Week 4: Skill-building Websites for Reading/Writing Skills and Technology-enhanced Lesson Plans

The topic of our discussion this week revolves around reading and writing skills. However, I focused a lot more on reading as reading is what my students lack off. They dislike reading. Well some of them do like reading, but time is their enemy. Or maybe passion. Or perhaps motivation? I don't know. I find myself read less nowadays. I hardly finish one novel in one month like I used to. In fact, I might have taken half a year to finish even one!  However, I read a lot online. Apart from reading updates on social networks, e-mails or online news, I read articles on various topics. I read e-books. I read short stories. I read books and films reviews. To conclude, I'd say, it's not that I don't read as much anymore. It's just that my genre of reading has changed from reading on paper to reading on screen. Well maybe that's what I need to do to my students too, especially because they are Generation Y. I need to use technology in my reading lessons.

In order to complete my assignments, I did some online search and found several interesting websites full of reading materials which I think might interest my students. SearchLit, Children's Library and King Features Comics are some examples. Here, students can explore the readings available based on their own preferences, levels and needs. Hopefully this can boost their motivation to read. I also read an online article on the debate of reading online versus reading on books; whether reading online really counts as reading. Pretty interesting arguments but I'm more to agreeing that reading online is also reading, no matter how little reading is going on. 

"What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text." Source: Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?

 What say you? 

Video Sharing

TED Talks: Ken Robinson says schools kills creativity.

What say you?

Week 3: Oral / Aural Skill Building and Delicious.com

Busy week! I might have too many things on my plate this week that my assignments seemed to be lagging behind. *Sorry Robert* But I've completed them, nevertheless. Though I still have markings to be done. Kids will surely be asking when will they get their papers back - or marks, actually. The ugly side of exam-oriented education system...

So what have I learnt this week? A lot, really. First of all, Delicious. It's a social bookmarking service. Before this I only knew how to bookmark page using the bookmark toolbar on my browser. And I've heard about del.icio.us. Little did I know that this Delicious thing is actually a social bookmarking service. What does it mean actually? It means, I use it to bookmark my favourite pages and I can share what I've bookmarked with my friends - hence the social part. Even better, I can log in to my Delicious from any computers so my bookmarks are always available. Pretty much like Dropbox where all my files are kept in my 'floating hard disk'. How technology makes our life easy! So if you're also on Delicious and wants to share good website pages (mine is mostly on English language teaching), feel free to follow me.

The topic this week is pretty interesting: Oral/Aural Skill Building. First thing first, I looked up on the online dictionary the meaning of 'aural'. Here's one from Oxford Dictionaries.

So this week's topic focuses on speaking and listening skills, with an addition of pronunciation skill. Of course Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) helps a lot in the teaching process of these skills with all sorts of technology from computers, internet, online radio and TV etc. The internet, for example, has tonnes of useful websites to be used in classroom either with students doing independent learning or with teacher teaching in front. I found elllo to be very useful, same goes to ManyThings. Life is so much easier for a modern teacher like me. Students too get the advantage of being exposed to authentic and semi-authentic materials easily, not only from local production but also from international production. This is in line with the school's mission which is to become a n excellent education centre that produces quality students who are globally efficient.

                   

One question I had in mind while reading one of the article The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills by Julia Gong is regarding accents. How could students' speaking skills be measured by softwares or all these modern technology while there exists a gap between the producer and the second language users in terms of foreign accent. I mean, not all Malaysians have same accent when speaking English. Some may have Manglish, some may have Kelantanese (Kelantan is a state in Malaysia who has a distinct local dialect) accent, some like me may well have a different accent - not Manglish, not British, not American but an accent of my own. My question was immediately answered upon reading another article New Perspectives on Teaching Pronunciation by Maria Grazia Busà. Thanks to her, I have now another knowledge on language learning - prosody. Basically, prosody is the use of pitch, loudness, tempo, and rhythm in speech to convey information about the structure and meaning of an utterance. For more information about how all these are linked, I suggest you to read the article which is available on our class website.

Video Sharing

One of the power of social networking is the ability to spread a piece of information wide and fast. Here's a selection of what I think worth spreading. Enjoy watching! :)

A Few Minutes of Perfection

Breathtaking Time-Lapse Shot Over Six Months on New Zealand’s North Island
Read more here.

New Zealand - a place like no other. The view is absolutely breathtaking. I spent 3-and-a-half years there for my undergraduate studies and I miss every single moment of it. Wish I could turn back time...

Week 2: The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches

Pheww! It has been a very hectic and at the same time tech-y week for me. The week started off with a 3 days visit to two schools in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor area. As soon as I got back in Mersing, piles of exam papers were already waiting to be marked as students just had their second test. At the same time, I had readings and one post due Wednesday on Nicenet. Friday and half day of Saturday were spent on a Microsoft Access short course in school. Then only I have time to sit back, do my other assignments and keep up with household chores. Challenges of being a teacher and a student at the same time, huh? But I'm glad nevertheless. I learnt A LOT this week!

The topic this week is The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches. What is The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework? Having read through the readings, basically it's a framework for teachers to set students' learning objectives i.e. what students can expect to do and gain from a lesson. Having done my degree in education, I have read about learning objectives before but this framework is somewhat new to me. The framework is really easy to understand and helps us as a teacher to set our learning objectives as well. Let's now look at the framework in summary:

Audience (A) – Who? Who are your learners?

Behavior (B) – What? What do you expect them to be able to do? This should be an overt, observable behavior, even if the actual behavior is covert or mental in nature. If you can't see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it, you can't be sure your audience really learned it.

Condition (C) – How? Under what circumstances or context will the learning occur? What will the student be given or already be expected to know to accomplish the learning?

Degree (D) – How much? How much will be accomplished, how well will the behavior need to be performed, and to what level? Do you want total mastery (100%), do you want them to respond correctly 80% of the time, etc. A common (and totally non-scientific) setting is 80% of the time.

Source: http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/

Another thing I learnt this week is Effective Web Searches. Before this, I had the idea of Google being the best search engine. However, from this week's assignments, I got to know a whole lot of other search engines. I learnt that different search engine caters to different audience, functions and interest. For example, if we want to do academic research, Intute or INFOMINE may be a better option. Other than that, there are also several web searching tips that can help us to get results that we want faster and more efficiently such as using +, ~, and " " in our searches.

Last but not least, the greatest findings from Week 2's assignments, the all time favourite Bloom's Taxonomy! But behold, it is not the usual Bloom's Taxonomy we know because it is now Bloom's DIGITAL Taxonomy! Yes you read it correct - DIGITAL. Let's look at the diagram from  Educational Origami:

This taxonomy reminds me of how we all need to keep up with the technology so that we can deliver a good lesson to our students. Therefore dear friends, it is now legit for us to put these verbs into our lesson plans, okay? :)

First post ever! *fireworks*

First post ever! *pat on the back* Finally, I have a blog of my own, thanks to the e-Teacher Scholarship Program: Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web. :)

This blog will be the accounts of my tiny little baby steps of becoming a super teacher. I am BARELY one. I've been teaching for only two years - I have a long looooong way to go!

And being in this course is one of the tiny little baby steps. Hopefully, I will be able to achieve the overall objective of this course which is to enable teachers to understand and use appropriate technology to enhance the learning environment and outcomes for students. 

So all the best to myself, and to you readers, welcome to my blog! :)

*p/s: To those who do not know, I'm currently doing a 10-week online course offered through American English Institute, University of Oregon and funded by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. For more information, visit http://aei3.uoregon.edu/eteacher/