GRADUATION!

Graduation is a pleasant moment in our life. Though it is a bit sad, still I am eager to implement new things which I have learnt about into practice. Besides, I am going to write some articles on the materials of the course and share my experiences with the colleagues at the conferences in the coming new year.

While doing the course I really enjoyed everything, because I learnt a lot of new issues. Of course, Webquests, Blogs, Delicious, ANVILL, interactive PPP, PBL, ABCD objectives writing, rubrics are very useful and should be implemented by all teachers.

Teachers’ discussions, partnership observations were very useful for the learning process. My classmates are very communicative and sympathetic; I wish all of them to cultivate these qualities in their students. I got useful advice and support both from our instructors and the participants of the course.

I’d like to advise the future participants of the course to pay their special attention to the time management. I have been struggling with the lack of time, because of the 11 hour difference between Oregon and Moscow time. For example, when I was waiting for the comments on my blog in the afternoon, it was night in other countries, and nobody wrote anything. In the morning I went to school and didn’t have an opportunity to visit my blog and read the comments, so I missed them and didn’t answer in time.

All in all, I managed to read the articles, visit the sites, fulfill the tasks and bring the whole world into my classroom.

I believe that my students have already got a lot of my doing the course, because now we use technology every day. We did our final project and received positive feedback. So we are making plans for the coming new year, which is sure to be one more step forward.

I was happy at the beginning of the course, when I received this wonderful opportunity to study and I am happy at the end of the course because I have learnt a lot of new issues.

Reading, Writing and Sharing Experiences

I have enjoyed reading articles about different learning styles of our students. Unfortunately teachers do not pay much attention to this issue in my country. That is why I am going to write an article about it with my own experiences and the examples, presented by the colleagues of this course in the nearest future.

This week was also important for me because the Pedagogical Council of our school was held. 100 teachers of different subjects participated in it. It was devoted to the new technologies in education and I shared my experiences of doing the Oregon University course there. I prepared a PPP   with my project and spoke about the experiences of my classmates from different countries.

My students and I also continued to work on our project – we were writing comments to the news which we have published in the Internet. All the kids were highly motivated to do it.

Most welcome to read our school news and leave your comments http://rels65news.blogspot.com/

WE DID IT!

This week was very exciting for my kids and me because we have prepared our news for publication in the Internet but there was no access to it during the whole week. 

At the end of the school week the Internet appeared and we managed to publish our texts without pictures, because the Internet was very slow. So I had to copy pictures and download them at home.

Still I am happy because my objectives were about teaching writing not about launching images. Besides, in class I could observe my students trying to launch them and I can say that they do it even better than me. Here is the URL:

http://rels65news.blogspot.com/

Of course there will be some improvements. Also we are going to learn how to write comments. Still the main job has been done.

It should be noted that this week brought me lots of useful readings and experiences in using different tools. 

I think it should be mentioned about the Regional ITE Conference which I participated in this week and shared my experiences of doing the Oregon University online course. My presentation was about 21^st century teachers of English and it was awarded with a diploma.


Irina

  

Autonomous Learners

As usually this week was full of readings and expectations of the new project.

Together with my students we have visited a lot of sites with daily and weekly news, studied the structure of the posts and photos which can “talk” with the viewer. I have offered my students to choose themselves whether they wish to work in collaboration or alone. We are going to publish our school news in English in the Internet. The students decide what to write about themselves. At present they are looking for something interesting what has happened in November.  

I believe that this project will help me to bring up autonomous learners.

Learner autonomy brings to our classroom more learner-centered kind of learning and radical change in teacher and learner roles. First of all the roles of the teachers change - they become counselors and managers of learning resources.

Motivation is one of the key factors that influence the rate and success of foreign language learning. As we work with the students of the 21 century we should take into consideration that all of them belong to the world of computers and can't imagine their life without them. I observe my students with amazement because they are eager to fulfill any task which I give them using a computer.

Our students are not born autonomous learners. We, teachers, should help them to learn how to learn by means of adapting resources, materials and methods to their needs.

Thanks to the Internet all teachers have equal opportunities for the professional development and access to various resources. It is difficult for me to imagine how we could teach students without computers 10 years ago. Because by means of the computer and the projector my students do presentations of their projects, demonstrate writing skills in story writing, critically evaluate written materials and graph survey information. With the help of technology I can easily access to a selected Internet site to enhance discussion, illustrate the point and retrieve authentic data.

Irina

Getting Closer and Closer to the Final Project

I teach English at Rostov Municipal English Language School #65 (in the south of Russia). My students are 13 years old and they are in 7th form now. Their English language ability is pre-intermediate because they have been studying English for 6 years. There are 11 students in my class. We study English 6 hours per week. 

I took the group 2 years ago, before it they studied English with another teacher in the primary school. I must say, that the students were taught to pay much attention to grammar rules, they have a good memory, can easily learn poems and long texts by heart, but they are not interested in writing and can't communicate.

This week I have offered my students samples of communicative creative students’ writings in the Internet. We have studied samples of writing e-mails, biographies, news, articles, stories etc. They expressed the idea of writing school news. I have offered them an opportunity to write individually or in pairs. Most of them wish to write in pairs. We have brainstormed the ideas about the interesting events in November and the students have chosen the topics. I am really surprised to see the enthusiasm of my students to write in English and still can’t believe my eyes and ears!

All of my students have computers at home; most of them have the Internet in their mobile phones and at home. Our classroom is equipped with 12 computers, the Smart Board and the Projector. We have got the Internet in our classroom this year.

There are some difficulties with the use of the Internet in our school – you can't be sure that you enter the Internet any minute you wish because they switch it off from time to time (for some unknown reasons). Besides, it is very slow.  That is why we can’t use Skype in class. But still, now my kids and I have got an opportunity to use the Internet in the classroom! 

Here are my A B C D objectives related to the communicative writing teaching of my special needs students: 
the students of 7th grade – pre-intermediate level will be able to write their own stories (120 – 130 words each) on the topic which is interesting for them and publish them on the on-line school site or teachers’ blogs site. They will be able to illustrate their works with photos, maps, pictures, etc. They will be able to write 2 or 3 comments on their classmates' writings on-line. The learning will occur both in class and at home.

 A common setting - 80% of time. 

I believe that technology helps to motivate my students to develop communicative writing skills, write creative compositions (not only reproductions), exchange opinions, make comments, etc.

New Views on PowerPoint Presentations

I learnt to make PPP about ten years ago and used them from time to time as visual aids. I must say that they are bright, colourful and better than pictures or post cards. But I am not fond of them because I prefer active and communicative learning.

This week readings made me change my mind, because they brought me better understanding of the teacher’s role in the classroom where presentations are used. PPP is just an additional aid - a visual accompaniment to the spoken word. It is not a television and each slide should be discussed with the students. My students can be placed in the center of the class by means of the really interactive PPP. Students can be asked to anticipate information on an upcoming slide or be involved into interactive games or story writing. Video workshops in the Internet, offered to us by our instructor, helped me to learn how to do it. And I did it! I’ve prepared my first interactive PPP myself. Before it I only used ready-made software.

My students have learnt to make their PPP at the lessons of Computer Science and use them to illustrate their projects. It should be noted, that very few of them use fonts, colours, slide design in an appropriate way. Thanks to the articles which we have read this week I was able to create materials with the main tips and samples of PPP Arts. I believe they will be useful not only for my students but for my colleagues as well.

PBL and Web Quests

Week 5 brought  a lot of exciting materials about PBL and Web Quests, because it’s my favourite way of working with teenagers. It can satisfy students of different learning styles. 

I read many articles about WebQuests but I didn’t read any articles by the creator of this wonderful project Bernie Dodge, only quotations used by other teachers. And this week I was offered to read the whole article written by him in the original and that was exciting for me.

This week brought deeper understanding of the project-based learning as a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges.

 Firstly it’s an active type of learning; students are inspired to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they're studying. 

Secondly, students explore real-world problems and challenges, developing cross-curriculum skills while communicating in small collaborative groups.

Project learning is an effective way to integrate technology into the curriculum. It can easily accommodate computers and the Internet, as well as interactive whiteboards, digital cameras, etc.

I believe that while doing the Web Quest students get the experiences of a life time and they are more likely to retain the knowledge gained through this approach more readily than through traditional textbook-centered learning.

Besides we were offered the necessary materials on assessing students’ projects. It has been a my problem how to explain students the merits and the drawbacks of their job.

Creating rubrics with the help of RubiStar was exciting and our discussions brought me some new ideas on using them in my classroom. Surely I am going to implement the idea about creating rubrics by the students themselves.

In the whole the week was full of interesting travel in the Internet, reading new articles, meeting new people and discussing our problems.

 

Creating My Lesson Plan with Technology

Week 4 has brought not only delicious reading of articles and visiting web-sites but an opportunity to do something practical (to create our own lesson plans) and it was really unforgettable experience for me.


While reading articles of special interest for the ESL teachers offered by our tutor and participating in the discussions I understood that I should carefully consider my objectives as it is impossible to gain something by adding on-line activities at random.
The next very important issue is that I shouldn’t put the Internet activities on the top of my classroom and spend the whole lesson on them. The Internet should be integrated into the syllabus and connected with our textbook.  


It was also fascinating for me to study two plans – one of a regular lesson plan format, that we are used to, and one with the use of technology. On the one hand they appeared to be similar, because we need to take into consideration such things as students age and level, timing, objectives, materials, previous lesson material, learning styles and resources, on the other hand we should predict all the complexities of the on-line learning environment and  prepare tasks in case the technology doesn’t work. As for the objectives for the English class with technology they are sure to be the A (Audience) B (Behaviour) C (Condition) D (Degree) objectives – very concrete and special.
As a teacher I should support my students while working on-line, because the materials we work with are authentic and students can get lost.


I believe that bringing the technology into my classroom, I bring the whole world into it because my students can experience issues which relate to the present day, and are not out-dated because of the time that passes from the publication of the course book. The Internet gives students and teachers variety and choice, as they have the enormous number of sites to choose from. Since the Web is multi-national and without borders, the classes with the use of the Internet bring cultural issues and help to increase students' cultural awareness, allow them to get to know and appreciate other cultures and give students the feeling of having the whole world at their fingerprints.
Another important thing that I learned during the fourth week is about authentic materials for language learning. Jarek Krajka proposed the wide choice of utilizing authentic materials for English writing practice. The idea of presenting authentic materials to enable students to perceive the natural English usage and communicate with people on the other side of the world is an important objective of teaching the language.


 I have also found interesting discussions brought by my classmates about teaching and learning in the 21 century.

Learn English with Your Ears!

This week was very productive for me, because I have found new possibilities for teaching English with the help of the Internet. Bookmarking was a real finding and now I collect my favourite sites in Delicious (http://www.delicious.com/irumyantseva).

Another finding was learning English by listening (Learn English with your ears!). The Internet gives us great opportunities for organizing students’ listening by means of audio books, films, mini plays, authentic interviews, songs and even soap operas. Jazz chants are a fun way to practice stress and rhythm in the classroom. I am very thankful to teachers of English A.J.Hoge, Joe Weiss, Kristin Dodds from Sun Francisco who give free classes in the Internet (www.learnrealenglish.com)

I am fond of drama and my colleagues of the project were very helpful to share sites of mini-plays with downloadable mp3 files, students’ worksheets with activities and tips for the teacher how to organize the class.

I have read a number of articles for organizing storytelling and drama lessons, and the most interesting for me was “Storytelling and drama” (an extract from 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?sectionType=listsummary&catid=59393 ) by Carol Read which tells how to incorporate story-based lessons and drama activities into the English-language classroom.

I agree that drama provides opportunities for kinesthetic responses to stories and involves children in ‘learning by doing’. Through listening and responding to storytelling and doing drama activities, children use mime, sounds, gestures and imitation to show their understanding of the language. Before-drama activities provide a focus and support for children to use language from the story in an independent way and also contribute to building up their confidence and self-esteem. Drama also provides opportunities to develop critical and creative thinking skills and to work with others in a collaborative way.
As for my future project I think it should be something what students create themselves in collaboration using different skills and drama. I was amazed by the students’ video project on the latest news (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/school_report/resources_for_teachers/default.stm ). If only I could do something like that one day!
This week I have understood that if you want to be a real blogger you should spend in the Internet at least 2 hours daily.  

Amazement

The second week of my studying technology is coming to an end. I was really amazed by the materials which we’ve got.

Everything was unusual for me. Let’s take for example, how to participate in the discussion. I can’t say that I hadn’t known anything before about it, but very short instructions helped me to concentrate on what is a must (what I shouldn’t miss). We were offered to read interesting articles and samples of other participants’ reflections in blogs. A long list of sites which could be used by teachers of English was introduced to us. It was fun for me to open new sites and travel in the Internet watching videos, cartoons, pictures, listening to different stories and legends useful for ELT. It was also very interesting to study the blogs of the former participants of the course.

There were so many interesting things to read and learn that I nearly got lost in them and there was a moment when I thought I’d be drown in the sea of the materials.

A B C D style of writing objectives was a real discovery for me. Though I have already done several courses and written hundreds of different objectives while working in ELT I have detected quiet a new “phenomenon” for me. With the help of the formula “Audience Behaviour Condition Degree” a teacher is able to foresee both the process and the results of learning. And of course it’s very important for the students to know the objectives from the very beginning.

Unfortunately I had a trouble with navigation (I couldn’t get at once to the necessary place), but I’ve managed to overcome it and after a short self training I can get wherever I wish.

All in all, the week was great for me as well as for the other participants judging from their reflections.

My First Days in the New Classroom

I’ve been dreaming of doing the course on implementing technology in my classroom for several years. And at last, this day has come! Of course, I can do something, and I have already used e-mail, Power Point presentations, Web-quests and some software in my classroom. But I would like to be more skillful, as I feel myself behind my students in everyday use of technology.

At last this day has come and the course has started!

It is pleasant for me to feel that my instructor is interested in my doing the first steps correctly. Before the course started, I had received about 6 e-mails from him. I think, it’s very useful to learn the objectives and the program of the course at the very beginning. I was asked to answer the questionnaire about my skills, and I think it’s very important both for self-reflection and getting acquainted with the other members of our group.


 I am excited to study in the international group with people from all over the world. I managed to create my account in Google and it was not difficult for me as I have experiences of creating them in Yahoo and Yandex.  But I have never had my own blog for the educational purposes. I believe it is very useful for reflection and moving forward. And I did it! Now I am writing in my own blog and I am looking forward to doing some new steps forward to creating my own materials on implementing technology in ELT.