Week 4: Skill-building Websites for Reading and Writing and Technology-Enhanced Lesson Plans

My reflection on this fourth week, more than a job, is a pleasure. Although my jobs absorb me a lot and I generally have to post my assignments during the last days of the week, I try to do my best. I feel more than happy in this course. Undoubtedly, our instructor, Courtney, has been an excellent guide during the week sessions. On the other hand, my classmates are quite smart and improve week by week in their works. Definitively, I am learning from all of them and that satisfies me a lot.  This week, our job concentrated on three main topics: reading, writing and vocabulary skills; technology enhanced lesson plans and problematic issue related with technology.

The first of the class topics, reading, writing and vocabulary skills; implied reading specialized material on these skills and sub-skill. “Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension”(http://iteslj.org/Articles/Constantinescu-Vocabulary.html) by A. Constantinescu was the first article that I read. It remarks the importance of integrating technology into the language classroom. Furthermore, it highlights the close relationship between reading and vocabulary. Constantinescu states that reading comprehension leads to vocabulary acquisition, while vocabulary knowledge benefits reading comprehension.  

Another good article about teaching the eading skill was “Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books”(http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Liang-ExtensiveReading.html) by Mei-Ya Liang.  It underlines the importance of using authentic material in the teaching setting. Liang, mainly, proposes using e-books in class to enhance extensive reading.

The last article that I read this week was “Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction” (http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krajka-WritingUsingNet.html) written by Jarek Krajka.  It features the effect of CALL in teaching the writing skill through three technological activities: creating class websites, using web pages and making e-mail connections. Besides, Krajka enumerates a series of writing genres to work with like writing a letter to a friend; a formal letter; a personal opinion essay; a description of a festival or ceremony; a biography; a newspaper report; and such.

After reading these articles, I analyzed three suggested websites. One of those websites focused on the reading skill “Breaking News English ESL” (http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/). Then, two multi-skill sites were reviewed, one focusing on vocabulary “Activities for ESL Students” (http://a4esl.org/) and the other focusing on writing "ESL Language Lab" (http://legacy.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/writing.html).

The second class topic was about creating technology enhanced lesson plans. This plan integrated information about class material (online and traditional material), introduction that included review of previous lesson and objective of the class, procedure to be developed by the teacher and the students, learning styles addressed, type of assessment and homework.

Finally, the last class topic constituted the third work on our project task. This time, it referred about the problematic issue in our current course that could be solved by means of technological resources. In my case, I exposed two different types of issues, extrinsic and intrinsic ones, that I expect to solve with what I am learning in this web skill course.

I hope that everybody is enjoying this learning experience like I am doing now!

Regards!

Week 3: Aural/Oral skill-building websites & boormarks

The learning experience that depicts this third course week consisted on the discussion of Aural/Oral skill-building websites, the creation of a delicious site and the discussion of a past sample project report.

Firstly, the discussion of Aural/Oral skill-building websites made us realize the abundance of good websites focused on the teaching/learning of the listening and speaking skills. This task has taught me where to look for good sites to reinforce my classes in the graduate course “Teaching Language Skills”.  I can encourage my students to look for these sites and teach their learners the right way to learn these skills. At the same time, my graduate students can promote self- learning experiences by advising their students to use the listening and speaking exercises to learn by their own the English language following the instructions of the suggested exercises.

Secondly, a very interesting and helpful assignment was the creation of a Delicious site. This as well as Digg, Reddit, StumpleUpon, Newsvine, and Diigo are some social bookmarking sites very useful to save important sites to support our classes. Learners can post and share their favorite links by categorizing them through the use of tags. In the same way, other users can also choose from other people's bookmarks, add them in their own delicious site and share them again with other users.

Thirdly, the analysis and discussion of a past project report constitutes a very helpful assignment for all the course members. By means of this analysis and its discussion, we all might tackle our future project reports from the point of view of an analyzer with a task experience in which we are criticizing, in a good sense, a former report.

Once more, it has been a great course week. It has also been so amazing to me. We are finishing week three and I am looking forward to a more fascinating and learning fourth week.

Thank you Courtney and University of Oregon!

Warm regards!

Week 2: Search engines, ABCD objectives and project task

This week has been characterized by new helpful increasing knowledge. In my case, knowing about new search engines besides "Google" has been more than an experience. My classmates are really smart and proactive. The have shared different links for academic searches. For example, Nino Tarkhnishvili  suggested "Glean Comparison Search" http://www.gleancomparisonsearch.org/index.php . This web browser provides lots of professional articles which are categorized according to experts' viewpoints. Besides, another useful search engine for my students was provided by Jasmina Ðordevic "10x10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time"  http://www.tenbyten.org/info.html . This web page provides 100 picture scans that represent different international updated news. Each picture is associated with a word that can be a name, and adjective or a verb. It is great for designing learning activities. I also did my own web search and I found another valuable search engine named “Lycos” http://www.lycos.com/ .  Lycos offers all kind of information including academic abstracts and complete articles on language issues that we can use in our classes. As a matter of fact, these three web searchers will be considered for my next classes and following courses since I plan to improve  my students' reading materials and searching sources.

On the other hand, two tasks were accomplished this week: ABCD objectives and project task. The former made me learn the revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy, which includes digital learning objectives and one additional learning level (Creating Level). Based on this taxonomy, all of us learned how to design a learning objective for one of our classes taking into account the learners and instructional setting.  In fact, the article on “Writing Objectives” reminded us that the students’ behaviors and expectations are closely related to the teaching and grading processes.

Furthermore the latter, the project task, became the first step to our final project.  As I am teaching a semi-distance course for the first time, I feel eager to design new, interesting and challenging activities for my students. Then, I decided that I will develop my final project on the graduate course “Teaching language Skills”.

This course is really motivating for me! Thanks a lot!!!

Week 1: Introductions and creating an Academic Blog

Hello, everyone!

It has been a week of multiple learning experiences. I really thought that I knew about the interactive web. Now, I realize how valuable it is to be in this course.

Reflecting about my own learning experience has not been that easy! In fact, I have been thinking for about two days about how to start doing my blog and what to write on it for this first time. After analyzing some blog samples provided by our gentle instructor, Courtney, and seeing my classmates’ ones, I think that I got it!

Guys, this is not easy! Once, Prof. Deanna Hochstein told us during a Critical Thinking workshop in my country, Venezuela, that we are not used to thinking or reflecting about our own learning experiences and that it was something we do not teach to our students. Smart words, Prof. Hochstein! She was completely right!!! 

Now, that I have been pushed to thinking is that I realize how important it is to encourage our learners to think about their own thinking. I feel that after doing my own job on this, I have grasped the essence of what “reflective blogs” are and what their objective is.  Basically, this experience about reflective blogs helps us, students, to make us conscious on our own learning.

Reasoning through “reflective blogs” make us drain about our own positive and negative feelings about any learning issue. It makes us more humble in the sense that we can recognize our own weaknesses and strengths. It makes us understand how difficult it might be for others to learn something for the first time and to think about their own learning process. Sometimes, we as teachers do not pay attention to as how hard it is for our students to learn.

Sharing this reflection with others makes us grow since they may give us their feedback and we can also reflect on that. Giving this feedback is like putting on someone else’s shoes. You may know if they really fit on the owner or not. So, you can act in accordance with their thinking records. That is, we as teachers can help our students to overcome their learning experiences.

I am really enjoying this web skills course. I think that I can apply what I have been learning about “reflective blogs” in my English Phonetics and Phonology and Language Skills classes. Most of my students consider that they are difficult subjects. Now, I am more interested in knowing about my students’ thoughts. I really love teaching and I want to help them. Besides, this knowledge will make me more sensitive about my students’ feelings and needs. Therefore, I can improve my classes based on my students own reflections about their learning process.

Thank you! Thank you very much for teaching me how valuable it is to use “reflective blogs” in the language classroom! I really appreciate it!!!

Warm regards from Venezuela!