Week 10

It is sad to say it is my last post in this blog. Sure, I will continue using my 2nd blog I opened for my class work. I guess I will keep this one as a reminder of the wonderful 10 weeks that I enjoyed so much. Honestly, there were times when I felt so pushed with assignments that I wished the course were over even though I knew deep inside I will miss those days. And now the end has come and as I predicted I feel very sad. 

I feel very honored to have been selected to take the online course. It is a unique opportunity for teachers to update their teaching kindly granted by Oregon University. Some of the participants might have already been fortunate to study in the US, but for the others the course was like a door into the US educational system which everyone enjoyed tremendously.

Like everyone in my group I learned a lot of teaching tools that I am going to try and use with my students. At least now I have a wide choice of resources to choose from. As I posted in the discussion I didn't consider myself a "technically challenged" person when we started the course and yet there were many things I didn't know, like "Nicenet", "Delicious", "WebQuest", "Rubrics", "Wallwisher", "Bookmarking" and "ABCD objective". Most of all I was fascinated by "Rubrics" which gives a clear picture of the required  skills from the students to get a certain grade.

The course was evern more amazing than I expected. My wish for future particinats is to take it seriously and wholeheartedly because it is a wonderful way to update yourself professionally and use modern technology in the teaching practice.

I will miss you all!

Week 9

Well, the amazing course is coming to the end. It is kind of sad because I have been used to meeting my collegues every day, read their views on this or that topic. Every week was a new dicovery and I have learnt so much.  The time has come to use all the knowledge we have gained thoughtout these weeks and not to waste it. I will miss everyone and everything. If I had a chance I would gladly participate in one more course provided by Oregon university.

In week 9 I took the course evaluation and tried to answer as honestly as possible. Hope, my contribution will help the research.

As for the week's assignment we had  readings and the discussion about learning style and technology tools for multiple intelligences. I guess Gardner made a big discovery by introducing his theory since people started to realize that each person is different and requires a different approach. It is especially important for educators since their role is to teach going to the goal through different ways.

I also had to read through my Final Project and make some changes as Nazeer and Robert put in their comments. When we read the project samples of the previous participants I was quite sure I won't be able to do as much as they did, but through the right guidance and help of my collegues and I managed to create my own project.

Week 8

The first 3 days were the most tiresome out of all the weeks. The draft of the project took a lot of my time and since we had deadline till Wednesday I had to spend late evenings to finish it. Luckily, we had  enough time to read the partner's report and prepare the check list by the end of the week. I read Nazeer's report, found it interesting and  in my opinion it fits all the requirements.

We also had to create a class site and I made a wallwisher, created an online class in the nicenet and put my class blog. I started to use my blog, leave assignments there and I check students' understanding in the classroom. Some of the students leave their comments, too. I feel my students are not yet used to writing comments, I guess it is another kind of rule they still should get used to. They listen to the activity, question each other about the pieces to clarify the understanding but they still feel that leaving comments is not so much necessary.

I appreciate new tools and resources that this week provided us with. I always save them in my delicious page. There is a lot I can share with my collegues. I can say that not only my school collegues but also teachers from other schools benefit from my course.  I am happy to learn new ideas and I am happy to share    new resources with my friends.

Week 7

We were introduced  a new tool this week- building a wallwisher. That was funny, very simple to create and completely a new concept for my students, which surprised me a lot! I showed them my wall http://padlet.com/wall/3dznwz5ixj and explained them how to make it and we all decided to use the wall for a change.

We also created a wall on the Learner Autonomy which was one of the reading assignments of the week.
As Benson stated "The autonomous learner is the one who constructs knowledge from their own experience, rather than the one who responds to someone's instructions".
Learner autonomy helps the student work independently, motivates and encourages him/her to reflect on self learning and make assessment. Autonomy empowers the student to think independently and be responsible for the decisions he/she makes.

We shared our experience working with one computer in the classroom since there is a lot that a class can do even with one computer. There are teachers in our group who have "one computer/ one student" system in the country but there are also teachers who don't have even one computer in the classroom and have to take students to the computer lab to introduce them the webpages and teach them how to navigate in the internet. Apart from using computers for teacher/student presentations, tests, computers develop such skills as word processing, critical thinking, problem solving and fosters independent learning. Students receive instant feedback when they do a test which motivates them to keep learning.

Since we started teachnology change in the classrooms we have to reflect on these changes and prepare the draft of the Final Project by Wednesday. As the course is coming to the end, we had to select the partner during the week and I decided to work with Nazeer because I always liked to read his posts in the nicenet discussions and I am sure he will give the most objective opinion of my project. In my turn, I will try to do my best reading his project.

Week 6

This week's assignment was to read about "Using Technology in Teaching Large Classes" and "Best Practices with Interactive Power Point" .

I was impressed by the way teachers deliver lessons in large classes. In Azerbaijan teachers ususally teach the English language to 30-40 students in the primary school but starting from the 5th form classes are always divided into 2 groups which makes teaching much easier (but not easy at all!) since then we have groups of 12-13-18 students depending on the size of the whole class.
I liked the "Think-Pair-Share" approach very much and though Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw introduced it as the way to enhance lecture classes, I liked the approach and will use it in my lessons when possible, just to make a difference in the lesson procedure.

As for Power Point Presentation I find it very useful and can say that teachers in my country widely use this technique nowadays, but, the thing is,  not everybody knows how well to use it. I remember taking a seminar at the British Council on giving a Power Point  presentation and we were given  2 nearly  identical videos with the same presenter but with a different attitude towards the audience. I understood that using the PPT in the wrong way may bring to rather negative results than posititve. If the speaker delivers the lesson in the monotonous way, or if the speaker uses too many slides, or if the speaker doesn't interact with the audience then the advantages that PPT can bring to the students will be lost. I think using PPT the teacher not only delivers a lesson in a more interactive way but also develops in students a sense of presentation skills.

This week we had to implement the technology-related change in our classes. As my students need to develop listening and speaking skills I decided to start with introducing my 10 Grade students
http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/

Their first assignment was to listen to the video, take notes to be able to discuss the video in details.
http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/freetime/video-zone/lunar-new-year-celebrations-begin-china
I explained to the students that they would get such tasks regularly at the end of the week so that they had time to get prepared for Monday. This time I assigned the work in the middle of the week and the result was as I expected. Some of the students were not prepared explaining they didn't have internet access or the speed was slow and they couldn't watch the video. The majority of the class was able to watch the video and enjoyed the lesson very much as it was different from our usual textbook stories and grammar activities.
Though part of the students were not ready I enjoyed the lesson, too. The students were enthusiastic, willingly talked on the topic and at the end of the lesson they did all the post listening activites that the website provided.

I am happy to take this course as it provides me with interersting articles and webpages on how to improve my teaching style.

Week 5

It is unbelievable we are half way to the end of the course! The time really flies, it seems we started not long ago and it is already week 5!
Every week is different, if I had a lot of fear at the beginning of the course, I feel much more confident now. As Nasim stated, week 4 was not easy, we had to create a technology enhanced plan, had to read a lot of articles about reading and writing but compared to the last week assignments week 5 seemed very easy to me. I have used PBL in my teaching practice,  most  of the creative teachers in Azerbaijan implemented PBL model even before computers and internet appeared at schools.

I was absolutely fascinated by the possibility of evaluating students' knowledge through Rubrics. Rubrics gives exact criteria for evaluation of the language skills. The students can clearly see what is required from them to achieve top results. It didn't take me much time to create rubrics and I introduced some of them to my students so that they knew how their knowledge is evaluated.

I tried Web-quest but, unfortunately, couldn't finish it as I was stuck at the evaluation part. I was amazed at how well Elena created her webquest page. This is something worth trying and I will explore it again and again until I manage it.

I decided to create a blog as a Final project, though Robert commented that it might take longer period to analyze the results. I think I can describe in my project the parts I will try with my class.

Week 4

Another week of intensive reading included articles about using CALL in writing and reading activities, then, we had to prepare a technology enhanced lesson plan, write about some issues or problems, the teaching class is experiencing and, sure, a discussion in the nicenet.

I really enjoyed reading the articles “Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction” by Jarek Krajka and “Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL students Using E-Books” by Mei-Ya-Liang. They give good, practical ideas which are possible to incorporate into the teaching process. I especially liked the ideas on different writing genres by Jarek Krajka and I will definitely include some of the genres into teaching writing. The teachers suggested a lot of useful websites that offer free lessons, exercises, worksheets etc. I was familiar with some of them and bookmarked the ones which were new and I found them useful. I especially loved Lauri’s ESL website http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/ and http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ which offer wonderful grammar, vocabulary, listening exercises with pre/while/post activities. I wonder if we shall have access to https://sites.google.com/site/webskillsuo/home when the course is over. That would be great!

Preparing a technology enhanced lesson plan was a kind of challenge for me but following the instructions I guess I managed to create the one correctly. It was, actually, my lesson in Grade 10.

We are moving forward to the next step in the Final Project and this week’s assignment was to identify the class problem in order to find ways to solve it. Having read the posts by the teachers in the nicenet, I realize I work in more comfortable conditions as our classes are much smaller and they are divided into groups for language study. We have the internet access which many schools don’t, but the main advantage is, sure, the small size of the class.

I want to concentrate on the improving my students’ listening skills in my Final project. Developing listening skills helps to build vocabulary and improves speaking skills as well.

My aim is to use the internet as a useful teaching aid and, thus, give variety and authenticity to learning English.

Week 3- My reflections

Week 3 added more valuable activities to use in the classroom. We were introduced to aural/oral skill building websites, to the samples of the project report and created a “delicious” page.

Week 3 was easier to handle than the previous 2 weeks. I am already familiar with nicenet, I know what I am supposed to do in the discussions.

Creating a delicious page

It was the easiest assignment to do. The webpage helps to save useful links by adding them on the webpage and share them with the others. I have saved lots of useful links that I will definitely use in my teaching. There are a lot of websites which are very good for practicing listening and pronunciation skills I came across during the discussions that I was unaware of, so www.delicious.com was the best solution to save all the links I liked and explore one by one later.

Aural/Oral skill building

Developing listening comprehension is the essential part of learning a language. Building the vocabulary, learning grammar, practice speaking will not contribute to mastering the language if the person is not able to comprehend and respond to the dialogue in a real world context. The article by Lindsay Miller “Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials” proved the importance of authentic materials in developing listening skills.
She suggests to use Pre-, While-, and Post-Listening activities to help learners develop their listening skills.

I read the article by Julia Gong about Computer-Assisted Language Learning and agree that “CALL environment becomes an ideal safe haven to learners to practice interaction. One of the greatest advantages is that it offers a private environment for working on the pronunciation.” It was also interesting to read about the advantages and disadvantages of CALL in the development of speaking skills. “Language is speech. People talk far more that they write and the importance of mastery of the spoken language as primary objective among learners is confirmed by surveys.”

A Sample Report

The assignment was to choose one of the sample project reports from the past Webskills classes, read and comment on that report in nicenet.

I skimmed three reports which gave me a clear idea of what my final project must be like. I was impressed how hard the teachers worked, made a deep analysis of their teaching environment, idetified problems and  found the solutions. Most of them mentioned Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences approach to choose the best teaching style.

I liked the reports by Prem Bahadur Phyak from Nepal and  Nicolici Nadina Carmen  from Romania very much. I summarized what Nicolici Nadina Carmen did in her project, posted my viewpoints in the nicenet, and expressed what I liked about the project.

Week 2 - My Reflections 

The second week has finished and I would like to sum up what we have done and learned. To be honest this week was harder for me than Week 1. I understand that readings are requirement but reading all the discussions take a lot of time. Sure, there is a positive side of it, too, as I made new discoveries for myself.

•        Search Engines

Thanks to discussions on search engines I discovered a lot of new websites that I had never had any idea about. There are a lot of tools to find the necessary resources on the internet. I saved all of them to explore step by step later whenever I need to do academic search. Still, my favorite websites are teachingenglish..org.uk and iseek education as both provide lots of practical resources, like lesson plans, activities and worksheets. I can find there almost anything I need.

•        ABCD objective

This was completely new for me. I learned that ABCD objectives include: Audience, Behavior, Condition and Degree but still I cannot fully comprehend the meaning. I even searched the web to get a better picture of it.

Probably it is a well applied model since some teachers put positive comments about it. Nazeer Ahmed mentioned in his blog ”This method is absolutely invaluable and worth-while for high quality teaching” I feel I need more clarification in this field. I will be grateful if the teachers who practise ABCD objective share with me how they apply this model in the classroom. If it brings to better outcomes I will be happy to apply it.

•       Final Project: Step 1 - Describing a class

This was the easiest task for me to do. I had to describe my class, my students, their age, workload, school equipment. I wonder what we are going to do in the project. I have worked in a lot of online projects in www.iearn.org , www.deliberating.org  so, I am very curious about this part of our assignment. I am a class teacher (I am not sure if there is such a position of a subject teacher in other countries) of the 9 Grade students who got enrolled and just started the school in September and are full of energy and motivation to participate in various projects.

I guess I have managed to finish all the required work in time though I am used to doing lots of things at the last minute. I will read through the discussions tomorrow once again to make sure I put comments or added to the discussion.

Looking forward to Week 3.   What is awaiting us?

Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web

University of Oregon

Week 1- My Reflections

Here is my first blog, I will share my reflections here and will look forward to my friends’ comments. I have never created a blog and neither did I use Nicenet, so, these are 2 main things I have learnt in week 1. Nicenet is more like a forum which I did before on different projects, so, when I logged in I could navigate quite easily. It was different with creating a blog since it was something completely new to me and I turned to the instructions every now and again. They were very helpful and here I am with my reflections. I am sure most of my students are very well familiar with blogging and can easily create them but the fact is blogging is not widely spread in my country as a teaching tool as it is in Argentina according to Elena Rivas.

I am sure we shall come to it but a bit later. I think, for the beginning I’ll start the idea of using the blog for the English department in my school. To keep it active and lasting I need to learn all the details to be able to pass it down to my colleagues.

The traditional art of Azerbaijani carpet weaving

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