Using technology to become a better teacher
This week was another very fruitful week in terms of learning new things. However, on the teaching front and using technology there was some disappointment for me.
What I did.
The heading defines what I did during the third week of my course in webskills. Not only did I learn to use some of the tools which were a requirement of the course, I managed to pass it on to the people for the benefit of whom I am doing the course.
I shared most of my learnings with my PGDTE (Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching of English) students. Also, as suggested by Courtney, I showed my BA Semester V students the film "Freedom Writers" that deals with the challenges of teaching and becoming a better teacher. As most of the students who come to The EFL University to do B.A. (Hons.) intend to become teachers of English.
With BA Semester-I, I put up an exercise on the poems I taught them.
What went wrong.
Despite asking my students to contribute to the discussion on my blog, as of today, I am unable to see the post of even a single student. The 'fault' lies totally with me. I think that I have not been able to inspire them or motivate them properly. Though in one of the advantages of blogging, I had read that even those students who do not speak out in the classroom do well on blogs.
May be, I have not got the hang of it or they do not see it as very exciting. We do have a computer lab which opens from 8 am to 8 pm. Still the students have not responded. Perhaps they have been overwhelmed by the idea of putting their thoughts formally before the whole class and are scared that they will be "judged". I need to get this fear out of their mind as well.
What I learnt.
As a student and as a participant in the course the week was very fulfilling.
1. Project: Step 2: Reading the project reports of eight participants who had done this course earlier was very informative and gave me a sense of direction in which I have to proceed. We were required to skim through the projects of the participants whose posts was there on the course website and pick any one. I decided to go with Aleyda Linares, but saw that Muhamad and Marina had already discussed her in a great detail. Later I picked up Camelia Pagilia and discussed her work with teens in Romania. I was quite satisfied with it until I read Jasmina's discussion of Nadina Nicolici. I went through Nadina's report in detail as well. I must say it was a very well structured and crisp report. The three reports that I read have helped me make up the structure of my prospective report in my mind.
2. Task-Delicious.com: Though most of my colleagues were very quick in making an account and categorizing the websites on it, I faced a tough time. It was rather easy to make the account on it but adding sites was something that took me 4 days to understand. I was ready to give up but suddenly I got it like an epiphany. My account on delicious is http://delicious.com/aashish_pande. Delicious proved to be very helpful in saving the favourite sites on the web.
3. Discussion-Aural/oral Skill Building: This week the discussion was very effective. I contributed a little bit on the forum about CALL for listening, speaking and pronunciation skill; but my knowledge was enhanced a lot by the comments and the posts of my colleagues and Courtney. I got to learn about
a. Dailystep (dailystep.com)
b. Listen and Write (http://www.listen-and-write.com/?gclid=CPzjoYqYhrMCFdG6zAodPhQANw/) Thanks to Jasmina for this link.
c. ESL Lab (http://www.esl-lab.com/) Thanks to Evelyn.
d. Real English
e. Onestopenglish
f. Vocaroo.com which Courtney suggested is a very good device for recording audio online.
g. Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab
h. http://www.visuwords.com/
i. http://www.wordle.net/
j. Courtney also suggested a very good lesson for using drama for speech which is indeed very good-http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/speaking/lesson-plans/pdf-content/speaking-skills-lesson-plans-drama-activities-teachers-notes-intermediate-to-advanced/149726.article
There are many others, which I will mention in a separate post.
4. Reading Assignment: Julia Gong's "The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speeking Skills" and Maria Grazia Busà "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation" were two papers/articles that were to be read. I read both of them and found them very informative. It was sad to read that we are still in the developmental stage in computers as far as speaking skills are concerned. But reading the posts of some of my colleagues and thinking about it, I realized that the articles were dated and everyday technology is making new advancements. CALL is very useful even in speaking skills. I suddenly realized the BPB Multimedia Software which I used to learn French. It had various tools and exercises for improving pronunciation. Busà also mentioned Praat- a software that can be used to see the speech in wave form and how it has been helpful with some of the Italian speakers of English in improving their pronunciation.
5. Pronunciation: Pronunciation was the skill that was focussed this week. There were many links to websites that were posted on the discussion forum. In the two articles, the role of pronunciation being "intelligible" was mentioned. The difference in 1. speech rate 2. pitch range 3. pitch prominence 4. length and location of pauses 5. intonation contours 6. prosodic stress are some of the factors that are responsible for the difference in pronunciation.
Overall it was a very busy week in a positive sense. There was so much to learn, but I have learnt only a little. I would be lying if I claimed that I have checked all the links that my colleagues have posted online. I still need to check some of them, especially the ones that were posted yesterday.
I also need to make changes to my ABCD objectives based on the feedback provided by Courtney.
I am looking forward to the next week eagerly to learn more and to be able to do things in a better way, especially teaching in the classroom and outside it.
Towards the end I would like to say that I am really grateful to Rustam. He is one person whom I can go on thanking each time I use HTML.
Rustam is one person who heard my cry in the wilderness when I cried, "Please help me with HTML!". He tried his best. First he tried to do it on the discussion forum; and when it did not work, he sent me an email, some easy steps on how to insert HTML.
Thank you Rustam. Thanks a lot.
Ashish Pande.
This week was another very fruitful week in terms of learning new things. However, on the teaching front and using technology there was some disappointment for me.
What I did.
The heading defines what I did during the third week of my course in webskills. Not only did I learn to use some of the tools which were a requirement of the course, I managed to pass it on to the people for the benefit of whom I am doing the course.
I shared most of my learnings with my PGDTE (Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching of English) students. Also, as suggested by Courtney, I showed my BA Semester V students the film "Freedom Writers" that deals with the challenges of teaching and becoming a better teacher. As most of the students who come to The EFL University to do B.A. (Hons.) intend to become teachers of English.
With BA Semester-I, I put up an exercise on the poems I taught them.
What went wrong.
Despite asking my students to contribute to the discussion on my blog, as of today, I am unable to see the post of even a single student. The 'fault' lies totally with me. I think that I have not been able to inspire them or motivate them properly. Though in one of the advantages of blogging, I had read that even those students who do not speak out in the classroom do well on blogs.
May be, I have not got the hang of it or they do not see it as very exciting. We do have a computer lab which opens from 8 am to 8 pm. Still the students have not responded. Perhaps they have been overwhelmed by the idea of putting their thoughts formally before the whole class and are scared that they will be "judged". I need to get this fear out of their mind as well.
What I learnt.
As a student and as a participant in the course the week was very fulfilling.
1. Project: Step 2: Reading the project reports of eight participants who had done this course earlier was very informative and gave me a sense of direction in which I have to proceed. We were required to skim through the projects of the participants whose posts was there on the course website and pick any one. I decided to go with Aleyda Linares, but saw that Muhamad and Marina had already discussed her in a great detail. Later I picked up Camelia Pagilia and discussed her work with teens in Romania. I was quite satisfied with it until I read Jasmina's discussion of Nadina Nicolici. I went through Nadina's report in detail as well. I must say it was a very well structured and crisp report. The three reports that I read have helped me make up the structure of my prospective report in my mind.
2. Task-Delicious.com: Though most of my colleagues were very quick in making an account and categorizing the websites on it, I faced a tough time. It was rather easy to make the account on it but adding sites was something that took me 4 days to understand. I was ready to give up but suddenly I got it like an epiphany. My account on delicious is http://delicious.com/aashish_pande. Delicious proved to be very helpful in saving the favourite sites on the web.
3. Discussion-Aural/oral Skill Building: This week the discussion was very effective. I contributed a little bit on the forum about CALL for listening, speaking and pronunciation skill; but my knowledge was enhanced a lot by the comments and the posts of my colleagues and Courtney. I got to learn about
a. Dailystep (dailystep.com)
b. Listen and Write (http://www.listen-and-write.com/?gclid=CPzjoYqYhrMCFdG6zAodPhQANw/) Thanks to Jasmina for this link.
c. ESL Lab (http://www.esl-lab.com/) Thanks to Evelyn.
d. Real English
e. Onestopenglish
f. Vocaroo.com which Courtney suggested is a very good device for recording audio online.
g. Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab
h. http://www.visuwords.com/
i. http://www.wordle.net/
j. Courtney also suggested a very good lesson for using drama for speech which is indeed very good-http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/speaking/lesson-plans/pdf-content/speaking-skills-lesson-plans-drama-activities-teachers-notes-intermediate-to-advanced/149726.article
There are many others, which I will mention in a separate post.
4. Reading Assignment: Julia Gong's "The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speeking Skills" and Maria Grazia Busà "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation" were two papers/articles that were to be read. I read both of them and found them very informative. It was sad to read that we are still in the developmental stage in computers as far as speaking skills are concerned. But reading the posts of some of my colleagues and thinking about it, I realized that the articles were dated and everyday technology is making new advancements. CALL is very useful even in speaking skills. I suddenly realized the BPB Multimedia Software which I used to learn French. It had various tools and exercises for improving pronunciation. Busà also mentioned Praat- a software that can be used to see the speech in wave form and how it has been helpful with some of the Italian speakers of English in improving their pronunciation.
5. Pronunciation: Pronunciation was the skill that was focussed this week. There were many links to websites that were posted on the discussion forum. In the two articles, the role of pronunciation being "intelligible" was mentioned. The difference in 1. speech rate 2. pitch range 3. pitch prominence 4. length and location of pauses 5. intonation contours 6. prosodic stress are some of the factors that are responsible for the difference in pronunciation.
Overall it was a very busy week in a positive sense. There was so much to learn, but I have learnt only a little. I would be lying if I claimed that I have checked all the links that my colleagues have posted online. I still need to check some of them, especially the ones that were posted yesterday.
I also need to make changes to my ABCD objectives based on the feedback provided by Courtney.
I am looking forward to the next week eagerly to learn more and to be able to do things in a better way, especially teaching in the classroom and outside it.
Towards the end I would like to say that I am really grateful to Rustam. He is one person whom I can go on thanking each time I use HTML.
Rustam is one person who heard my cry in the wilderness when I cried, "Please help me with HTML!". He tried his best. First he tried to do it on the discussion forum; and when it did not work, he sent me an email, some easy steps on how to insert HTML.
Thank you Rustam. Thanks a lot.
Hi Ashish,
ReplyDeleteWhat a productive week you had! Not only did you learn from the course, but also through your own trail and error.
Regarding the assignment you gave your students to post a comment to your blog, it could be that they simply do not know how to do it, or like you said, maybe they aren't comfortable doing it. I find that when you ask students to do a task that may be unfamiliar to any of them, it is a good idea to walk them through it. This way everyone is comfortable doing it and you know that they can do it because you instructed them on how to. Sometimes things that are familiar and simple to us are not to our students.
Also, you may consider creating a blog specifically for your class, or a wiki space. Perhaps the thought of all of your colleagues in the webskills course having access to their comments is intimidating to them.
I don't know all the details of your challenge, but I hope that my suggestions are useful.
Courtney
P.S. I'm glad Rustam helped you with the HTML coding. I had posted a few times in the week 2 discussion directing participants to a website that gave instructions on how to do it, but I'm glad Rustam came to your rescue.
Hi Ashish
ReplyDeleteI like your post. It is really complete and make me jealous to what I did. As Courtney said that you have tried trial and error and I think the way of writing the blog must be same as yours.
Regarding with your error in using blog I think that is common thing for the beginner level as us in using blog. The new thing that applied can give such as big challenge in both student and teacher. However, I have to say that you must stay at optimistic thought. I never try applying the blog as you did because of bad internet connection. Perhaps we will have the same problems in applying it as our media in teaching. Nevertheless, I can learn much from your error experience. In this case I have to make sure both of us(Student and teacher) are familiar with the Blog, They have good time to work through it, Make in-depth agreement to have assignment class through it (regarding with the score), and the last is realize well the advantage of Blog before having Blog class future.
I don't think my idea is right. I am going to learn from you more
Best
Muhamad Suhaili
Best Regard
Muhamad Suhaili