Week 10 - The Summer Ends

It's hard to believe our course has come to an end! The summer has flown by with engaging discussion, challenging tasks, new friendships, and lots of interesting ideas to chew on.

I can only echo Victoria's sentiments on Nicenet - I too am grateful to the US Dept of State and embassy officials for making this opportunity available to us. This has been my first online course, and I hope it is the first of many. I've learned that technology helps build connections - between learners, between learners and the world outside the classroom, between learners and teachers, between teachers and teachers, and between all of us as "netizens" of the world.

I've appreciated the fact that the course has served as a role model for online communication. From the beginning with the blog introductions and the discussion of rules, to the end with the posting of the projects and the summary discussion, we have experienced the experience we will be trying to recreate in some way for our students. The organization and flow of the course worked well for me and I appreciated the mix of theoretical readings and practical online resources, as well as the tasks we had to accomplish each week. This kind of "learning by doing" approach made the course interactive and learner-centered.

What advice would I give to my colleagues about technology? Well, I would encourage them to view the technology we have available to us as an opportunity. Technology can create a more learner-centered environment and one in which there is more communication and cooperation, not less. Technology can save time in lesson preparation, materials development and student assessment. Technology can also help us devise more diverse, creative and active lessons.

Based on my experience with the summer action research project, I would advise my colleagues to think of a problem they have when teaching, or a restriction they experience when working with the curriculum. Then consider how technology might fix the problem or overcome the restriction. The true potential of technology cannot be discovered when it is used for an add-on activity or as a time-filler. If teachers start small and incorporate one technologically-based innovation to their course that will increase learner engagement, autonomy or use of HOT skills, then they can build on that experience. Over time, we will all be using technology as a natural part of teaching/learning because it supports what we know is good practice.

As for us, we are very lucky we have had the chance to experiment with technology - either this term or in the next term. We are also lucky that the course materials will stay online after the course ends. We will be able to review the material and posts from the summer and upload new material to share with one another as well. It will be great to see progress reports from those teachers who move from the research plan to research action stage of their projects in the next semester. I hope we will continue to stay in touch and support one another as we explore new ways to engage our learners and ourselves.

Thank you Deborah and all the wonderful teachers taking this course! It's been fantastic working with and learning from all of you.

Week 9 Learning Styles

Learning styles and Multiple intelligences are interrelated. It is easy to assume that what worked for us as learners, will work for others. It's helpful to consider other ways of learning and how to acknowledge that there are many pathways to the goal of language acquisition. I think variety is the key.

Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligence is only about 25 years old but it has permeated education, psychology and career coaching. For example, the government of Canada has an MI quiz on its website for job seekers. Including these ideas help enrich the learning environments we create as teachers. Technology helps us do that, particularly the wealth of material available over the Internet.

For an opposing view on learning styles, please view this youtube video by Daniel Willingham. He argues that learning styles do not exist. For example, some information is most easily relayed visually whereas other information is most easily relayed in an auditory manner. Any teacher will teach in a variety of ways for this reason and any learner will learn in a variety of ways for this reason. I'm not sure how to react to this argument. I'd have to do more analysis of how the brain works and how I think this would impact my teaching.

For me, the most useful aspect to come out of this week's readings and reflections has been that we as teachers can use technology in many ways to expand our ideas of how to teach and how to learn. The ideas posted on nicenet as well as the ideas discussed in the readings have helped me consider new ways to introduce language to students, help them work with language, and help them create with the new language.

This also relates to my final project for the course. I introduced wikis to help with student writing and understanding of reading material, and we used a camera to record student presentations. I was able to use technology to expand and enliven our current curriculum requirements of writing, reading and speaking. The feedback from the students has been positive. My goal with the technology was to use it to increase student participation in writing and reading discussions, and to help them become more autonomous learners by enabling them to assess their own presentations. These goals were met. Did the technology address different learning styles? I'm not sure. But I do believe the technology added a new dimension to the class tasks and enabled the learners to interact with one another more fully and become a little bit more autonomous. Therefore, I think the project was a success.

Janet

Dear Saulat,

Thank you for the comment on my blog. Using wikis is not hard once you get used to it. For me, the best way to learn is through trial and error. Experimenting with a friend or colleague will help you get familiar with things and then you can delete that wiki when you are done.

You can read my project report on the class wiki for the details, but overall using a wiki as a writing space for the class has been a positive experience and has really improved the students' editing skills in particular. I would just say that if more than one writer is updating a page, it must be saved often in order to not lose any work. But really, wikispaces is very elegant in its simplicity!

Unfortunately I can't include you as a member of the class wiki because some students have said some personal things about the stories we have been reading. I need to protect their privacy. However, I'm sure you will feel comfortable with wikis if you set one up yourself and try out a few functions.

Good Luck with wikis!

Janet

Week 8 Teacher Resources Online

This week was very full with work, family and of course, the course. I'm exhausted!

I've been introducing two new types of technology into my classroom for the course project. On Friday, we had a trial run with the camera in the class. On Monday and Tuesday, if all goes well, we will record the student presentations and they will be viewing them and uploading them to Vimeo on Wednesday. I'm hoping the technology will help the learners identify their strengths and weaknesses. I'm also hoping that having a record of their presentation will motivate them and make them feel proud of themselves. This will help them when they have to do their presentations in the next EAP level. I have to be careful when operating the camera that I keep the students in frame, but at the same time not move the camera too much. I may need to work on my technical skills before the next term starts.

The students have been using a class wiki. This is the second new technology I've brought into the classroom. They have been using the website to ask questions, answer questions, and post comments on the short stories and academic articles we have been reading in class. They have also been using it to compose and edit essays. There have been two surprises. The first one is that the students need more direction than I had thought. They are questioning if they are writing too much or too little and if their comments are clear. Next term, the wiki will be introduced more slowly and with more scaffolding from me. I'll have a trial run with the wiki just like I did with the camera. I'll give the students immediate feedback. The second surprise is that the wiki is really helping the shyer students speak up more in class. By writing comments on the class wiki before the in-class discussion, they are beginning to be more confident about speaking and explaining their opinions. Their contributions in the class wiki and in the discussions help all the students gain a fuller understanding of the text and helps them all "negotiate meaning".

The course this week looked at different ways to create a class site. I have a blog here and I've already started a class wiki this summer. Therefore, I decided to set up a Nicenet site for one of the classes that starts in the fall. This is an ESL class that only meets twice a week. I think the Nicenet site will be a great way for the learners to keep in touch with each other throughout the week. By commenting at times during the week, the connections between the learners will grow. By giving specific homework assignments, I can help with the continuity of learning. I can also list additional discussion topics and links to enable students to work at their own level and pace. I'm excited about the opportunities available through Nicenet. The most important advantage that I see is that it will help the learners connect with one another and they will learn to learn from each other. I surveyed my learners this term and they all had computers at home with an Internet connection, so I expect that all the students will be able to take equal advantage of the Nicenet site.

It was interesting to see all of us taking the Oregon course reacted a little differently to the websites Deborah has suggested we try out this week. For example, some of us, including me, found Hot Potatoes to be very user-friendly, whereas others found it to be difficult to use. I found Easy Test Maker to be frustrating. I'll have to try it again at another time because this week, it just didn't seem to work for me. However, others loved this site.

This parallels how our students may feel. What we think may be an easy technology for them to use, may in fact, be frustrating and difficult for them. I thought using wikispaces as a discussion board would be a cinch, but some of my students were hesitant about it at first. Of course, the reverse may be true, like our Nicenet discussion on learner autonomy when several teachers discussed the possiblity of using cell phones in class as a learner aid. I would have to ask my students to teach me how to use these functions!

There are so many online exercise makers available and as Bella noted, one site leads into another site which leads into another site, etc. I was a little overwhelmed this week trying to figure out effective and creative exercises for my classes. For example, Arjana's blog includes an exercise from www.eslvideo.com and Camelia's blog has an avatar from www.voki.com.
These are fun and motivating, but I just couldn't think of how I could use these for my classes. I need to create exercises that connect to the coursework and build on it. I think that with practice and time, I can think of great activities using all the teacher resources websites we have been introduced to this week, exercises that will be motivating for the learners and really helpful for them as well. However, for me to put in the time to create these activities, I need to know they really will be useful, especially for adult learners. I think planning is essential. However, I've been inspired by the work of my colleagues in the course and I look forward to having these tools available to me next term and beyond.

Week 7 - Learner Autonomy and the One Computer classroom

As I stated in my nicenet posting, I am very enthusiastic about promoting learner autonomy. It is not always easy as we need to envision new roles for ourselves as teachers and encourage the students to envision themselves as active, not passive learners. I sometimes work with adult students who have not taken classes in many years and it is interesting (and a bit discouraging) to see knowledgeable active professionals revert to passivity when in a classroom with a teacher. As a teacher, I try to promote continuous language learning; it is not something that is only learned and used in the classroom. In fact, the classroom is a kind of lab for safe experimentation before really putting the language into practice outside the classroom. This is where "the rubber meets the road". If it's a successful interaction, the learner gets an authentic feeling of satisfaction. If it's an unsuccessful interaction, the learner realizes it and returns to the classroom with a specific need that the teacher can help the learner address. Unfortunately, sometimes there is a great length of time between the classroom experimentation phase and the real experience phase.

Learning a language is a fascinating intellectual undertaking, but ultimately the point is communication. Fortunately, with modern technology, the opportunities for communication have multiplied beyond what could be imagined even 10 years ago. When I began teaching, I didn't have a computer in class although I have always had a computer in the office. Now, I usually have a computer in class that is connected to an overhead projector and is connected to the Internet. It was great to read about so many interesting ways to use a computer in the classroom by reading the posts and lesson plans this week. I especially appreciated Arjana's use of Skype to connect learners throughout the world in a communicative lesson and Camelia's lesson which looked at the Prince Charles and Princess Diana story and compared it to the fairy tale paradigm. I'm already thinking about how I can use these ideas in the fall semester.

I'm hoping that my summer technology project will help the learners develop their cognitive and especially their metacognitive learning strategies. Liliya noted in one of her posts that her students had difficulty with self-reflection. I am concerned that my students as well may find this skill a challenging one. Perhaps it comes from a sense of powerlessness. If students don't feel they really have the power to control their learning, there is not much point in doing self-reflection activities. As learners become more active and are given more personal choice and responsibility, they may see that they do have more control over their learning and that they really can achieve their goals. However, there needs to be a lot of scaffolding and small tasks along the way before students are really capable of setting goals and monitoring their own progress.

The article written by Dimitrios Thanasoulas entitled What is Learner Autonomy and How can it be Fostered? is one that I return to again because it is a clear summary of the subject and cites many good sources. Another article I found this week is a 2009 article written by Bonny Norton entitled Language and Identity. In the article, the author discusses the notion of personal motivation and includes the concepts of learner identity and imagined communities. Learners are not just individuals, they are members of communities. When we learn a new language, we can also learn a new identity or expand the identity we have. Sometimes teachers, classmates, or the greater community impose an identity on the learner that is not wanted. This relates to the issue of power which is a key component of critical theory, which is mentioned in Thanasoulas' article. Language is power and whoever controls the language, is powerful. Perhaps in the 21st century, we can also say that technology is power. Besides giving students access to the power of language, we may also need to give students access to the power of technology as well.

I'm looking forward to more work on my project and to the work we do in Week 8!

Janet

Summer Project

I've begun work on my summer project. One new way I'm using technology is the digital recording of student presentations. I've done a trial recording with the camera that we have at our school. The camera comes with a microphone, but I'm looking into whether we can get a clip-on microphone to better capture voices. I've signed onto the website www.vimeo.com. Students will also sign onto the website in order to save their presentations, edit them, and upload them onto the web.

The students already have a rubric for the presentation itself. This is the one I will use to record their presentation mark. However, I've decided I will also create a rubric for their viewing of their presentations. They will decide on three (?) personal goals before the presentation and then view the presentation to see how well they met those goals. There will also be a section for them to think about what they learned and what their goals will be for the next presentation in the fall. And a section for feedback from a peer.

Besides that, I'm going to use wikispaces as a space for students to discuss the readings in August, and to work on a group essay and peer edits. I've started the wiki and the students can join on Tuesday. We have a class in the computer lab this upcoming week and I'm planning to use that time to get us started using wikispaces.

My goal is that by viewing themselves giving the presentations, the students will have a better awareness of their strengths and weaknesses and a greater feeling of pride of accomplishment. By using wikispaces, I'm hoping to increase student collaboration, especially between the stronger and weaker writers. I also think that the students will better understand the readings if they have a forum to discuss them outside of class time.

Student-centered learning and interactive PowerPoint

This week we learned about various techniques to make the learning process more student-centered and more engaging for the students. The techniques were specifically written for large classes, but can be easily applied to smaller classes as well. One site had a list of 36 interactive activities. These ideas are written with lecturers in mind, but it helps all ESL/EFL teachers to be reminded of how many ways there are to engage students. All of us can get stuck in a rut. That's why a course such as this is so helpful; we are able to share ideas with one another and think about teaching in a different way. I'm sure that our teaching will change for the better.

The University of Oregon site on Using Technology in Teaching Large Classes has many links to lots of information about keeping students engaged. I think one of the advantages of large classes is that the students have so many colleagues to learn from (similar to our class!). As a teacher, I can make the class more student-centered and more effective by providing opportunities for students to learn from each other - by doing predicting activities together, playing a game or writing a story together, or by doing summarizing activities together. Students can do many pair/group activities and have different partners each time. This is a definite advantage that large classes have over small classes.

The other focus of this week was interactive PowerPoint. It was very useful to go through the steps of creating an interactive PowerPoint presentation and of course, to view the presentations created by my colleagues. By becoming students and going through the learning process ourselves, we can empathize more readily with our students who are also trying new things, stumbling, getting frustrated, trying again, and feeling the personal satisfaction that comes from acquiring new skills. We can talk about the pleasure of learning and the importance of life-long learning from a personal standpoint, not just a theoretical one. Learning is part of living.

Deborah's PowerPoint presentation about interactive PowerPoint presentations was an excellent introduction to the methods that are available to teachers. I never knew a presentation could be so interactive. My goal is to use a few of these techniques in every presentation I create from now on. I created a PowerPoint presentation, but I have not created a jeopardy game or interactive story yet. My colleagues have been using these tools though, and I think they will work well. Luiza mentioned that students may not see the benefit of just playing games and I think this is true. Any new technology or task we introduce we have to "sell" to the students by explicitly saying how it will help their language learning. If we can't do that, then there is no reason to use this technology or task at all.

Once again this week I've learned a lot by going through the readings. Then I learned more by doing the assigned task - creating an interactive PowerPoint presentation. Finally, I learned even more by reading the comments and posts of my colleagues who have helped me think about the material in a different way and have sometimes challenged my initial views. It's been a very productive week for me. Thank you Deborah and everyone!

Janet

Rubric and Webquest

This is the rubric that I wrote this week. A well-designed rubric will help students understand what the learning goals of a task are and what they should walk away from the project being able to do. The students will see the goals as achievable and desirable and this will motivate them as they complete the task.

This is the webquest that I wrote this week. I started another one, but abandoned it as unworkable. At first I thought building a webquest would be easy, but the more webquests I read, the more intimidated I became. It would take a lot of time to produce one that I really think can stand on its own and still be part of our overall curriculum.

For me, I always think of a student asking, "Why should I do this?" "Why do I need to know this?" As a teacher, if I can't give good answers to these questions, I shouldn't be asking the students to do this particular task or learn this particular material. I think there are short-term goal answers and long-term goal answers to these questions.

For example, I don't know how to create hyperlinks. I just copy and paste from a website. If I was away from a computer, I couldn't tell you how to do it. Yet, I know all I need to know, at least at this point. I've learned what I need to know. This is how many of my adult students think. They are motivated to learn what they need to know to accomplish what they want to do. As a teacher, I need to tap into that motivation and use it in my classes. I think a well-built webquest can do that.

Janet

Week 5 - Project Based Learning and Webquests

This week we read about using projects as a teaching/learning method rather than the traditional discrete, skill-based lessons. This is how we learned to teach in my master's program, so this idea is not new to me. Unfortunately, this method is not used enough in my opinion, especially in the realm of adult education. Perhaps this will change as more children use PBL at school. I went on at some length about this in a nicenet post, so I'll try to say something new here on my blog.

Susan Gaer's article "Less Teaching and More Learning" was particularly interesting to me because she was working with adult immigrants, just like I do. She mentioned that working on a project helped learners build a sense of community and I appreciated that because people who enter a new country or new culture often feel isolated. I also noticed that when her students were preparing to share their stories with the 8th graders, they modified their storytelling style. They added visuals to engage the audience. This is an example of the meaningful communication that PBL helps to create. The ESL students really wanted to communicate with their audience, so they used their cultural stories and told them in the cultural style of their audience. This kind of adaptation is HOT skills in practice.

Two other points from her article were relevant to my situation. She states that the project helped her students be in control, as they had been in their native countries. It's important when teaching adults to remember that they are in fact, adults. We need to access the skills they have and help them use them in an English-speaking environment. PBL is well-suited to this and the added technology element can make it easier for the teacher to find and build materials and more interesting for students to engage with those materials. Also, she states that projects that are 4 to 6 weeks long are best. This can be achieved with some of my classes, although not all.

I really like the idea of webquests, which I hadn't heard about before. I'm trying to develop one and I find the hints in A Road Map for Designing Webquests and Internet Expeditions to be very helpful. It is a bit daunting though because the material has to fit in with the existing curriculum, engage the learners, be understandable and be manageable. I think I'll get better at it with more practice.

The sites with links to good examples of webquests I found at Webquest Design Patterns and
the interview with Bernie Dodge. (Beware of pop-ups if you click on this site.)

It's too late in the summer semester for me to introduce PBL into the class and I'm not yet confident about my ability to build a reasonable webquest to use this learning method in class. My plan is to put webquests in the fall and winter semesters as supplemental options for the students to try. This way I can get some student feedback and then decide if I should introduce it into the syllabus in the spring.

Now I have to get back to the traditional world of teaching this weekend and mark essays!

Janet

Week 4

This week I learned a lot about how to integrate technology into the classroom. By reading lesson plans written by my colleagues and by writing one myself, I thought about some of the isssues raised by the use of technology and I considered how to make it part of the curriculum, rather than just an add-on after the fact.

I found it interesting that the writing article mentioned the use of the Amnesty International website as part of a lesson on writing a formal letter. I did a similar lesson when I was working in a university in Asia. As it turns out, the parents of a few students thought the writing was too political and might somehow place their children in danger or put them on some kind of a list. The fact that the students were writing to real people and were writing for a real purpose to prompt a real change in the world was viewed by the instructors (and most of the students) as a positive, but a few parents held a different view. In the end, all the students wrote letters and all the students decided for themselves whether or not to actually send the letters. This may relate to Paulo Freire's ideas in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and his other work. Once learners begin to participate in the culture outside the classroom rather than just observe it from within the classroom, people take really take notice.

This week I investigated a lot of websites! Focusing on reading, writing and vocabulary was helpful this week but it is a kind of artificial split from listening and speaking. For example, the listening part of my classes is connected to writing because the students often take notes while listening.

I found one website that is very hepful for note-taking and another one that is very helpful for building academic vocabulary. These are parts of a great website which helps learners with all academic skills: English for Academic Purposes. I was very pleased with the lay-out and content of this site and I will be suggesting that my EAP students and TOEFL-prep students use it. I plan to incorporate this material into my lessons as well.

Another great site for building vocabulary is the Academic Word List. It not only lists the words, but also has some exercises the students could use to help understand the words. Building one's vocabulary is important for all skill areas and is really motivating as well.

One really fun website is http://www.freerice.com/ This is an interactive vocabulary test that students can play and by getting the answer correct, they donate a few grains of rice to the UN food program.

Another website I like had Fairytales with annotations. Fairytales are accessible for all kinds of learners and with annotations, it is easier for the readers to understand the vocabulary, which can be old-fashioned.

Finally, I found two other websites that are good for learning tasks related to reading/writing.

One is about extraordinary people who have done heroic things, and another is about "happy news" - currect events that are positive, not negative. This type of material is motivating for learners and teachers. Sometimes in our quest to find up-to-date and relevant source material, we end up introducing some depressing subjects into class. It helps to be able to provide material that is inspirational and fun as well.

Learning should be goal-oriented and learners should be able to identify clear results. However, we need to recognize the social and psychological motivators that will help students want to learn. Some students have a kind of mental block when it comes to reading and writing in particular. They see this as difficult in L1, never mind L2 (or L3 or L4...). I think technology can help by providing materials that appeal to these students, by helping them focus on communicating their ideas and by helping them learn about and connect to the real world around them. Sometimes authentic materials are the best option, other times I think adapted materials may work better. If I recall Vygotsky's point about the zone of proximal development (L + 1) correctly, materials with language too removed from the learners' starting point is not helpful. We need to use materials that challenge, but not overwhelm the students and we need to scaffold the materials so that students can understand.

Two readings about Technology and Education

This article by Benedict Carey and John Markoff discusses the use of robots in classes with children, including language classes. Will robots be our new teaching assistants?

"Students, meet your new teacher, Mr. Robot"

Another article by Randall Stross discusses the surprising educational outcomes related to home computer use by underpriveleged children. The technology hindered rather than helped in their education.

"Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality"

Week 3

Learning Styles

Different tasks and readings this week got me thinking about different learning styles. Any class will have students with a variety of learning styles and we as teachers need to recognize this and use a variety of approaches and materials in order to catch the interest of everyone and help everyone learn. One student may be captivated by the mechanical visualization of English language phonemes and want to work on pronunciation alone in a computer lab. Another student may be interested in learning English-language songs. Another student may want to work with other students to create a video about a certain course theme. Another student may enjoy daily face-to-face classroom discussion. I think variety, with a pedagogical purpose, is the key.

I always think of myself as a verbal person who reads a lot. However, when learning a new skill, I really just like to dive right in and learn while doing. This is what happened with the delicious website. I just don't get along with written forms and instructions. Like everyone else, I have a preferred learning style.

www.delicious.com

At first, I thought I wouldn't use the delicious site too much. However, I now see how much time it will save me, how practical it is and how useful it is for sharing sites with others. I don't know why I never discovered this before now. No more scribbling down website addresses! Thank you Deborah!

Listening

The major focus of this week was Aural/Oral skills in language learning and teaching. In my EAP class, we divide class time between the skills. Listening/Speaking (including Pronunciation) account for 19% of class time and 19% of the final course grade. There is another type of course students can take where these skills are given twice as much emphasis - but I don't teach that course. On the other hand, I do teach a part-time course that is all Listening/Speaking/Pronunciation. We do not assess Reading or Writing in that course. Therefore I think we are paying attention to listening skills in a specific way, not just expecting students to develop these skills on their own, as Lindsay Miller suggests in her article.

What wasn't mentioned in that article and what I like to stress in my course, is the importance of active listening in discussions. Active listening skills are essential for being perceived as a good communicator in the English language context. I have had students who believe they should score highly in discussions when they talk a lot, dominate the group, and fail to respond to others or connect their ideas to the comments of others. I tell them that listening is more important than speaking in a discussion and that by talking less and listening more, they will actually become better communicators.

Another point that occurred to me after reading Miller's article is about the use of Voice of America (VOA) in our classrooms. Miller suggests its use without acknowledging that it is produced by the American government for overseas listeners/viewers and that it "will present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and will also present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies" as stated on its website. I have no problem using VOA in language lessons but I do think when we use resources, we need to make it clear to the learners who is producing the material and what their objectives are in producing this material, especially when we use news programs.

Another point about VOA is its use of Special English, or English that is unnaturally slow. This is modified English, not authentic English. Modified English is used in various ESL/EFL listening websites and is helpful for beginner and intermediate students. However, modified English needs to be identified as such to the learners. It's a stepping stone to authentic speech patterns.

A final comment related to Miller's article is on her discussion of material for academic listening. At our institution we use a textbook and CD entitled "Lecture Ready" (Sarosy and Sherak). I find that it does have some false starts, redundancies, and pauses that are more authentic than the academic listening materials Miller may have transcribed in her work. Ironically, however, we do not actually show the videos, some of which are available on youtube. We only listen to the lectures on CD's without the visuals because a committee decided that it is a fairer determination of "listening skills". Now I think that decision could be changed and that including the visual information would make listening practice more realistic and useful by helping students use visual cues to aid understanding.

Pronunciation

Maria Grazia Busa's article, New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation, highlighted the use of CALL to create individualized, safe environments for learners. This brought back memories of myself as a learner of French and Japanese. How I would have loved to have had CALL! The language lab is useful but I did feel self-conscious knowing the teacher was listening in and sometimes the teacher's attempts to help me just confused me further. Also, pronunciation work in class can be time-consuming and less beneficial if some students need more practice whereas others don't. I think the Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) system really is one of the most helpful technological developments in language pedagogy.

The author states that language courses emphasize segmentals over suprasegmentals and I have to admit that I do the same. It's easier to teach segmentals and it's easier for students to recognize and work on segmentals. There are more materials and there is more technological support for work on segmentals. I do include practice with suprasegmentals, but I agree with the author that it is hard to articulate and explain why they are so important. English is a stress-timed language. I can point out patterns, but I can't actually time student utterances with the accuracy of a computer program, nor can I visualize it for the student. That is the benefit of technology. However, who knows when this kind of technology will be available to me as a teacher. In the meantime, I will try to pay more attention to prosody now that I can access research confirming its importance.

Speaking

In Julia Gong's article, The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills, she notes that Web documents can be updated constantly (although links often are abandoned in time), can be accessed repeatedly, and can be individualized. This aids distance learning. At our school, we are trying to incorporate more e-learning with a view to decrease the amount of time learners need to spend in class. This will allow more learners to participate in classes, regardless of work commitments and residence, similar to this course we are now taking. CALL is changing the way students learn and the way teachers teach. Language is moving out of the classroom and back into the real world.

Video conferencing and chat forums are ways in which students can speak with one another and practice their communication skills without having to be in the same room together and without having to come up with an immediate response. I think this is the type of technology that will be used more and more where I work and in other institutions throughout the world. I look forward to the time when we are better able to make connections between cities and between countries.

Critical Thinking

Finally, I read a column in the New York Times by David Brooks making reference to Marshall McLuhan's phrase, "the medium is the message". In the article, Brooks discusses the effect the Internet may have on the way children think and learn. How does the use of technology affect the learning patterns and thinking patterns of our students? Does it have a greater effect than we can predict? I think the jury is still out.

Janet

Reflections on ABCD and Bloom's Taxonomy - Week 2

Elsa said on nicenet that she had had a crazy week. I can only say...me too! One course ended and a new one will begin on Monday. Plus the Canada Day long weekend. Way too much for seven days!


What has affected me the most through this week's readings and tasks?

I found http://www.intute.ac.uk/criticalthinking.html on the web. I'm planning to use it for my classes. It's a very concrete way to look at critical thinking skills.

I really found the web searching task useful. Google is so omnipresent that I often forget there are other options. I realize I should be teaching the use of Boolean operators to my students to help them do their internet searches. Taking the time to do that at the start may save time in the long run. Thank you Deborah for posting the link to your tech tip site.

The Penn State website helped me with the ABCD framework - but unfortunately there are dead links on the site. The issue of describing affective behaviour is important because I think it is almost impossible for these to be observed, at least objectively observed. Therefore, I think it would be easy to ignore affective goals when using this framework. But certainly affective objectives should be part of our lessons.

The Tennessee website and the slide show highlighted for me the fact that objectives should be "observable and assessable". Accountability has become very important on the North American educational scene of late. Every stakeholder needs to be considered and every stakeholder wants observable and assessable results. This affects how curriculum is developed and how lessons are planned and delivered. On the whole, I think it is a positive development. It's the difference between developing activities that you imagine will help the students develop a skill, and observing what the students need, delivering lessons that fill that need, and assessing student skills to measure how well those needs have been met. The basic assessment is "Can the student do this?" not "Does the student know how to do this?" For example, I studied calligraphy and I know how to do it, but I can't actually do it! As my former calligraphy teacher will attest.


Most importantly, I think students benefit when they know their work is building towards goals that will actually change their lives in a real way.

The reworking of Bloom's taxonomy for the digital age was new to me. Of course it makes sense that our students need to be techno-literate and that we need to keep up with them.

What struck me the most was that searching is listed as a skill under "Remembering". Working with EAP students, I know that it is a very important skill. Validating is also listed as a skill under "Analysing". I agree that students need to find and analyse their sources, especially the sources they find on the web.

Another point that came up is the importance of collaborating and networking as skills under "Evaluating". The digital additions to the taxonomy involve creating links with others. This was one of the earlier promises of the web. The social aspect died down as the information glut on the web held everyone's attention. However, it seems to me that the social aspect is where the advances are being made lately. I find this enormously encouraging as an ESL educator, a lifelong student and a citizen of the world. The more we can connect with each other, the better as far as I'm concerned. To quote from the site:

"Collaboration is an increasing feature of education. In a world increasingly focused on communication, collaboration leading to collective intelligence is a key aspect." (p. 6)

Finally, hacking is listed as a skill under "Applying". I find this bizarre since all my associations of hacking are with young counter-culture techno-wizards illegally getting into computers and messing things up.

Collaboration comes up again and again in the longer reading for this week, Taxonomy for the Technology Domain. This reading really brought up specific issues of how to use technology wisely in class. One of the important points for my classes, particularly the one specifically for immigrants, is that instructors can in no way discriminate based on access to technology or technological know how. The class experience at the end of the day must be equal for a 65 year old who doesn't have a computer and never uses one, and an 18 year old who has an i phone and twitters constantly.

Personally, I feel my skill level has stalled at "Creating". I would really love to use technology creatively within our language classes. For example, I would love to be able to film class presentations and post them on a website for other students to comment on. I'm not sure if this is a reasonable project for this course, but I am hoping to try it this summer.

Past Experience with Blogs

Azhar asked how I had used blogs in the past. I really used them as a way to spark students' interest in writing. In EAP classes, the writing format, requirements, and topics are often pre-determined. Students are not given a lot of leeway. By using blogs, I hoped to get students really interested in writing by writing about what they wanted in a way that was meaningful to them.

Another really useful aspect of blogging is the idea of audience. Students wrote to each other and to the web audience. They knew people were reading their work by the comments left by classmates and others. This made writing meaningful communication, not just something they had to do because the teacher made them.

As an aside, some comments proved to be quite inappropriate. This proved useful however, as we discussed maintaining privacy online and how to deal with obnoxious comments. There was even one case where I was concerned a student may be getting approached by an online predator. Thankfully she decided to abandon her blog and start another one.

The blogs were very useful, but because I couldn't make them part of the standard curriculum in the next school I worked at, I stopped using them in class. Unless students see that it is valued by the teacher and by the course, they won't take time from their other classwork to do it - and I wouldn't expect them to either.

Larry Ferlazzo's edublog

I was very impressed with this blog.

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org

I have already used some reference material he cited in one of the classes I am teaching.

Introduction

Hello!

I'm Janet, a Canadian ESL instructor. This blog is designed to record my reflections throughout my coursework on the University of Oregon's E-Teacher Scholarship Program's "Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web". Please feel free to add your comments!

I first used blogs in my teaching a number of years ago when blogger.com was the hot new thing. The advantages of blogs were that they were a novelty, they encouraged writing fluency, and they helped students write to an audience other than the teacher. As noted in "Blogging for ELT" http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/blogging-elt , blogs were also helpful in creating a sense of community among the users.

However, blogs were added on as an adjunct to the main coursework. I found reading and commenting on all the student blogs took much longer than I had anticipated. As time passed, the students, who were young adults, became more interested in posting links and photos than actually doing the writing assignments. Now of course we have Facebook and other social networking sites as well as blogs to help students network with others.