Week 6 Using PowerPoint in the Classroom

PowerPoint’s designed as a presentation tool and great for e-learning.  I struggled to get past the PowerPoint look because I usually used the templates.  Essentially the tools create multimedia content regardless of how they’re designed.  The key is to understand what the tools can produce and then figure out different ways to use them.  This helped me get more value out of my applications.  For example, with an application like Quizmaker I focus on the quizzing because that’s what it’s designed to do.  But when I want to build “regular” e-learning, then I have to use something else. Browsing for more possibilities I found that I can do a lot more than quizzes like interactive branched-scenarios which is very interesting and new.  I tried to use PowerPoint to edit my graphics, create illustrations, videos, and Flash movies. With QuickWrite I can reduce the typing time several times and increase the writing accuracy.  The program predicts the word you are typing, using a predefined spelling vocabulary. QuickWrite will provide writing assistance in almost any application whenever you start typing - just a few compatible programs are messaging, web browsing, calendar, phone book, notes and many other. I need more practicing with all this. The key is to understand the tools and what you get.  The day-to-day users are the ones who will come up with the different ways to use the tools.  I made up a very nice Master Class in Cooking Ukrainian Dishes Slideshow Slideshow: TripAdvisor™ TripWow which I enjoy a lot! As to the Power Point- I have to change my Microsoft Office to 2007 or 2010 to create an interactive quiz in Powerpoint which uses some Visual Basic .

Week 5 Creative and Practical.

The week suggested much to think about and try my hand at. It was a bit not as tense as previous weeks. I perceive it is so on two reasons: I got used to intensive reading and became more skilled in fulfilling practical tasks, secondly- this week offered exploring the fields familiar and close to my understanding. Thus, I’ve read the material, created the Rubric ( which I enjoy a lot!), I have sketched my first WebQuest http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=119625  “Healthy Food Project”. Also it became the time to use my knowledge more consciously –I have met my students from the university and we started fulfilling the WebQuest tasks from “To Kill a Mockingbird” http://www.zunal.com/author.php?w=111979 as it happened to be up to the point in accordance with  our university course program. The WebQuest was created  by three Australian teachers  Sue Fearnley, Usha Chambers and Danielle Macpherson, a sophisticated and clever piece of a creative work. At last I browsed through the pages and lists of the WebQuests with clear vision of the tool- very effective for the work in the classroom and beyond, helping students find ways. PBL is what I have been doing  in my classroom for at least 10 last years. Though, it is no news for me I found very well structured articles to logically organize my work and pay more attention to some characteristics I’ve neglected on this or the other reason. Some statements sound not very fair to me in the articles presented by Survival Tips for New Teachers on the NCLRC web site (http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/whatteach/survival.htm ). While speaking about the content

 they claim that working through the curriculum should be a process of discovery for the students, but not for the instructor. I always open new pages together with my students if even the lesson is well prepared and worked out. The vision of those pages may be different for me and them, but students always make the teacher learn and feel amazed. My Delicious page is full of links and needs to be ordered, hopefully soon. I adore reading the posts on the mates’ blogs - tons of hints, creativity and fresh thoughts. Rashid’s Reflections Through Comic Strips are just awesome!

WEEK 4 Reflections on the Endeavour.

This week brought lots of joys and  pleasure from the work done. I have read all the articles suggested  on Reading/writing skill-building websites, practiced in preparing a technology-enhanced lesson plan and realized it conducting a lesson in my Form 10 groups. I find it very handy to use ABCD objective for planning my lessons and use the Lesson Plan with Technology Template for writing my Lessons plans. On the web sites suggested for browsing there are many excellent collections of content-rich sites on the Internet. I've included my favorites to my Delicious page which I enjoy so much! I am sure all the pages can be used by my students who want to learn about a particular topic. I shared them with my colleagues and pre-teachers from the university.  They all showed great interest to use Web resources to supplement classroom lessons and were eager to see how to integrate Web resources into their teaching. I got very useful hints and ideas on teaching from the posts on Nicenet which I always read with interest. I thank my e-Teaching colleagues for their generous reflections on the blogs. I brought my knowledge to system having read the articles about using CALL in writing and reading activities. My students’ groups’ blogs become the place for  Real writing interaction: the problem might be for students without computers to have the letter typed, but  we solved the problem by arranging the computer lab for self-access after classes and  by having some more computer-advanced students help the less skilled, in this way adding the collaborative element. I expect that comments and letters sent to my students may lead to close cooperation and real friendship, and certainly they increase students' cultural awareness and teach them how to appreciate different cultures.

Week 3 A Rewarding Work.

This week brought me much pleasure with reading and web searching. I am happy to “ tame” my Delicious page and organize the link ( not so well as I would love, but I am on the way). I agree with Garri that NiceNet discussions are becoming more rich and resourceful, with in-depth ideas shared by many of us. I enjoyed the discussion posts and saved a lot of useful links of great web resources many of which I may not ever come across. I analyzed more closely my project plan thanks to reading Final Reports of the former program participants. I am happy blogging and have nice hints from others. Dragana shared SEETA web which I was able to visit as a guest and glanced at some pages for visitors. I loved watching  Daisy and Drago, a short cartoon which was created and dubbed by  six year old children.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6109028310424842448   It’s amazing how creative the teachers is and how well the children’s voices are recorded! A good example for small children in teaching them pronunciation! and creativity. I would be happy to learn this technology, maybe I will one day. I came across a very nice set of videos More Travel Videos and think about drama activities for my 10 form students “ Pack a small suitcase efficiently so that you make the most of your carry-on luggage's capacities”, “Know Airline Restrictions Before You Pack a Small Suitcase”. Teaching materials: using literature in the EFL/ ESL classroom  (SEETA web site) offer a deeper understanding of a country, view a literary text as a product and the cultural model. Very often literature is treated as a source of information about the target culture. It is the most traditional approach, often used in university courses on literature. The cultural model will examine the social, political and historical background to a text, literary movements and genres. There are nice answers to some questions facing the teachers: Is this piece of literature something that could be relevant to the learners? Preparing to read  some activities include : have students read each other the poem aloud at the same time, checking for each other’s pronunciation and rhythm. Ask students to write or discuss the possible story behind the poem. Who was it for? What led to the writing of this poem? Ask students to improvise a role play between two characters in the book, etc.

It was not easy to cope with all tasks planned for us for this week but the work is rewarding.

Week 3 Does it Matter How Well We Pronounce the Sounds?

If we keep in mind the development of writing we never should neglect pronunciation of the words. It’s a common knowledge phenomenon that many of the learners misspell the words as they write them the way they hear or pronounce them.  Very often my students ask me about the importance of pronunciation of the words the way the native speakers do. They recognize that mostly without living in a country where English is a mother tongue you may never talk like them. Of course you will always consider the peculiarities of pronunciation in the system of the mother tongues (some sounds may be absent in the sound system of the language), but the matter is that what we call “inner” skills while speaking are very important. “Inner” speaking implies the movements of the facial and mouth/throat muscles while speaking. If they are trained correctly it doesn’t matter much what quality of the sounds a person produces - it will be close to the pattern, recognizable and understandable. In this case the spelling will be better as well. In relation to articulation sounds and words in the target language video clips or animation of the speaker’s mouth in motion during the pronunciation of sounds and words are very effective as they visualize the process and the learner can easily follow the pattern. It would be nice to have a CALL  software as I’d prefer it to very good quality videos, one of them    (http://www.howcast.com/videos/487785-English-Pronunciation-Sh-vs-Ch-Sounds by Megan Brach in which people train pronunciation. Psychologically for adults in our country ethically it’s more preferable to follow the digitalized example than to watch the mouth of a person.

Week 2 Feeling More Confident

Two weeks past and I am amazed how much better I am able to organize my work in the class with blogging. My first steps I made last year and the idea seemed very vague and uncertain. This semester in two weeks with our program I have created my two blogs for school students and university correspondent course. They are not ideal (!), far from what I 'd love to have but at least I wrote the A BCD objective for each course, I stated the task and joined the students blogs in a net.

The starting point is here!

In two weeks my university students will come to their autumn session but we have started some blogging already. During our lessons I will be able to hear more from their experience with blog creating and web searching and will teach those who can’t join in on different reasons. I am happy I can do that now for them, as I am able to work with this technology myself.

Another great event related to what we are doing in our program and which  I’d love to share was the first Webinar within the course entitled Shaping the Way We Teach English offered by the Office of English Language Programs, U.S. Embassy, Ukraine. Exploiting Literature in Project Based Learning was the subject of the presentation for the worldwide teachers audience. I was so happy to see Garri, Bin Li on the website! It’s true that e-Teaching is forming a very friendly educational community and I feel I am the part of it. You can find nice tips on project based learning/teaching on the web site http://shapingenglish.ning.com

WizIQ  is of great interest for me and I hope we shall learn more related issues while in the program.

Week 2 Reflection on the Findings

This part of the week has brought many new findings and emotions. I tried several new tools for searching the information. Even more I got from reading the other participants’ experience share- that’s a great idea to have a Nicenet for this purpose. It would take me long enough to come to many of the mentioned in the posts results. Thanks to our discussion I can have them right now. So, I tried the recommended sites and techniques to improve my skills in search for the links I need. The other great thing during these days was to discover the ABCD method of writing objectives, which wasn’t new to me but it was nice to practice it again. It was very helpful to have the feedback from my students having filled out the Survey on independent learning styles. Especially I got interested in Bloom’s  digital taxonomy map. Being well acquainted with it before and having used it not once, I opened it anew as applied to digital. New terminology made me search for the definitions and examples. On analyzing some of them and having read more on http://www.techlearning.com/article/blooms-taxonomy-blooms-digitally/44988

I have now more clear understanding of differences which should be considered while teaching writing in blogs. New tools bring fresh understanding of the approaches  to be used and the peculiarities of the style and  e- written language itself.

I am sure the rest of the week will be in no way less interesting and fruitful.