Week 4. Rewarding reading, new discoveries and an inspiring planning process!

http://get2running.com/couch-to-5k-week-4/

What a busy week! :) I was thinking that I have really spent so much time on all the activities assigned to us by Sean, nevertheless I must also add that I have enjoyed the learning process so much! I am happy! I am really happy that being a teacher myself, I have an opportunity to be a student one more time! :) The Webskills course teaches me a lot of things, makes me grow as a person, as a teacher, alters my viewpoints and little by little makes me change my standpoint towards using technologies for language teaching and learning. All the tasks make me organize my time and activities and teach me how to learn. Due to this, I can teach my students not only the language, i.e. English but also how important it is to manage our time if we want to take everything what is the best from the situations and opportunities offered to us by life itself, by our teachers and friends. 

http://eternalbooks.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-i-love-to-read.html

The week started with quite a few articles on the topic of Reading, Writing, Grammar and Vocabulary. I have looked through all the offered material however I have eventually chosen to read, analyse and reflect on the articles of Jarek Krajka "Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction", Mei-Ya Liang "Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books" and Andreea I. Constantinescu "Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading". I really liked all three articles and have either reviewed what I had known before or gained lots of useful knowledge in how to apply a certain Web tool for a specific skill, namely reading and writing. I especially liked the idea expressed by A.I. Constantinescu that many people and a lot of teachers actually forget at some point how important vocabulary and its extension is for all the skills, i.e. Writing, Reading, Listening and Speaking. Hence, we cannot claim that certain aspects play a more significant role in comparison with the others.  All the activities described by the authors in the articles are an amazing and vivid example on how technology can help students enhance not only their skills in Reading or Writing but it can also help students become more self-confident, independent, creative learners who analyse, think critically and are able to attain results while working both individually and especially in groups. It teaches them that it is not enough actually to know the words, grammar rules, theory on how to write an essay. Web tools can be a way to inspire students to become inquisitive learners who ask questions, who doubt, who carry out  research and who learn the language in the global, authentic context.

http://edtechreview.in/event/87-webinar/583-selecting-right-web-tools-for-your-classroom

Technology-enhanced lesson plans...mh, it sounded really complicated for me at the beginning and I haven't changed my mind. I have just understood once again how precise, organized you have to be if you want to create a clear lesson plan which would work in any situation and which could be used by any teacher. It is quite tough to write a usual lesson plan, yet it is even more difficult to create a technology-based one. I assume that it is not even that complicated to find the necessary web tools that might look appealing to both students and the teacher (as it was named in one of the articles "a cool web tool") however it is really difficult to find and use the technology that could be an aid to the obejctive of your original class and that could help you achieve the desired results. It took me quite a lot of time to prepare the lesson plan but I do not regret the time spent on this as I consider this assignment as huge experience in the domain of lesson planning where I still feel I need to learn a lot. I liked the planning process and I really wanted to create such a lesson which would give pleasure for my students and where my role as a teacher would be changed into a role of a person who directs the students how to reach point B (the goal of the lesson) from point A (the starting stage in the form of general knowledge of a certain topic) by using web tools, real situations and real people as their educators. I am so happy and maybe it is not nice to say like this, but I am a little bit proud of myself over the desire and the efforts I use to enjoy the fulfillment of this amazing course. :) 

http://depositphotos.com/13982019/stock-photo-3D-Happy-group-of-students.html

The third task of the week was one more step towards our final goal, towards our technology based project. It has made me realise what exactly I would like to focus and work on. I have analysed the needs of my great and motivated students and come up with a few issues they have difficulties with, i.e. Grammar, Listening and Writing. They do have problems with these skills or field of language and need to work more on them. However, we either have no time for this or the material we have does not help us to attain the desired goal. I have eventually come up to the conclusion that I will most probably work on Writing in my project but I also hope that Sean and you my dear groupmates will help me to organize all the thoughts and create the best possible result, which I will implemet in the class and share the results of it with you and my colleagues here in Lithuania.

A great week indeed! :) I am so overwhelmed with pleasant emotions and I am waiting impatiently for Week 5! Every moment of these studies enriches my little, amusing and creative teaching world!

Thank you! :)

Warm wishes to all of you from cold and windy Vilnius! :)

Jurga.

P.S. A nice picture that is related to our week and technologies! :)

http://caroleschatter.blogspot.com/2014/01/Kids-book-how-to-turn-on-cartoon-humor.html

Week 3. Deliciousss...the week of sweet knowledge! :)

http://scls.typepad.com/techbits/2011/03/the-demise-of-delicious.html

What an intensive and productive week is approaching to the end! Am I happy? Yes... I am happy not that it has flown away so fast but I am so delighted when I think of what I have learnt and experienced so far.

The week has been full of reading, researching, sharing, commenting, etc. All this makes the learning process pretty complicated, yet so rewarding. I have found out things I had known before we started the course but at the same time I have learnt a lot of new things. I have started with this amazing word "Delicious", since I have been so much in love with Delicious.com for the last 3 or 4 days. I have never used any sites like this and as an old lady, I used to write down all the addresses of my favourite sites in my notebook. :) Then I used to lose some of them and it seemd to be a vicious circle. However, Delicious.com is a tool which helps us to add the links of all you favourite sites so you would easily find what you need. You can add tags, which will also make your search swift, since you will know that these links are for Listening, the others are for News, Vocabulary, etc. I love the idea that I can follow what my friends or groupmates like and in addittion to all this, you can use the "Discover" link to search for people who have the same interests as you do. I have been telling all my friends, colleagues and students about this site and we will definitely use it with my students in future. It's a great tool to encourage students' independence and resourcefulness.

http://www.keystage2literacy.co.uk/speaking-and-listening.html

The first assignment of Week 3 was based on research, reading, critical thinking and analysis. The week was aimed at analysing Aural/Oral Skill-building websites as well as getting acquainted with some researchers and their viewpoints connected with this domain. The most interesting article for me was "Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Material" by Lindsey Miller. I especially liked her idea that we, teachers should not forget the student's autonomy, independence and the factor of pleasure. Students should never be afraid when learning languages and we sometimes forget how stressed they are when they need to both complete the tasks and at the same time hear what people say when they speak. Therefore, I will definitely use the idea offered by L. Miller where while-listening activities might not only be specifically conten based but rather open-ended, where the students can discuss and debate over what they have or haven't heard. I really like Randall's Cyber Listening Lab as the majority of my groupmates and I would not like to repeat myself here while mentioning the same ideas over it. I would rather add that this particular listening site is great not only for listening activities. These activities are a wonderful tool for further discussion, which is a means to practice speaking. Isn't this great? This again proves that these two highly significant skills always go together! You cannot be a good speaker if you are a bad listener! :) Hence, do your best to achieve proficiency in both aspects of the language. I don't agree with the teachers who give preference to one skill over the other. I am convinced that all skills are important to master and students should try to do their best to master them so they would feel at ease in their future life when using the language in real life situations. Randall's Listening Lab is also a great tool for teachers to express themselves. I mean here that all the lessons can be easily adapted to the needs of your learner, to the topic you are dealing with, to the level of students you are teaching. Creativity should be promoted among both students and teachers! :)

http://www.projectteaching.com/projectteaching.aspx

The third task of Week 3 was the most difficult for me, since I needed to select one past sample project, analyse it and introduce it to my groupmates on Nicenent. It was difficult to choose the project, then I really needed time to carefully look through it, find out the essence of it, its strengths and weaknesses, etc. I have chosen the project of Aleyda Linares from Honduras, since her students and her teaching settings reminded me a little bit of my group and my university. Aleyda's focus on Grammar has attracted my attention too and I have immediately thought of my advanced level students who are good at speaking but who still make so many grammar mistakes and the problem is that we have no time for grammar during our face-to-face classes, therefore Aleyda's idea of using a class blog for addittional grammar exercises (interactive games, videos, power point presentations, etc.) was great indeed! I liked her idea of assessing students' participation rather than their quality of assignments done. This just reminds us, teachers, again that we should not always intimidate students by reminding them over their marks. The knowledge is much more important than the grade itself and we should motivate our students to practice, since practice makes perfect! :) Aleyda gave lots of practice for her students, moreover she has involved students in creating the class blog and asked them to look for online resources too. This way, the blog turned out to be a real class blog rather than a teacher's possession. :) Having taken a look at that blog, I felt how motivated they all were and I hope Aleyda has achieved her aim!? :)

This Webskills course is such an invaluable experience for me! It makes me grow as a teacher, as a professional in my field. I feel how much I have changed my attitude towards online tools. I like the fact that the articles given to read, the sites provided for us to explore, the ideas of my groupmates make me think, rethink, ask questions, doubt, look for the answers to the questions. It is difficult, I am not going to deny this but at the same time I know the course will bring sweet and delicious fruit, i.e. knowledge and skills that will help me to implement online tools in my teaching environment.

Will be waiting for the 4th week to come, for one more week of pleasure, anxiety, stress and happiness! :)

Smiles and wishes to all of you! :)

Jurga. 

Week 2. Active, swift, full of events and thoughts!

It is unbelievable how fast the second week has flown away! The impression I have is that we are learning more and more, and all the assignments are getting a bit more difficult and time consuming! It also seems to me that I am either pretty slow this week or I need more time than my groupmates to carry out the research and share my ideas with you! I feel a bit ashamed that I am so slow however I have to keep in my mind the thing that qualty is highly essential for me and the speed has no connection with it actually, right? :)

I would like to go through the whole week step by step and reflect for a while on what I have done and learned. Such a process is valuable indeed, since it might help you to find out the flaws and the pluses of the work you have done.

http://www.bitba.com/search-engine-optimization/

Web search

The week started with the assignment to look at NoodleTools and search the web, especially for something which is not Google. It has taken me even three days to complete the task. I had to think over what I want to find so that it would be practical and I could tell my students and colleagues over it. I had to get acquainted with NoodleTools and most importantly, I had to look carefully at the sites and search engines that were on the NoodleTools site. There are a lot of good sites there and it is so great to know that NoodleTools help teachers to save their time and focus on a specific domain which would let them find precisely what they are looking for. I know now which site is the best for finding the necessary books, which one is great for working with vocabulary, which site is excellent for quotations and literature, which one is amazing when getting ready for presentations or debates, etc. I have also found out some sites that I would not use or would not recommend to my colleagues or students and I am convinced this also saves time, since you know that this particular site will take your time and give you no results. I will definitely include some of the sites in my blog as the ones I like so that people who follow my blog would be able to try them and enjoy their search results. I have already used some of the sites in my classes, e.g. http://www.merriam-webster.com/, http://www.quotationspage.com/search.php3, http://tenbyten.org/now.html and must admit that my students have absolutely loved them. When presenting my search results, I have tried to do my best and to share pretty detailed results with Sean and my groupmates. I have described everything in such a way, so that you would understand what the site is like even without taking a look at it! I hope I have managed to do this and you have found some useful points there. :)

http://ipttoolkit.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/mager-and-abcd-method-writing-behavioral-objectives/

  

ABCD Objective

The second very important and useful task was to get acquainted with the ABCD model for writing objectives and use this knowledge in practice, i.e. to write the objectives for your own class. We have had some required reading that have helped us a lot in the practical process. There was the article on "How To Write Clear Objectives" (http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/) and I especially liked an online slideshow which was a nice visual tool (http://www.slideshare.net/ashleytan/writing-specific-instructionallearning-objectives-presentation). Having read the theoretical material, I have tried to write the objectives for my selected group of students and one of my classes. The class was last week, on the topic of Education and I have written the objectives for a 90 minutes class. I must admit it was not that easy and it took me a while to think over my Audience (A), the Behaviour (B) I expect from them, the Conditions (C) given for the audience to achieve the result and the Degree (D) which will indicate how well the students need to perform to achieve the behaviour. I find this model an excellent way to write objectives, clear and understandable to both the students and the teacher, any teacher actually who would take the lesson plan of that particular class. I have also shared the objectives I have written with my students before the class on Education and I was pleased to find out how successful the class was. I am not saying the lessons were not successful before that, yet everything went so smooth, fast and everybody was satisfied with the result achieved! :) I will definitely implemet the ABCD model in my future lessons and I am sure this will help me grow up as a teacher. :) I have also chosen this picture as a symbol how important every letter of the ABCD model is and that all of this together really leads to success! :)

http://bookboon.com/blog/2013/05/project-launch-stage-how-to-get-a-project-properly-running/

Project Task 1: Describe your class as it is now

The last task this week was focused on our present teaching situation, our students and technologies we use or have used so far. I have chosen the same group of students as for the task of this week. I am so proud of these students and I do believe they will benefit a lot if I share the results of Webskills course with them. I have described my students who like speaking activities, who are of a pretty advanced level in English, who are good at using technologies however they are also the ones who dislike using technologies for learning languages. I have shared the information with Sean and my groupmates over the technologies we have in the class and let them know that even if we have the Interenet access, we have no TV, projector or laptop in the class. However, we have a blended course for langauges at university and we do use technologies in the learning process (e.g. Moodle). I do hope this course will offer us more opportunities to use some interactive and attractive online tools that would motivate my students and would inspire them to use Web tools for learning English. I am thinking now that I would really love to learn more over the Webtools for Writing, Speaking, Listening and developing vocabulary. I am also deeply convinced that with the help of Sean, my groupmates and my amazing students, this project will be successful and lively! :)

All in all, I am satisfied indeed with the second week, which has been so productive, analytical and full of lively discussions. I have learnt not only about the Web search and the ABCD model for writing objectives but found out more about my groupmates, their teaching experience, their students and classes! All this will also help me in my future project and will help me develop my teaching skills. :)

Would really like now to share a great picture with you which concludes very well this week's discussions and even better represents our course itself! :)

http://www.techedknow.com/?tag=tools

Winter smiles and wishes from Lithuania! :)

Jurga.

Week 1. So fast and so busy! - the second post

It's amazing that the first week of the course has just flown by. It has been so busy and so productive! We have had a bunch of homework assignments and it took quite some time to complete all of them. I am not complaining and I am not going to, since I know what I have taken up! :) On the contrary, I am still full of energy and expectations to learn more, to try something new, to discuss and share opinions, to agree and disagree and to grow both as a person and as a teacher.

The week began with the Introduction task for our discussion on Nicenet. I have been waiting for this task a lot, since I knew I would eventually get acquainted with my teacher Sean and the groupmates. And it's so amzing there are so many of us from all over the world! Wow... I love this fact, especially when I take into consideration the professional exchange. 

The second discussion task was connected with Ground Rules for Discussions and the Rubrics. Since we are all teachers, I am sure we have used this in our teaching process at least once, because we need to guide the student and let him/her know over what he/she may expect and what his/her mark depends on. Everything seemed clear to me and I know what I need to do now to achieve my best result. I must sincerely admit that I haven't understood some of the comments by my peers who were saying that there should be limits over the posts and the time. It is indicated in the rules that we need to post at least twice, i.e. once at the beginning of the week and then during the second half of it. It is also added that we can post as many times as we wish and I think we should not impose constraints on this, since some people might simply want to learn, discuss, analyse, etc. But these are only my thoughts and you don't need to agree with me. :)

Lastly, we have received a task to create a reflective blog over the learning process of the Webskills course, which I personally enjoy a lot, since this is a practical assignment, which encourages us to reflect, to be creative, to be critical and analytical, and most importantly, it teaches us to some extent, how to manage our time properly as we need to take care of our created tool, i. e. blog. :) In addittion to this, I would also say that this reflective blog might later be used not only for us to interact further in our life but it might also be used as a teaching tool with our colleagues or students. Thus, I will try to do my best to record here all my progress and ideas, which might help me a lot in my professional life.

I am already waiting for the second week to come and I am a bit worried over the amount of assignments, yet I will do my best to cope with everything provided to us by Sean. :)

And some fun to share with all of you English teachers! :)

     http://binaurality.com/blog/tag/comics/ 

Jurga.

Week 1. The exciting journey has started!!! :)

http://www.distancelearning.com/online-teaching-strategies/

Hello dear Sean and my new great groupmates,

I am so happy to have this chance to start blogging. I am so delighted to start this new and promissing Webskills course together with all of you, people who represent different cultures and who come here from all over the world! I am grateful to have been selected as a participant of this course and I have so many expectations related to learning new things and sharing ideas with all of you.

I am not going to introduce myself again and again, since then you will think that I am just boasting all the time. :) I have already told a little bit about myself on Nicenet and you can also find some information on my profile here but you are also always welcome to ask me questions and I will tell you even more with pleasure. :)

I must admit that I have heard of blogs a lot and I have followed some myself (e.g. Cooking blogs since I am in love with cooking!), yet I have never created a blog myself or used one! Shame on me, maybe?! :) However, it is never late to start and I have a wonderful opportunity right now to create a blog for our online course. I must also tell you that I know little about blogging used as a teaching tool, thus I hope Sean and you will teach me more over this online device.

I can imagine using blogs for teaching or learning English, since this is a great opportunity for students to develop their writing skills. I believe a Blog could be a great tool for practicing reading, which is always a complicated area for students to deal with. I can only imagine or predict that maybe it would be possible to use a blog for some project work and I am sure blogging is a great way for teambuilding. I mean here that students achieve the best results only when they possess the team spirit and blogging could be one of the ways to unite them.

If I had to tell you over the process of creating a blog, I would tell you that it was a very interesting evening and I could not stop "playing" with the templates, design, colours, etc. I really loved that process even though it was the first time for me. The instructions Sean has shared with us helped a lot but it gets even more interesting when you try new things yourself. I love the fact that you can change things and a variety of templates and colours is necessary, since I believe that the design of the blog can also tells us something about the owner of it and his/her personality. I do hope you will like the look of my Blog and nothing will disturb you here? :) I like the fact that the posts can be commented by other people and if I think about my students, I can again add that such things help them with written communication and the concept of "collaboration".

We have quite a few tasks this week however I do love the fact that Sean has divided them and we are going to do everything step by step. I have completed the Needs Analysis so far and introduced myself on Nicenet. It was so great to meet Sean and Lupita there, and I can see now that there are so many of us together! Yeahhhh...I love this! :) I am going to do some other assignments tonight and even if I had been scared a bit over the workload before we started the course, I am not afraid anymore, since I know that I just need to manage my time propely and everything will be great! :) I will run to my private teaching class right now and will see you later! :)

I wish all of us great, productive and creative time together, wonderful mood, and lots of knowledge! :)

Smiles to all of you from Vilnius! :)

Jurga.