Week 6 Engaging students

Teaching large classes with 100 or more students always poses a challenge to lecturers. The main advantage smaller classes have over larger ones is that they provide students with greater opportunities for interaction with subject matter, with the teacher and with one another. So the way to improve teaching large classes is to make it interactive. Technological tools like Web Quests and technology-integrated projects allow students work in small groups independently and these tools have clear expected outcomes and as they are focused on the activities or tasks students have to interact with each other to accomplish them.

Having done the usual week's readings ("Using Technology In Teaching Large Classes" http://www.uoregon.edu/~tep/workshops/teachertraining/largeclasses/usingtechnology/usingtechnology.html , "Teaching Large Classes" http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/largeclasses.html, "Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students" http://umbc.uoregon.edu/eteacher/webskills/material/engaging_students_handout.pdf), I have found some techniques I would like to have in my arsenal.
A ConcepTest is a technique used often in a lecture setting. The instructor presents one or more questions during class along with several possible answers. Students in the class indicate which answer they think is correct. This could be done by a show of hands, for example. If many of the students do not give the correct answer, students are given a short time in lecture to try to persuade their neighbor that their answer is correct. The question is asked a second time to gauge class mastery.
Brainstorming can be simple and useful in all disciplines but it must be used appropriately to be effective. Choose a strategic point in your class for brainstorming: for example, when beginning a new topic or at the end of a lecture as review. Use students' input to decide on sub-topics to focus on during your class, to identify possible lines of questioning, and to assess students' level of comprehension and interest in your topic.
A debate is a good way to encourage class participation in large groups without losing control, and they can work in any discipline. They can emerge spontaneously from classroom material but are best used with planning. Think-Pair-Share is a good ice-breaking technique and it's also an easy way to make large classes interactive and encourages more students to participate than regular question strategies. Use the offerings of students after think-pair sharing to lead into a lecture or discussion of class material. Pose a question or problem to entire class: answerable but complex. Give students one to three minutes to think about it individually then divide students into pairs. Have them discuss their answers with each other for two to three minutes. Invite students to share responses with entire class: those whose ideas have been challenged, reinforced, or refined will probably volunteer.
One-Minute Paper
This shows students that they can write quickly and spontaneously, and enhances general writing ability. The one-minute paper can provide you with a source of candid feedback on course material and your presentation style. It can also encourage students to think about the key concepts discussed during this class.
An ungraded quiz encourages students to pay attention during lectures by presenting them with a short-term, non-threatening learning objective. It can be done very quickly, and also provides you with a source of candid feedback on students' knowledge level.
Role Playing
Ask several students to take on the roles of participants in the situations being studied, characters from novel, historical figures, representatives of political or theoretical positions, science foundation grant evaluators, etc. To reduce the students' fear, you might allow them some choice as to how involved they get, asking for volunteers for major roles and allowing some roles to be played by groups of students. You might also give them some time to prepare: a few days outside of class to research their roles, 15 minutes to confer in small groups, or five minutes to refresh their memories.
Just-in-time teaching Simply speaking it is a method when the teacher posts, using a class web site or for small classes even sends via e-mail, some useful links, open-ended questions or tests or other materials of the lecture before the class and students come to the class knowing the topic of the lesson. Using students' responses as part of an active learning session makes JiTT an especially effective teaching method.
Emails
In large classes, it can sometimes be difficult to respond to every concern or question. Emails allow students to ask questions or provide feedback on a particular issue at any time of the day or night.
Internet
You can use an electronic bulletin board or course website to post the course syllabus, course notes, assignment instructions, or administrative details (i.e., your office number, dates for tests and so on). More intensive use of the Internet could involve using bulletin boards, chat-rooms, or on-line discussion groups to answer student questions or pose discussion questions. These tools work best in large classes if students are divided into smaller groups and are graded on their participation. Also, consider what face to face activity you will eliminate from your course to make time for on-line discussions.

Though I use some of the techniques I just wanted to list some of the most interesting ones to fill the lectures with interactivity.

Week 6 Interactive Power Point

Games, accompanied by feedback from the teacher and peers, add exciting and novel elements to professional education. I have created my interactive PowerPoint in the form of Jeopardy game (https://sites.google.com/site/webskillssu2010/interactive-powerpoint).
The tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgPO-agnnMk has helped me greatly and I want to save it for me for ever. Guided by I have also created the interactive quiz about US Presidents and have made up my mind about creating one more interesting quiz of my own.
I knew about PP Presentations and used them widely and taught my students to be successful speakers with the help of this tool but now I can make my presentations interactive, I know some secrets and tips (http://tinyurl.com/353d7zy, http://tinyurl.com/38qwyok , http://tinyurl.com/2vll7kc, http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html ) and I am very proud of myself and very thankful to Deborah for this acquired knowledge.
While preparing my game I found out that we can create them and many others much easier if we use readily available web-based computer templates (e.g. http://teach.fcps.net/trt10/PowerPoint.htm). With a template you or even your students can create a game in minutes. These PowerPoint™ presentations can be modified with your own questions to create an interactive review or test for your students on any material and with lots of interest and enthusiasm.
We were given the secrets of successful presentation and this video is exactly about the necessity of poor Power Point Presentations:

Death by PowerPoint

After watching it I see the only way out is in well-conceived and well-founded INTERACTIVE presentation!

Week 5 Video

Dear Deborah and course mates,
I am also stubborn, so to prove myself that I can add a video, to show dear Deborah that it works for me and to thank you all for good work, I want you to relax and listen to this beautiful song I used in my first Webquest.
A Beautiful World - Tim Myers:

Week 5 Half the way

This week we replenished our knowledge reading suggested material on Project-based learning, Web Quests and Rubrics, acquired urgent skills for creating Rubrics and Web Quests with the help of Internet tools, discussed their feasibility and possible applications into our classrooms, devised ways of implementing technology tools into our teaching and came back to reflecting the fulfilled work in our Blogs. I find this week very fruitful and beneficial.

I will naturally try Web Quests with my students. Web Quests are motivating, fun, reflect real-world roles and tasks, invite collaboration, promote and exercise higher-level thinking process and practice skills inherent to any language learning project, such as reading for main ideas and detail, negotiating meaning through spoken and written communication, incorporate listening skills, peer teaching and interaction. I can use them at least once in a thematic unit. I am sure my technologically hooked students will love them.

Now I will not be able to do without Rubrics in numerous aspects of my teaching and especially project-based learning. I am thinking about sharing this knowledge with my colleagues during first August town meeting of foreign language teachers.

I am full of plans as to using Internet tools in my teaching this school year: Blogs, Electronic portfolios, international e-mail exchange, Wikis, Websites with authentic material, Web Quests and international projects. Thank Camelia I have already had a tempting suggestion for collaboration. I will definitely take advantage of this offer. I will also be able to use our Interactive whiteboard in a new context now when it is connected to World Wide Web. If you have access to the Internet, whether for yourself or for your students, you have the world's premier ESL resource at your fingertips.

And let me thank everyone for your fruitful cooperation and congratulate on the traversed half way.

Week 5 Creating a rubric

    Rubrics make assessing student work quick and efficient, and they help teachers justify to parents and others the grades that they assign to students. At their very best, rubrics are also teaching tools that support student learning and the development of sophisticated thinking skills. When used correctly, they serve the purposes of learning as well as of evaluation and accountability. Like portfolios, exhibitions, and other authentic approaches to assessment, rubrics blur the distinction between instruction and assessment.
I am familiar with rubrics but I have never created them with the help of the Internet tool – rubric maker websites (e.g. http://rubistar.4teachers.org/). It turned out much easier and time-saving.                       
I also value this practical assignment of this week very high – really necessary for every teacher.

The rubrics I created are determined for assessing my web project “We are the same, we are different” . The students of 10-B form (intermediate level) after making a web search on the topic will present their information in the form of a Power Point Presentation or a Movie. I included such dimensions into my rubrics: quality of information, organization, originality, mechanics, illustrations, multimedia and sources. I've chosen 4 levels of gradation: beginning, developing, very good and exemplary. The total score is 100%. The students will get the rubrics before starting their project and will know to what level to aspire and what to expect. The link to my rubrics on  Rubistar: http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&module=Rubistar&rubric_id=1926775&.

Designing an instructional rubric takes time. You can create rubrics successfully if you have vast experience with rubric design, but if not, don't despair. Take some class time and create a rubric with your students. Thinking and talking about the qualities of good and poor work is powerfully instructive. Your students will not only help you come up with a rubric; they will also learn a lot about the topic at hand.  Creating rubrics with your students can be powerfully instructive.

Suggested reading:

 “Rubrics and PBL assessment tools” http://www.globalschoolnet.org/Web/pbl/plan/assres.htm

“Creating a Rubric: Tutorial” http://health.usf.edu/publichealth/eta/Rubric_Tutorial/default.htm

One more interesting article about creating rubrics: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb00/vol57/num05/Using-Rubrics-to-Promote-Thinking-and-Learning.aspx

Week 5 MY FIRST WEBQUEST

Though I have been working with projects, Web Quests are completely new for me. 

But I am dead sure Web Quests will work with my students. Because Web Quests require their real engagement and participation which results with a final product. It's not a future far result but something they can feel satisfaction of and be proud of at the spot. Web Quests require computer interaction and up-to-date skills. What teenagers won't like it instead of drilling grammar rules? Autonomy for children is their independence and also everybody enjoys it. Group work will be a solution for very modest and shy students. And, of course, practical results of PBL are the base of their creativity and everyone can find himself, develop his talents and feel himself very useful and helpful.

I have created my first Web Quest called "We are the same, we are different" and enjoyed this practical task greatly. With Zunal.com it wasn't difficult at all. I wish I had known about it earlier. Its URL is: http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=66578                                                                                                     

The objectives of the quest are: 

1 Given the task and possible resources (C), students (A) will gather necessary material, analyze it and put into logical order (B) for at least one article (D).                                                                     2 Having prepared all necessary information and illustrations (C) students (A) will create a report (B) in at least one article, a brochure, a Power Point Presentation or a Movie at their choice (D). 

3 Given the Web Quest task (C), students (A) will compare and contrast facts, traditions, cultural background of foreign countries with their own (B) in summing up (D). 

4 Fulfilling the Web Quest (C), students (A) will recognize the importance of technology as a tool of their educational process (B) in one successful report (D).     

5 Using cooperative learning style (C), students (A) will appreciate group work (B) in good mood (D).

The Web Quest will take one or two weeks in a classroom setting.

I believe Web Quests are also a wonderful way of capturing students' imagination and, as you know, communication, group work, problem solving, and critical and creative thinking skills are becoming far more important in today's world than having students memorize predetermined content.

Week 5 PBL and WebQuests

This week was dedicated to Problem Based Learning and Web quests as their Internet version.  We were proposed to read the following articles:” Less Teaching and More Learning" by Susan Gaer (http://www.ncsall.net/?id=385 ),  “A Project-Based Learning Activity About Project-Based Learning” (http://www.sun-associates.com/lynn/pbl/pbl.html),  “Project-based ESL Education: Promoting Language and Content Learning” by Yan Guo (http://www.atesl.ca/cmsms/home/newsletters/december-2007/project-based-esl-education/), “Essential parts of a WebQuest” (http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index_sub3.html )and   Useful WebQuest Resources (http://www.webquest.org/index-resources.php ).

Collaborative project-based learning is a useful methodology and WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners interact comes from recourses of the web. According to it, the teacher proposes the students one or several real-world cases. Students must work cooperatively in groups to seek solutions to the cases. In this way, collaborative active learning takes place; students learn to learn and to apply the theory to practical situations. We know from Dale's Cone of Experience that people mostly remember when they do a “real” thing.

Common Features of Project-Based Learning:

■ Students conduct multifaceted investigations extending over long periods of time.

■ The projects deal with real-world questions that students care about.

■ Students encounter obstacles, seek resources, and solve problems in response to an overall challenge.

■ Students make their own connections among ideas and acquire new skills as they work on different tasks.

■ Students use authentic tools (real-life resources and technologies).

■ Students get feedback about the worth of their ideas from expert sources and realistic tests.

■ Problems are presented in their full complexity.

■ Students find interdisciplinary connections between ideas.

■ Students struggle with ambiguity, complexity and unpredictability.

 By the conclusion of the project, students are able to do the following:

• Gather pertinent information through various data-collection techniques, such as interviews, surveys, and library and Web research

• Engage in critical thinking activities, partially through synthesis activities

• See improvement in their language skills

• Use English with more self-confidence

Here are recommendations for EFL teachers who attempt to integrate project-based learning into their own curricula:

• Devise projects with students' immediate and future language needs and content interests in mind, while at the same time remaining vigilant of institutional expectations and available resources.

• Specify language, content, task, skill, and strategy learning objectives in line with students' needs and institutional expectations to maximize the benefits of the project.

• Strive to engage students in all stages of the project. Begin by giving students the chance to structure parts of the project, even if those contributions are small, with the aim of building a sense of student ownership and pride in project engagement.

• Design and sequence tasks with great care. Make sure that (1) skills are integrated to achieve real communicative purposes, (2) students are obliged to use various strategies for meaningful aims, (3) critical thinking is required for successful task completion, and (4) students are held accountable for content learning.

• Integrate tasks that require both independent and collaborative work. Help students reach agreement about different team member responsibilities. Students should view each other as single links in a chain that unite, through exchanges of information and negotiation of meaning, to produce a successful project outcome.

• Be sure to plan an opening activity that promotes students' interests, taps background knowledge, introduces important vocabulary, and builds up expectations for the final activity.

• Take advantage of Steps 4, 6, and 8 to provide explicit instruction so that students not only improve their language abilities but also excel in the information gathering, processing, and reporting stages of the project.

• Allow time for feedback at the conclusion of the project and at other critical junctures as well.

You can also watch the video"Why use webquests"    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuZ949Zi0TY&feature=related

WEEK 4 Records

This week was more difficult for me: maybe because we had more tasks, maybe because it is extremely hot in our place or because it is the middle of my summer vacation.

 We had to

1 Discuss reading/writing skill-building websites

2 Prepare a technology-enhanced lesson plan;

3 Describe the issues that technology may be able to help with as our Project Task 2;

4 Reflect the week's work on the blog as usual.

After finishing with my posts I prepared my Lesson Plan with Technology "Healthy Eating"

for 9-B (Intermediate level). As my colleagues admitted perhaps I took too many activities for 45-minute lesson. It's always a matter with me I want everything in one lesson. But sometimes it helps when you need to change something on the spot and we should definitely have some extra exercises.

Then I described the expected points technology can help my 10-B both teacher-oriented and student-oriented. I think I understood this task as my expectations from implementing technology not problems we can face.

And at the end I tried to compare my usual plan of the lesson with that of the technology-enhanced one.

There is a general rule for planning any lesson: "Prepare thoroughly. But in class, teach the learners – not the plan." It's true but I think it's necessary to prepare even more thoroughly for a technology-enhanced lesson. Preparing for the technology-enhanced lessons the teacher should analyze such aspects of the educational process:

-to determine the place and role of Internet technologies in the current program;

- to decide upon the form of a technology lesson (lecture, practical experiment, discussion, problem seminar, project, etc.);

-to think of the kinds of interaction between subjects of the process during preparation for the lesson, the lesson, reflection after the lesson;

- to work out criteria for evaluating students' knowledge during the lesson using the Internet technology;

- analyze educational resources;

-to give a reasonable estimate of the teacher's qualifications in the field of ICT, his ability to use Internet technology;

- to analyze the group of students in terms of their educational and computer skills and abilities.

I believe I've done all the tasks successfully.

Week4 Reading/writing skill-building websites

Reading the articles (http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krajka-WritingUsingNet.html, http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Liang-ExtensiveReading.html, http://iteslj.org/Articles/Liao-Emailing.html, http://iteslj.org/Articles/Constantinescu-Vocabulary.html ), exploring the given sites (http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/, http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/, http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html, http://a4esl.org/, http://www.manythings.org/ ), and analyzing my colleagues' posts I found much useful and interesting as usual. 

Teachers can use the Internet for gathering information. If you need additional teaching/learning materials for the class, you can find a quite large number of materials on the web. There is a huge amount of material for listening, reading, writing and speaking. No doubt the Internet can be used as an effective application for the development of grammatical and lexical skills. This includes all sorts of training in vocabulary, grammar, phonetic exercises, tests on reading, grammar, IQ- tests, etc. (e.g. Various tenses quiz http://a4esl.org/q/f/x/xz88mgu.htm , FL Vocabulary Practice http://iteslj.org/v/ei/verbs1.html,  Multiple choice grammar quiz http://www.manythings.org/voa/040229pa.htm)

You can select appropriate materials for your students' interests and level of English proficiency. There are some teaching plans which include materials may help you to teach your students. It is a good idea to go over those materials when you have free time, and classify the ones that interest you according to their topic or how you might use them. Since there is a huge amount of material available on the web, there should be many useful materials for your students, if you look for it.

 Teachers can arrange key pal experiences for their students, and the students can exchange e-mail with key pals individually or as a group, like corresponding with pen pals. Students can use the Internet as a resource for their projects. That is, the Internet can provide access to such resources as dictionaries or encyclopedias. Students can also find thesauruses and various reference materials for writing papers.

There are library web pages at http://www.cyberkids.com/cw/sto/re/simpson/simpson1.html,  http://www.backyardnature.net/r/reddog00.htm, http://www.manythings.org/voa/stories/ ,  where you can look for e-books. Students can subscribe to student lists and participate in general discussions for low and high level English students, or discussions on business, economics, current events, movies, music, sports, science, technology, and learning English. You can give students assignments to obtain certain information on lists, and students can bring the information back to the class. There is Kidlink, where students can participate in global projects for teenagers conducted in English (http://www.kidlink.org/).

Students can read journals or newsletters for students of English. Many of them have readings and fun activities to do as well as useful information. It is worth investigating these and making plans for what your students read, and how you can use the materials for your class.

Students can get news from various sources on the Internet. Teaching the English Newspaper Effectively (http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Lessons/Kitao-Newspaper.html  ) is useful, if you are thinking about using English newspapers to teach English. It has some exercises which you can use with any newspapers. (The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/, CNN http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/?fbid=0CEx-5hCwbq  ,The Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/ BBC World Service (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice )  - provides an opportunity not only to read but also to listen to the news, in many languages and even choose the appropriate level of English, The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/ ) in addition to the above offers its readers a training version of the newspaper with ready lesson plans (http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/picture-this-building-photo-based-writing-skills/).

I can imagine how my students will appreciate creating my own movies with http://www.dfilm.com/live/moviemaker.html  .

Week3 Reflections about Skill-building Websites for Aural/Oral Skills

 We had four assignments this week: a discussion, a task, and a course task on Nicenet, and a reflective post on the blog as usual.  

1)    First we were to explain how technology could be helpful in improving our students' aural/oral skills.

Some notes about CALL:

Today, with the high development of computer technology, computers can capture,analyze, and present data on second language students' performances during the learning process. Many different types of technology can be used to support and enhance learning. Everything from video content and digital movie-making to laptop computing and hand-held technologies (Marshall, 2002) have been used in classrooms, and new uses of technology such as podcasting are constantly emerging. 

Technologies available in classrooms today range greatly. Even the cell phones that many students now carry with them can be used to learn (Prensky, 2005).

 Each technology is likely to play a different role in students' learning. Students can learn "from" computers—where technology used essentially as tutors and serves to increase students basic skills and knowledge; and can learn "with" computers—where technology is used as a tool that can be applied to a variety of goals in the learning process and can serve as a resource to help develop higher order thinking, creativity and research skills (Reeves, 1998; Ringstaff & Kelley, 2002).

The use of technology in the classroom improves students' motivation and attitudes about themselves and about learning. Through various communicative and interactive activities, computer technology can help second language learners strengthen their linguistic skills, affect their learning attitude, and build their self-instruction strategies and self-confidence. Computer and its attached language learning programs could provide second language learners more independence from classrooms and allowing learners the option to work on their learning material at any time of the day.

          2)    Then we had to discuss Aural/oral skill-building looking at two or more of the skill-building websites for our classes.Listening in a foreign language is a complex process. Students have to be able to understand the main idea of what is said as well as specific details. They may need to check any predictions they have made, and understand the speaker's meaning, emotions and opinions.   

I wanted to add here some useful techniques to use when teaching listening by Miles Craven:

Pre-listening

Tell your students they shouldn't     worry that they have to understand every word they hear. Not every word is important!

Where possible, make sure students know what they are listening for before you start listening. Explain they should focus only on the information they need.

Give two or three general questions to check students' comprehension of  the basic details.

If possible, check for any words that your students may not know.  Pre-teach these so they do not interfere with understanding.

Brainstorm students' ideas on the topic they are going to listen to.  This will help focus them.

Don't choose a listening that is too long. If necessary, stop the recording at certain points and review what students have understood so far.

While listening

As a general principle, try to play the recording once for overall comprehension. Then play the recording again for specific details. 

Tell students to note any dates, people or places they hear. 

Divide students into groups and give each group a different listening task (e.g. different questions). Then swap their answers and have students listen again and check their classmates' answers. 

Don't be afraid to repeat the recording… especially the parts students have most trouble understanding.

 Post-listening

Tell students to compare their notes and discuss what they understood in pairs or small groups. 

Encourage students to respond to what they heard. For example, where possible ask questions like Do you agree? and encourage debate. 

Tell pairs to write a summary of the main points. Then have them compare their summaries and check if they covered all the main points. 

Play the recording again and tell students to call out ‘Stop!’ when they hear the answers they were listening for. 

Put students into groups and tell them to make a list of comprehension questions to ask each other. 

Tell students to make a list in their notebooks of any new vocabulary they feel is useful.

Remember, it's important to give students a lot of variety in what they listen to. Try to use as many different sources of listening material as you can: advertisements, news programs, poetry, songs, extracts from plays, speeches, lectures, telephone conversations, informal dialogues… the more varied and authentic the listening practice you offer them, the more fun you'll all have!

After exploring several sites individually we had hot discussions about their advantages and shared lots of our favorite sites. There was no end to new exploration and the task became infinite. 

Here are the links to numerous interesting sites proposed by Deborah Healey and Larry Ferlazzo:   http://www.uoregon.edu/~dhealey/138/pronlinks.html

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/the-best-sites-to-practice-speaking-english/ 

And I bookmarked some more suggested by my colleagues to my Delicious page.

Now I have a feeling of fear to be lost in this diversity of new sites! What about you? Do you feel the same?

 

Week 3 Delicious

     I liked the expression of my colleagues, that this week was delicious. Yes, it really was!

We got acquainted with its recipe and created our own piece. How does it taste and what should we eat it with?

Del.icio.us is a free website that enables all the users around the world to bookmark their favorite web contents on the web.This way, users can see what the most famous items on the web are so far and refer to them to be able to go directly to their source. Link: http://delicious.com/ 
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine. With regard to creating a high-quality search engine, a social bookmarking system has several advantages over traditional automated resource location and classification software, such as search engine spiders. All tag-based classification of Internet resources (such as web sites) is done by human beings, who understand the content of the resource, as opposed to software, which algorithmically attempts to determine the meaning of a resource. Also, people can find and bookmark web pages that have not yet been noticed or indexed by web spiders. Additionally, a social bookmarking system can rank a resource based on how many times it has been bookmarked by users. (From Wikipedia) 

STEP-BY-STEP: HOW TO USE DELICIOUS.COM

http://www.focuss.info/storage/Step%20by%20step%20guide%20-%20How%20to%20use%20Delicious.pdf

 I liked it .Do you want to try? This is my piece of Delicious -  http://delicious.com/victoriaillarionova/

Week2 The ABCD Learning Objectives

What are other reflections of the week?
1) I've fulfilled my Project Task 1: analyzed the students of one class and described them in the post on Nicenet. To my great astonishment I enriched my knowledge about Education around the world reading the posts of my colleagues about their students, classroom environment and school curriculum. Now I can implement it on my Country Study lessons.
2) After reading about the ABCD model (http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/, http://www.slideshare.net/ashleytan/writing-specific-instructionallearning-objectives-presentation, http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/classifications.html), I shared my objectives on Nicenet. Here I'd like to place some basic rules about creating behavioral learning objectives:

4 Parts of an ABCD Objective
• Audience

• Behavior
• Condition
• Degree
- The objective does not have to be written in this order (ABCD), but it should contain all of these elements

Audience
• Describe the intended learner or end user of the instruction
• Example: … The 10-B student…

Behavior
• Describes learner capability
• Must be observable and measurable (you will define the measurement elsewhere in the goal)
• If it is a skill, it should be a real world skill
The “behavior” can include demonstration of knowledge or skills in any of the domains of learning: cognitive, psycho-motor, affective, or interpersonal
- Cognitive domain
- Emphasizes remembering or reproducing something which has presumably been learned
- Deals with what a learner should know, understand, comprehend, solve, spell, critique, etc.
- Psycho-motor domain
- Emphasizes some muscular motor skill, some manipulation of material and objects, or some act that requires a neuromuscular coordination
- Concerns with how a learner moves or controls his/her body
- Affective domain
- Composed of two different types of behaviors: reflexive (attitudes) and voluntary reactions and actions (values)
- Stages: perception, decision, action and evaluation
- Interpersonal domain
- Emphasizes learner skills (not attitude or knowledge) associated with interpersonal exchanges
- How a learner interacts with others in a variety of situations

Condition
• Equipment or tools that may (or may not) be utilized in completion of the behavior
• Example: …given the complete works of William Shakespeare…

Degree
• States the standard for acceptable performance (time, accuracy, proportion, quality, etc)
• Example: … without error/ … 9 out of 10 times/ …within 60 seconds.

Difference between Goals and Objectives:
-Goals are broad objectives are narrow.
-Goals are general intentions; objectives are precise.
-Goals are intangible; objectives are tangible.
-Goals are abstract; objectives are concrete.
-Goals can't be validated as is; objectives can be validated.

I hope setting the ABCD objectives will soon become for us as easy as ABC.

3) I've written my reflections and a comment on the blogs.
4) I've learned to insert files into my blog.
5) Constant reading of e-mails, posts, blogs and materials never stops.

My friends admire that I've been thinking about my studies and not summer rest. I am becoming a Study Freak:)

Week 2 Web Searching

It's almost the end of week 2. What are the results?
This week I've spent much more time surfing the Internet than recently. Our task was to do web searching and discuss our experience.
After thorough reading of Tips and strategies for better searches I rushed to explore the Net. We were given very useful Noodletools www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html which can help everybody and especially teachers to reach thousands of on-line resources such as virtual libraries, on-line media and language reference material: free full-text electronic books, journals, reports, maps, blogs and articles from leading world publishers. We can find a wide range or databases in the fields of education, management, business, media and etc. To be successful we were supported with the secrets of effective Internet search strategies. I've learned and brushed up how to formulate a search statement using Boolean operators and navigate my way through directories, databases, portals and web logs., and thus, make my search quick, easy and efficient. http://www.uoregon.edu/~dhealey/techtips/june2009.html The most valuable tool for on-line research is the search engine. Different search engines use different algorithms to determine the order in which pages are listed. I discovered (to well-known www.google.com, www.rambler.ru, www.yahoo.com, www.aport.ru, www.yandex.ua and www.meta.ua) a new metasearch engine Clusty – http://clusty.com/ for myself.
It can be useful in searching a large number of papers.
Then it has taken me great time and I've always wanted even more to look at the sites with specific information for my profession:
- some professional journals, which focus on the theory and practice of language teaching http://iteslj.org/;
- virtual libraries - http://scholar.google.com.ua/, http://www.worldcat.org/ - to find and order full-text articles free and on a commercial basis;
- numerous lists of on-line periodicals http://www.newspaperindex.com/,
radio programs http://www.publicradiofan.com/, as appropriate sources of reading and listening material for students;
- media sites with special sections for teachers and learners, with sample lessons http://www.sitesforteachers.com/, http://www.apples4theteacher.com/;
- Web sites created by museums http://wwar.com/, http://www.artcyclopedia.com/ as valuable source of information about art and art museums around the world for Country Study lessons
- database of movies http://www.imdb.com/, http://video.search.yahoo.com/,
http://www.truveo.com/, http://www.archive.org/details/movies - real wealth for teaching
- English language dictionaries on-line - http://education.yahoo.com/reference/, http://www.merriam-webster.com/, http://www.wordcentral.com/
- kid-friendly sites http://www.kidsclick.org/, http://www.askkids.com/ my favorite precious area for young learners. (To tell the truth I like playing, doing quizzes and watching cartoons myself).
These are just several examples from a huge field of my future exploration given by Noodletools and our dear colleagues Azhar,Stephen,Camelia and others.
Thank you, everybody, for your help! We are not wasting our time this summer!
Here is a video about Searching Strategies in Plain English: