Week 10

This course gave me a unique opportunity to develop my skills of using technology in EFL classroom. The issues raised and discussed were rather interesting for me. As Jodi said in her comment to my blog post for Week 9, many things in the course are not earth-shaking, but for sure they are  redirecting (if I may call them so). They made me reinterpret and reconsider my teaching preferences and opened to me a new approach to teaching. In my work I feel double responsibility, because apart from teaching English to my students, through my teaching I also show them how they may teach their students (as they are future teachers).  I develop both their linguistic and teaching skills. The more proficient I am, the more proficient my students will be. Unfortunately, I haven’t tried much with them this semester, but I hope I’ll do my best next academic year. Frankly speaking, I can’t name the best tool I have mastered in the course or the most relevant to my class, because everything I have learned may be successfully applied depending on my lesson objective. My Delicious stacks contain so many links that it will need some time to organize them.  As the head teacher of the English Development Course I have discussed my studying with Web skills course with my colleagues and they want me to share my experience with them in a form of a workshop or a seminar. So I have some plans for summer. 

As for other tools to be discussed, I think may be it would be nice as an alternative to get acquainted with data driven activities for developing basic linguistic skills based on the use of corpus data. It’s my personal interest, but still maybe other teachers would like to know about this possibility to use technology in EFL class.

To sum up my impressions from the course, I will say that this course is inspiring, encouraging and efficient. It was a great pleasure to be a participant of this fantastic learning community!!!! Thanks everybody!!! I am convinced, that this is not the end but the beginning of a new teaching life equipped with innovative techniques!!!

Week 9

With the course nearing to the end and much work done I can definitely say that  I have learned many useful and interesting things concerning the use of web resources for EFL classroom and gained valuable experience in distance learning and intercultural communication. I have enriched my teaching skills with new techniques which I want to integrate into my course next academic year. In the final project I present an instructional module which I designed for my course of English Language Development where I tried my best to incorporate everything I learned during the course. I will confess,  that it took me much time and many late nights to design everything and still I am not very much satisfied with the results (because as I am not currently teaching I have doubts what will work with my students and what not). Everything I did for project was new for me. Maybe my project is not so sophisticated compared with  some projects of my classmates, but before the Web Skills course I knew nothing about the educational use of many technology advances, I didn’t use them in class and what I know and can  to do at the end  of the course, I consider to be my personal victory. My project is dedicated to the use of technology to develop critical thinking skills. I designed a class web site, a class blog and a class Nicenet and worked out the activities using the web resources (videos, crosswords, tests, rubrics) I was suggested with during the course. I hope everything will work perfectly well.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the instructors of the course, Jodi Weber and Celeste Scholz, for their constant support, encouragement and understanding. As well I am grateful to the administration of Oregon University for providing me with such a valuable opportunity to participate in this wonderful course, which has changed my attitude to Web recourses and introduced me into the world of intercultural communications. Thanks a lot!!!

Week 8

The Internet tools and exercises I have tried this week are very interesting. Each of them has a specific feature of their own and to my mind can be successfully integrated in EFL lessons for students of different levels of proficiency. Now I am a little bit overwhelmed with the number of tools and software, that I need some time to think over and decide how efficiently integrate them and adjust to the requirements of my curriculum. For sure, my teaching methods have undergone considerable change.  From now on with the amount of knowledge I have acquired from the Webskills course I just won't be able to teach as I used to. It will be a "crime" to keep this knowledge about me and not to share it with my students and colleagues. I am deeply concerned, that the new interactive web resources will not only motivate my students at the lesson, but also (and it is even more important) will promote their self-directed, autonomous learning by providing them with the opportunity to enrich their knowledge on the subject in out-of-class activities. The variety of tasks that may be suggested for them and diverse information on any issue can be effectively used to develop their basic linguistic skills as well as skills of critical thinking, collaboration, cultural awareness etc. I think it will take some time to get my students accustomed to technology enhanced teaching and learning and then they will do everything on their own. The most difficult thing will be to start. To implement the change, to reorganize their traditional way of learning. I know it will not be easy… but not impossible. With effort and perseverance everything can be achieved.  Under these conditions of unlimited possibilities the role of the teacher is not lessened but, I am convinced, of paramount importance. For students not to be lost in the torrents of new information, not to be discouraged by the variety of new tools, it is the teacher who should be responsible for the appropriate selection of the content of the sites (the students are to be informed about the danger of internet bullying), level of the activities, thorough planning of the lessons.  Integration of these technology innovations of course should be gradual, step by step, from simple activities to more complicated ones. The teacher should be an active manager of the class, because a mere fact of employing an innovative technology in class will not lead to success, with time students may get bored or frustrated with new activities and the teacher is responsible to make the process lively and engaging.

Week 8 gave me a chance to communicate with my project partner, exchange information on our projects,  help each other make it better. I have a nice partner, Sandra, from Colombia. I like her project and the site she created for her course.

This time I got to know about a new resource ANVILL and Jeff Magoto, its developer. The software is great. I have registered for it and I hope to use it with my students. This software is a rare case of high quality and free access. I am happy to have a chance to try it. The fact that I missed the workshop makes me very sad, but I had to be present at the meeting.

Week 7

Week 7.

The issue of Learner Autonomy raised this week is a very topical for me as a university teacher. In the article “Interconnections: Learner Autonomy Teacher Autonomy” it is stated that learner autonomy is dependent on teacher autonomy. If teachers in educational institutions are not autonomous to decide on the content, methods of teaching and forms of assessment, there is little room for learner autonomy. In Ukraine there are comparatively not strict restrictions in universities what subjects to teach, how long the courses should be, what textbooks to use etc. Of course there are guidelines and recommendations of Ministry of Education and university authorities. There are obligatory subjects, set hours for obligatory disciplines, the accepted system of assignment, but there is a variable part where the departments and even the chairs can autonomously decide on the disciplines to teach, their content and forms of their presentation. In this respect teacher autonomy is preserved. But another issue bothers me. I have presented it in my fist post to Nicenet. Due to the historical peculiarities of my country’s development, the necessity to be lead and governed by the authority is deeply rooted in many people. Fortunately, younger generation is more free to decide on their own and reflect critically, to be discerning citizens. But still some of them (not all!) are reluctant to accept new ways of teaching, where they are provided with the responsibility for their learning. This problem is very vital, both our teachers and students are to be shown the ways how to become autonomous and self-directed (I understand this as being motivated to learn something on one’s own, carry out independent research, do more than it is prescribed, but not simply doing a set of drilling exercises at home as an individual assignment). But it is easier said than done, and on finishing this course, next academic year I want to start with myself and reorganize my courses, implementing the principle of autonomous learning.

This week I am working on my Project Plan as  I am currently not teaching. This is due to the objective reason: this year my country hosts Euro2012, a football championship, and the terms of the academic year have been shortened. My students are having summer holidays now. I am working on implementing technology and web resources into developing critical thinking in EFL course.

Week 6

The materials of this week are the most valuable for me from the beginning of the course.  As I lecture on several linguistic disciplines and have to teach large classes, the issues raised are highly topical for me. It is not so simple to deliver a lecture, I must not only dwell on serious scientific questions but also control how the students comprehend the material and can apply it in practice. It’s an undeniable fact that the role of a lecturer has greatly changed recently. The lecturer is not the single source of information as he used to be in the times of first universities. Today students have wide access to information and can find and learn about any problem raised in the course. That’s why the position of the lecturer and the methods of presenting the material in the classroom need thorough reconsideration. To many questions, which I put to myself, I found definite answer in the articles we were to read. Most of all I liked ‘Teaching large classes”, “Online assessment”, “Interactive lectures summaries of 36 formats” and ‘Presenting with Power Point”. These articles helped me to systematize my ideas how to involve and motivate my students during lectures on theoretical linguistic disciplines and how to promote their active learning and critical thinking skills. For them not to be “little vessels ... ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim” (Ch. Dickens “Hard Times”), but active discerning citizens.

One more issue that is of great interest for me is online assessment. I have read how to make an online test with Blackboard, the Grade Center. I consider this task is a rather challenging one and I haven’t tried it yet.

This week I am working on my Webquest. It is based on the topic “Profession of a Teacher”. I am slow with it as I plan it to be a part of my project. I am looking for some interesting sites to incorporate into it and work out the instructions.

WEEK 5

So, it is the middle of the course. Week 5 was very interesting and fruitful. Time and again I say to myself how lucky I am to be a participant of this very course!!!

The problems raised in this week discussions are really engaging. I shared my experience on applying self and peer assessment in my lessons and it was very instructive to know Celeste’s and my classmate’s thoughts on these issues. What I have understood from this discussion that I have to improve my knowledge on systems of education in different countries. As while discussing sometimes it seemed to me that though we used English, we were speaking a different language. Frankly speaking, I could not understand why my classmates (Sandra and Georgia) raised the problem of impossibility to use projects in some curricula. Then I saw the same problem raised by Han Nah in his post about education in Korea. Only after that I have realized how important it is to be aware of differences between cultures and countries. What is accepted in one country, maybe not in another.

One more thing that was of great benefit for me and my colleagues is rubrics. The site    http://rubistar.4teachers.org/    is really  something! I have made up l rubrics for essays, literary text comprehension and oral presentation. We have already discussed them with my colleagues and decided to use them in our course. That is really great!!!

WebQuest… I have some ideas how to implement it into my course, I am working on it but I need to think over the sites to suggest.

Week 4

So, another week comes to an end. Another week of new impressions. It was interesting to know a lot of new and useful things about teaching writing, reading and vocabulary using technology. There are so many useful sites that I haven’t even imagined! Still I do not have enough time now to study these sites carefully so I keep bookmarking all links in my Delicious not to miss anything.

This week we have discussed our classroom problems that could be solved by using technology. I have been thinking about this for the whole week. Reading my classmates’ posts I see that I have the same problems as they do. Though my students are university graduates majoring in English Linguistics, they also have certain problems with grammar, writing, reading, vocabulary. It was not easy for me to formulate a definite problem me group face. Because some of my students are better in grammar, other are better in writing, and other - in speaking etc., but all of them have to master the same material from the course book. In a word, the traditional course book contains activities which are to be done by all the students irrespective of their actual abilities. What I have learned from Jerek Krajka’s article “Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction” (and  what I will try to implement into my lessons) that the use of the Web in the classroom gives both the teachers and the students the element of  choice and variety. Each student can get an individual activity which will be interesting for him and correspond to his level. The task of a teacher is only to carefully select the activities suitable for a particular student.

To write a lesson plan … well… in the University we don’t have to write detailed lesson plans as school teachers do. I plan my lessons but in a way of activities to be done without detailed descriptions of materials, procedures and so on… well… I am still working over on my lesson plan….

This week is very busy for me because the academic year comes to an end and I have to check different tests and papers, then credits, exams ... But I try my best to cope with the tasks of Week 3.

To sum up my reflections on Week 3, I'd  like to say I that I find Delicious interesting and  comfortable. Now I try to save all interesting for me links from our Discussions in my stacks. 

Reading the suggested articles on computer assisted pronunciation and listening teaching, I came across an issue I have been pondering on for  some time. This is what in Maria Grazia Busa'a article "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation" is named a foreign accent. It is said that "the ultimate goal of pronunciation teaching should not be to eradicate foreign accent, but rather to promote pronunciation which is reasonably intelligible, as intelligible pronunciation is considered an essential component of communicative competence". I can't fully agree with this statement, because if we speak about teaching a foreign language as a means of basic communication, than maybe it is correct. But when it goes about trainee teacher (as my students are), whose primary occupation is to teach a language to others, pronunciation must be one of the main concerns. These students should have decent pronunciation, as they will go to schools and will teach their pupils  the same   reasonably intelligible pronunciation.   In this respect, the materials of the sites, dedicated to pronunciation and listening skills training, are useful tools to improve both teachers' and students' skills. What I like about the computer assisted pronunciation and listening activities, that they contain authentic materials, can be done both as in- as out- of class activities, students can work independently and have the feedback immediately. 

During Week 2 I have gained much valuable information on the following: 

Firstly, I have learnt how to write the objective to a lesson in a new unusual to me way. I think that a teacher cannot come into the classroom without having a clear objective of the lesson: what to teach, what to expect from the students, and how to evaluate. In this respect Dr Bob Kizlik’s idea that “fuzzy thinking might get you through the day, but it will never get you through a career” (Kizlik, 2012) deserves my strongest support. Frankly speaking, I was taught to present objectives of a lesson in a bit different manner, but my personal opinion is that the one we used in the course is better and more laconic.

Secondly, I have found out and tried so many nice search engines from Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need. This experience is most useful for me because I am convinced that who possesses information, possesses the world. Following the threads of our discussions of Week 2 I tried my best to link practically to all the sites mentioned by my teacher and classmates. Some of these sites are really fascinating and provide interesting resources.

Thirdly, I have improved my skills on Internet search. The tips from “Technology Tip of the Month” (Healey, 2003) helped me greatly to make a proper query in the search engines I used and lessen the number of irrelevant hits.

And last but not least, I have communicated with my teachers and classmates and discussed some interesting issues. This experience was very engaging.

In addition, translating my reflections on the assignments of Week 2 into actions I have made some practical steps to integrate the gained knowledge into my teaching practice. For example,  I prepared some activities for my students using the resources from the given list. On Friday I tried with my students the debate on the topic  “Advertisements do more harm than good” from http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=717.   We discussed advantages and disadvantages of advertising basing on the resource developed by Richard Penny (Finland). The debate was rather heated and my students liked it immensely.

Though I don't work with school children I found many  interesting sites for my daughter. She is 6 and learns English. We added into Favourites the http://kids.yahoo.com/games, and http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/pizza-and-chips. These interactive sites suggest many vocabulary and grammar games as well as videos. I have mentioned that I have no experience of teaching English to kids, that’s why only I “experiment” with my daughter. I see that when we work with a book, she is not interested much. But when we watch a cartoon or play a computer game she is more engaged in studying and remembers better.

I have added the tips on Internet search into my seminar materials on Information Search for Research on Linguistics.

            So, in a whole I consider that this week was rather productive for me.

Week 1 is full of surprises. It seems to me that I haven't done such extensive reading for  a long period of time. I have visited all blogs and read everything presented by my classmates , and I was deeply impressed by their  skills and creativity. Now I see what I must strive to!!!  I like all the blogs because each of them represents a person who created it. Some blogs are really superb. The only thing that worries me a little bit is that for a while I have some difficulties with posting comments and  I can't  communicate with my classmates  personally on their blogs (but hope I'll cope with this).

 I would like to say that the idea of introducing the countries we live in is great. It was so interesting to learn  about  Serbia on Marija' blog. I have made up my mind to suggest this video about my country, Ukraine.

I hope you will enjoy this video and my country.

This week Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter.  So, let this joy of Easter  fill up your heart today and forever. Happy Easter!

I feel like a freshman trying to get my bearings in the assignments of  Week 1. I should admit, that to cope with some of the assignments was not an easy task for me (especially to create a blog). It took much time and effort, but it was worth my while.

     Week 1 is full of new experience. Thinking over on what I have gained this week, I can say

·     I've got acquainted with my teachers - Jodi and Celeste.

·     I have met my e-classmates.

·     I have learnt how to create a blog and tried to share my reflections.

·     I have participated for the first time in online discussion.

·    I have read several articles  and .....(to be continued….)