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.

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.

Building Teaching Skills through interactive Web

The reason for creating this blog is part of the online course which provided by the University of Oregon, U.S.A. under the tittle "Building Teaching Skills Through Interactive Web". It is to show my reflections about the course including sharing and exchanging my ideas with the other participants who are chosen to participate in this course from other countries all over the world. I am very happy and proud to be chosen from the American Embassy in Thailand as part of the E-Teacher Scholarship Program.

It is my first time here to create a blog myself in which a systematic reflection on what I have gained while creating it and how good it is for English classroom. It challenges me to create my first blog on education issue. I did scare of what I have asigned for week 1 because I have never used it in my classroom or created it before. Everything is very interesting and encourges me to be here as a new blogger. I have learned new things from the others on our discussion and try to improve myself as well as try to share some of my opinion to other participants too. It is very easy to log in to Nicenet which provides the participants to post and have a discussion there. Honestly, I did not know what to do after exploring Nicenet and got the asignment to create a blog for the week 1 task. So, I went through everyone blog and tried to make it clear of what I should start first in creating a blog. I have learned from the other blogs and it amazed me a lot that some of them are the first time here like me but they did it well. I felt student's heart to do so and thought that my students would feel in the way as I did. It is exciting, isn't it?