their own interests.

This week I have learned about the assessments. There are many types of assessment which is important for language teaching and learning. Effective teaching and learning language cannot be successful without assessment and the main purposes of assessment are to make summative evaluations and to provide instruction feedback to help students progress. Obviously, the result of my students showed how failure I had from last school year. I have to think back of my assessment that I used before, is it good enough to assess my students. Is it suitable? This week assignments reminded me of what I have done before and reviewed my weak point of teaching. I should keep learning and searching for the best new things for my students. Additionally, Rubistar is great for helping me create my own rubric to assess students. It’s easy to create and apply to my lesson. It does help a lot for the ones who have no much time to think about the criteria because it provides some of items that you might want to use it. It depends on what you want to focus in your students’ task. I am glad I can share all of the sites I have found in this course and make them available for my colleagues in my school.

It's great and that's all for this week.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Week4: Reading/Writing & Lesson Plan with Technology

Week 4 is over! I finally can't finish my assignments and my reflection in time. Poor me! Reading and writing is my weak point of all four skills. I myself like to teach listening and speaking. It seems lot of activities and exercises to have the students practice during an hour. Actually it is not what I thought, Internet as a technology is the great resources that provide various of authentic materials in English and benefit students at all level. They can ascess it with no cost. It is convenient for both teachers to prepare their lessons by integrating this wonderful tool which is suitable for their students' level and what skills they want them to improve and for students themselves, Internet provide opportunities for individualized learning when they work alone. Internet can provide forums in which students can share their works with otheres. As from Jarek Krajka's article "Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction" (http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krajka-WritingUsingNet.html)showed the idea of the three main elements for using Internet in writing, websites an authentic material to find information both for students need and teacher’s also, e-mail to help written interaction while communicating in writing with their peers who have the same interests, and web publishing to create students' website where they can post their own writing. As from Chao-chih Liao’s article “E-mailing to Improve EFL Learners' Reading and Writing Abilities: Taiwan Experience” used e-mail to improve students’ reading and writing competence. He argued that after students joined Computer Pals Across the World (CPAW) their intercultural and communicative competences were improved. They not only grained more those competence but also their reading and writing skills were developed.

During the week and having read the posts from other participants I found lot of wonderful websites that are really truely benefit in teaching language for all skills especially reading and writing in week4 assignment. Mary Grace Magcanam suggested some sites to use reading to teach writing:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4471443_use-reading-teach-writing.html
In improving writing skills, the site http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/70-ways-to-improve-your-english.html has 70 suggestions to improve the English language. She suggested that it has a lot of activities that are easy for teachers to prepare.

http://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Writing-Skills this sites also offers some tips in improving the writing skills. Lot of subcategories that is very useful in giving suggestions and activities that are truly useful available for us. And for reading test exercises she adviced this site http://www.usingenglish.com/comprehension/intermediate.html
There are several Readings and follow up questions to test reading comprehension of the students. We can use this http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/writingexercises.html for writing test. It has a varied topics to test the writing skills of the students. And also these sites from our professor
http://a4esl.org/
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/
http://legacy.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html
http://www.manythings.org/
http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/

In this week I also have a task to write the example lesson plan with technology. In fact I spent most of the time read my classmates' and tried to imagine of how could I integrate this tool to help my students improve their reading and witing skills. After reading my classmates' example lesson plan I found that everyone is done all assignments perfectly and shows their good examples for me. Well, I am going to say thank you for everyone and that is all for this week.

Best,
Garunyawun

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Week3: How technology could be helpful in improving students' aural/oral skills

It is the end of this week again. I have just finished posting on Nicenet this morning. It is just the third week of participating online E-Teacher course and I have been gaining lot of knowledge from this course. I have learned new and interesting things of teaching language. Thery are really useful to apply to my classroom. I am really excited when the school opens again in May and I have many useful tools of using technology in classroom and also the websites to share with my colleagues at the school.

I am so glad to meet Delicious.com this week. Yes, It is new for me and it is such a wonderful site that Deborah suggested us to save our favorite bookmarks. I don't have any problem with my favorite sites anymore. Delicious.com helps me to find it easily. I learned how to create Delicious and save my favorite websites on there. Just go to www.delicious.com and create your own and bookmark the sites you like. Here is mine http://delicious.com/gkainoonsingha I faced problems during creating it but it was not so difficult to do. After finishing it I put lot of useful bookmarks there but I don't understand much to do with the tag. Yes, I am now so happy how convenient it is. It provides us bookmarks everywhere we go or when you use other's computer.

How technology could be helpful in improving students' aural/oral skills

Dennie Hoopingarner (2009) and Lindsay Miller (2003) mention how useful of using technology into language classroom. "Best Practices in Technology and Language Teaching", Hoopingarner's paper illustrates how technology promote language learning all four skill listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Lindsay Miller (2003) make suggestions how to be achieved in teaching listenin with authentic materials by go through main three stages: Pre-listening, While- Listening and Post-Listening. These steps help learners meet the goals of learning with technology.

Computer as technology is considered to promote language learning all four skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing skills Hoopingarner (2009). The use of computer and the internet in classrooms is essential to actualize development in listening comprehension and oral skills, because computer environment allows fast developmental assessment and fast update. There are lots of websites benefit learners by providing content that enables them to interact with one another. Speaking practice via the internet, there are cheap, useful and wise solutions available such as Skype, MSN Messenger, IM Myspace, Facebook, and GoogleTalk can be used to connect a native speaker on the internet and realize a real-time conversation for free. Besides, karaoke is also beneficial in that it requires a recitation which eventually leads to improvement in speaking and listening skill. YouTube is also the site that helps teachers in teaching listening and speaking skill as you have seen that YouTube.com is broadcasting many listening comprehension improving videos. If your Internet connection is too slow to apply it into your classroom immediately, you can download it and save it on your computer first. To facilitate this tool, you may have to create additional handouts which help learners interact, and understand, and apply what they learn.

Teaching with technology that emphasizes on entertainment may be fun in the classroom but you have to be aware that the use of technology needs to support objectives, and students learning. Teacher can teach to reach curriculum goals in a variety of ways and methods. Why it is necessary to emphasize the entertaining aspect of using multimedia environments into your classroom. Because it makes learning language easier and the more important thing is that it makes learning permanent. For example, movies, cartoon, talk show, games show, and reality show. They are a good equipment of teaching English as a foreign Language and improve students’ comprehension. The most important thing to apply those technologies into your classroom is to help learners reach learning objectives.

Aural/oral sites - specific uses


In this week we are assigned to discuss about the websites that we used in our classroom and also recommend to our classmates. As for me, I actually did not recommend any websites to the others because all I used in my class was the sites that everyone knows. I found many interesting and very useful sites from our professor and our classmates. They are so excellent of doing so. It is such a great opportunity to learn from the excellent ones. The following are all wonderful websites that I have seen from their suggestions.

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?sectionType=listsummary&catid=59414
for lesson plan
http://www.esl-lab.com/
listening lab and listening task for any levels and any topics
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/
for learning language and pronunciation
http://esl.about.com/od/conversationlessonplans/Conversation_Lesson_Plans_for_English_Learners_at_All_Levels.htm
for Conversation Lesson Plans for English Learners at All Levels
http://www.esl-galaxy.com/speaking.html
for ESL Communicative Lesson Plan Resources
http://www.freerice.com/
Vocabulary game for donation to the hungry people
Http://www.npr.org/
for listening to news stories and read the text at the same time at the National Public Radio site
http://www.elfs.com/
for practicing with idioms, pronunciation, spoken grammar and more at Adam Radio’s English Learning Fun Site (ELFS)


They are all the best I have learned and that's all for this week.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Week 2: Search Engines and ABCD Model

This week is more difficult for me to discuss about search engines and ABCD Model for writing objectives. I found NoodleTools.com is very interesting and a lot more for searching engines to help me find things are easier and more options to do. I have thought that Google is a magic website to search for anything I want to know but now my eyes are opened widely and learned some new things from the discussion on Nicenet this week. I actually cannot recmommend any wedsites to the others but I have learned from their sharing instead. It is really great, isn't it?

"What is ABCD Model or Method?" I asked myself since I have never heard about it before. After reading Ruslana's post and following her suggestion to this link http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/writing_objectives.html It helped me understand that the four aspects of ABCD Model are Audience-Behavior-Condition-Degree. I also tried to get some excellent ideas from our participants to help me finish this task. Finally I am done with this task and I still need comments from our partners. I realize how ABCD MOdel can help students provoke their learning and help me improve the way to write objective and activities preparing for my students, making my lesson more interesting.

Well, I think everything is going to be clear from me after 2 weeks passed.