This course was the greatest experience I have had in my life. In our course survey we were asked what we liked best about the course. My answer is: everything! I liked the structure, the content, the organization, the balanced mixture of theory-based and task-based assignments, and an extremely friendly and helpful virtual environment in class.
But most of all, of course, our instructor Deborah Healey! With the highest degree of professionalism, her readiness to help promptly, her extremely valuable and positive feedback to every part of my work was very motivating for me. Thanks to Deborah's excellent work, I have acquired more knowledge and skills for these unforgettable 10 weeks, than I would have acquired for years probably.
However, things not always went on as smoothly as it may seem now: throughout these ten weeks I have had quite a few exhausting and sleepless hours sweating over the assignments and tasks. It was a rather tough and challenging course for me. At times I thought that I would not be able to make it, e.g. while creating a WebQuest on Zunal.com, or an Interactive PPt, or creating a Wiki on Google Sites, but I never stopped trying, and, as a result, I always accomplished the goals set by Deborah. Surely, I am far from thinking that my creations are perfect – I will need a lot of work, and more sleepless hours to make these my creations ‘workable’ at full speed in my classes, but I can claim that I have made huge steps forward in this direction, and I intend to move further ahead!
MANY THANKS PERSONALLY TO DEBORAH AND TO THE WHOLE STAFF OF UNIVERSITY OF OREGON AMERICAN ENGLISH INSTITUTE FOR DESIGNING SUCH A WONDERFUL AND EXTREMELY BENEFICIAL COURSE!
And Many thanks to you , my dear colleague-coursemates, for sharing your experience, giving advice and offering help whenever I needed. I know, I’ll be missing this course very much. But thanks to the technology, hopefully, we will stay in touch.
Please, take this video clip as a little gift – a part of my country’s culture. It’s a video-collage of our national folk dances, performed by the best dance company of Georgia.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Seven ‘Commandments’ for our future action plan in view of acquired knowledge and skills developed at this wonderful course
Before posting my farewell comment, I would like to share with you specific recommendations for improving teaching with technology use from Arthur W. Chickering and Stephen C. Ehrmann at: http://polaris.umuc.edu/~cschwebe/gsmt800/7principles.htm
For me these seven principles are like ‘Seven Commandments ’ for my action plan for future. Though the authors provide some advice about how to match these principles with technology tools, I think, this wonderful course equipped us with all the knowledge and skills to apply to each of these principles and fill them with our individual content depending on our individual aims and needs. I advise you (and myself too) to take these principles as guidelines before planning or implementing novelties in your classroom:
1. Good Practice Encourages Contacts Between Students and Faculty
Frequent student-faculty contact in and out of class is a most important factor in student motivation and involvement. Faculty concern helps students get through rough times and keep on working. Knowing a few faculty members well enhances students’ intellectual commitment and encourages them to think about their own values and plans.
2. Good Practice Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students
Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one’s ideas and responding to others’ improves thinking and deepens understanding.
3. Good Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques
Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.
4. Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback
Knowing what you know and don’t know focuses your learning. In getting started, students need help in assessing their existing knowledge and competence. Then, in classes, students need frequent opportunities to perform and receive feedback on their performance. At various points during college, and at its end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how they might assess themselves.
5. Good Practice Emphasizes Time on Task
Time plus energy equals learning. Learning to use one’s time well is critical for students and professionals alike. Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty.
6. Good Practice Communicates High Expectations
Expect more and you will get it. High expectations are important for everyone — for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and well motivated. Expecting students to perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
7. Good Practice Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning
Many roads lead to learning. Different students bring different talents and styles to college. Brilliant students in a seminar might be all thumbs in a lab or studio; students rich in hands-on experience may not do so well with theory. Students need opportunities to show their talents and learn in ways that work for them. Then they can be pushed to learn in new ways that do not come so easily.
For me these seven principles are like ‘Seven Commandments ’ for my action plan for future. Though the authors provide some advice about how to match these principles with technology tools, I think, this wonderful course equipped us with all the knowledge and skills to apply to each of these principles and fill them with our individual content depending on our individual aims and needs. I advise you (and myself too) to take these principles as guidelines before planning or implementing novelties in your classroom:
1. Good Practice Encourages Contacts Between Students and Faculty
Frequent student-faculty contact in and out of class is a most important factor in student motivation and involvement. Faculty concern helps students get through rough times and keep on working. Knowing a few faculty members well enhances students’ intellectual commitment and encourages them to think about their own values and plans.
2. Good Practice Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students
Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one’s ideas and responding to others’ improves thinking and deepens understanding.
3. Good Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques
Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.
4. Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback
Knowing what you know and don’t know focuses your learning. In getting started, students need help in assessing their existing knowledge and competence. Then, in classes, students need frequent opportunities to perform and receive feedback on their performance. At various points during college, and at its end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how they might assess themselves.
5. Good Practice Emphasizes Time on Task
Time plus energy equals learning. Learning to use one’s time well is critical for students and professionals alike. Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for faculty.
6. Good Practice Communicates High Expectations
Expect more and you will get it. High expectations are important for everyone — for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and well motivated. Expecting students to perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
7. Good Practice Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning
Many roads lead to learning. Different students bring different talents and styles to college. Brilliant students in a seminar might be all thumbs in a lab or studio; students rich in hands-on experience may not do so well with theory. Students need opportunities to show their talents and learn in ways that work for them. Then they can be pushed to learn in new ways that do not come so easily.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Week 9: Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences
Curry's Onion Model. The Curry Onion Metaphor (1983)
I have learned about Curry's Onion Model from the article by Terry O'Connor “Using Learning Styles to Adapt Technology for Higher Education”, http://iod.unh.edu/EE/articles/learning-styles.html/, which I found very interesting, as it directly addresses my personal needs.
In this article she states that most teachers tend to rely almost exclusively on sequential, verbal presentations, combined with private reading & writing activities. However, students learn best when they can address knowledge in ways that they trust. Curry's model provides categorization of human learning differences:
1. Environmental preferences regarding sound, light, temperature, and class design;
2. Emotional preferences addressing motivation, persistence, responsibility and structure;
3. Sociological preferences for private, pair, peer, team, adult or varied learning relations;
4. Psychological preference related to perception, intake, time, and mobility;
5. Psychological preferences based on analytic mode, hemisphericity, and action.
According to O’Connor ‘The concept of learning styles has gained growing attention from educators because it provides a stable-enough characterization to plan pedagogical strategies. These strategies appear more responsive to students needs’.
Here are some general conclusions for teachers:
• Students will learn better when using preferences in which they're successful
• Students will be better learners when they can expand their preferences
• When teaching accommodates various preferences, more students will be successful.
• Teachers can construct activities that include specific (& multiple) learning preferences
• This can be done by adding alternatives or, completing learning cycles that incorporate all styles or, by utilizing holistic, complex tasks.
In her article I also came across the Dunn and Dunn Learning Style Model, and found a very interesting presentation at: http://www.slideshare.net/bking/edu-5701-7-dunn-dunn-learning-styles-model1-presentation/ which I recommend to view.
I found particularly helpful for me “Sailing the 5 C's with Learning Strategies” http://www.nclrc.org/sailing/, as it deals with Foreign Language Learning Standards, the 5 Cs: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities. The thing is that besides teaching, I am also involved in designing and developing National Standards for Foreign Languages (English in particular) for all stages of schools: Primary, Basic and Secondary. One of the main directions in our standard is Learning to Learn. That’s why, the material provided here is very valuable for my further work on the Standard.
Currently a Presidential Program “Teach and Learn Georgia” is underway: within this program volunteer teachers (native speakers) from all over the world are invited to teach in Georgian schools together with local teachers.
On Saturday I had a very important mission: I had to make a presentation to the group of 60 volunteer-teachers about the objectives of the National Curriculum, The National Standard for Teaching English and the Assessment System. Equipped with all the theoretical and technological skills, the presentation was successful, though very tiresome: the whole week I was working on the presentation material, and yesterday I had to traveled by car for 7 hours to and fro (as it was held in another city). So, please forgive me if you find my writing a bit incoherent.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Week 8: Summing up
This week has offered a great variety of teacher on-line resources. For instance, tools for educators http://www.toolsforeducators.com/ and Personal education press http://www.educationalpress.org/index.asp/ offer innumerable resources for word search, bingo, crossword puzzles, board games, flashcards, matching and multiple choice exercises which you can make online and print out to use offline.
Easy test maker http://www.easytestmaker.com/default.aspx is also a tool for making paper tests in an easy way. I used this site to create a test for my BA students in English philology to check the understanding of basic stylistic devices which we need for conducting stylistic analysis of literary texts.
At this point I was not able to explore Hot Potato Program http://hotpot.uvic.ca/, as it required downloading, which might change some of my computer programs and I did not take a risk, but judging from my colleagues exercises that they have made using it, I can say that it is a really great tool for teachers. As far as I know, Moodle has the HotPotato option, and I am going to use it later.
However, there was another Option, SMILE, offering web-based activity generators which, I think, is similar to Hot Potato. I was able to make a Jeopardy like game for beginners for word search in different categories.
At a glance I liked the Web Poster Wizard - http://wizard.4teachers.org/ which I could use for a single lesson assignment or for short-term Projects.
For this week's task we were also asked to create a Nicenet class, a class blog on blogger.com/ or a class wiki on sites.google.com/ .
The first two were quite easy, which I had done with pleasure. Creating a Wiki was really challenging for me, and I wasn't able to do it yet, but I'm not going to give up, as this is the tool I will be definetly using with my class very soon. Victoria kindly offered detailed instructions to solve some of my problems, and I'm going to follow them.
In addition, this week we worked on finalizing our Project report/plan drafts and sending to our peers for review. I have read very interesting projects from Janet and Hanan and sent them my feedback already. Now I'm looking forward to their feedback to my Project plan. While reviewing my peers works I used the recently studied techniques of 'tracking changes', and 'adding comments', which I found very helpful.These are the techniques I need to use all the time while reviewing my students assignments or papers.
On the whole, this week, like previous weeks, was full of amazing new things we learned. I wonder, how many more new things are awaiting us ahead!
Easy test maker http://www.easytestmaker.com/default.aspx is also a tool for making paper tests in an easy way. I used this site to create a test for my BA students in English philology to check the understanding of basic stylistic devices which we need for conducting stylistic analysis of literary texts.
At this point I was not able to explore Hot Potato Program http://hotpot.uvic.ca/, as it required downloading, which might change some of my computer programs and I did not take a risk, but judging from my colleagues exercises that they have made using it, I can say that it is a really great tool for teachers. As far as I know, Moodle has the HotPotato option, and I am going to use it later.
However, there was another Option, SMILE, offering web-based activity generators which, I think, is similar to Hot Potato. I was able to make a Jeopardy like game for beginners for word search in different categories.
At a glance I liked the Web Poster Wizard - http://wizard.4teachers.org/ which I could use for a single lesson assignment or for short-term Projects.
For this week's task we were also asked to create a Nicenet class, a class blog on blogger.com/ or a class wiki on sites.google.com/ .
The first two were quite easy, which I had done with pleasure. Creating a Wiki was really challenging for me, and I wasn't able to do it yet, but I'm not going to give up, as this is the tool I will be definetly using with my class very soon. Victoria kindly offered detailed instructions to solve some of my problems, and I'm going to follow them.
In addition, this week we worked on finalizing our Project report/plan drafts and sending to our peers for review. I have read very interesting projects from Janet and Hanan and sent them my feedback already. Now I'm looking forward to their feedback to my Project plan. While reviewing my peers works I used the recently studied techniques of 'tracking changes', and 'adding comments', which I found very helpful.These are the techniques I need to use all the time while reviewing my students assignments or papers.
On the whole, this week, like previous weeks, was full of amazing new things we learned. I wonder, how many more new things are awaiting us ahead!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Week 8: My Project Plan
I have finished my draft project plan: I am so excited! When I started it, a had a very vague idea of what I would do. But now, after following this wonderful course step-by-step, I am so happy that I have come up with a very interesting project plan ready for implementation in about a month;s time (of course, after my peers' and Deborah's approval).
As my project is related to using multimedia in English language teaching, I mainly followed the stages we had undertaken within our Oregon online course.
As the course I am going to deliver from September 2010 is absolutely new, something that I haven't done before, I was a little scared about its success. Certainly, I have searched for some material to write a syllabus, but I felt that it lacked some 'spice'. Now I have designed a NEW syllabus, adding nearly all the 'technology spices' we have learned. And I am almost sure my students will enjoy doing this course, as now it is more student-centered, practice-oriented, and encouraging learner autonomy.
Many thanks to Deborah and the whole staff of University of Oregon American English Institute for creating such a wonderful and extremely useful course to meet today's challenging demands in teaching.
As my project is related to using multimedia in English language teaching, I mainly followed the stages we had undertaken within our Oregon online course.
As the course I am going to deliver from September 2010 is absolutely new, something that I haven't done before, I was a little scared about its success. Certainly, I have searched for some material to write a syllabus, but I felt that it lacked some 'spice'. Now I have designed a NEW syllabus, adding nearly all the 'technology spices' we have learned. And I am almost sure my students will enjoy doing this course, as now it is more student-centered, practice-oriented, and encouraging learner autonomy.
Many thanks to Deborah and the whole staff of University of Oregon American English Institute for creating such a wonderful and extremely useful course to meet today's challenging demands in teaching.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Week 7: Learner Autonomy and One-computer Classroom options
For me this week was less stressful – probably because I have finished the electronic marking process for National Exams and Teachers’ Certification Exams, which lasted over 5 weeks and went on alongside with our online course; or, maybe, because it was a bit lighter in terms of its technological fulfillment. Anyway, I am happy that the following weeks I will have more time to focus on my project plan, and, hopefully, finish the course successfully.
Fostering Learner Autonomy, reshaping and reconsideration of teacher’s roles in this connection, the interconnectedness between learner and teacher autonomy – these were the key points in this week’s readings. As usual, we were offered interesting material to read on these issues:
1. An article by Dimitrios Thanasoulas “What Is Learner Autonomy and How Can It Be Fostered?” at: http:// iteslj.org/Articles/Thanasoulas-Autonomy.html/., in which the author give a profound analysis of the term “autonomy”, conditions for learner autonomy, learning strategies (cognitive and metacognitive). He also connects the lerner autonomy to learner attitudes and motivation and their self-esteem. I particularly liked the part in which he shares his ideas about the ways of promoting learner autonomy through self reports, diaries and evaluation sheets.
2. “Bird-in-the-hand or Bird-in-the-bush? “ by Samuel Sheu , in which the author discusses a question about interconnectedness between teacher autonomy and learner autonomy on the example of Taiwanese schools at: http:// http://coyote.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/learnerdev/LLE/8.1/sheuE.html/.
3. The latter issue is further developed in a very interesting conversation between Richard Smith and Andy Barfield at:
http:// coyote.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/learnerdev/LLE/8.1/smithE.html/.
In our discussion posts most of my colleagues agree that learner autonomy depends to a great extent on teacher autonomy. I learned that in many countries, and my country is no exception, teachers work under administrative constraints to fit their syllabuses into the school curricula. But only teachers’ freedom in deciding upon the material and the syllabus does not guarantee fostering the learner autonomy: and as Juliet noted in her post, everything depends on the teacher’s professionalism and creativity.
In view of encouraging learner autonomy with the help of technology, we were suggested to think about one-computer lesson options: http://www.susangaer.com/sgaer/onecomputer/wordprocessing.html/.
http://www2.drury.edu/dswadley/101/.
I should confess that I was really impressed by my course mates’ excellent ideas, their creativity and urge to change things to the advantage of their learners.
Thank you all for that!
Fostering Learner Autonomy, reshaping and reconsideration of teacher’s roles in this connection, the interconnectedness between learner and teacher autonomy – these were the key points in this week’s readings. As usual, we were offered interesting material to read on these issues:
1. An article by Dimitrios Thanasoulas “What Is Learner Autonomy and How Can It Be Fostered?” at: http:// iteslj.org/Articles/Thanasoulas-Autonomy.html/., in which the author give a profound analysis of the term “autonomy”, conditions for learner autonomy, learning strategies (cognitive and metacognitive). He also connects the lerner autonomy to learner attitudes and motivation and their self-esteem. I particularly liked the part in which he shares his ideas about the ways of promoting learner autonomy through self reports, diaries and evaluation sheets.
2. “Bird-in-the-hand or Bird-in-the-bush? “ by Samuel Sheu , in which the author discusses a question about interconnectedness between teacher autonomy and learner autonomy on the example of Taiwanese schools at: http:// http://coyote.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/learnerdev/LLE/8.1/sheuE.html/.
3. The latter issue is further developed in a very interesting conversation between Richard Smith and Andy Barfield at:
http:// coyote.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/learnerdev/LLE/8.1/smithE.html/.
In our discussion posts most of my colleagues agree that learner autonomy depends to a great extent on teacher autonomy. I learned that in many countries, and my country is no exception, teachers work under administrative constraints to fit their syllabuses into the school curricula. But only teachers’ freedom in deciding upon the material and the syllabus does not guarantee fostering the learner autonomy: and as Juliet noted in her post, everything depends on the teacher’s professionalism and creativity.
In view of encouraging learner autonomy with the help of technology, we were suggested to think about one-computer lesson options: http://www.susangaer.com/sgaer/onecomputer/wordprocessing.html/.
http://www2.drury.edu/dswadley/101/.
I should confess that I was really impressed by my course mates’ excellent ideas, their creativity and urge to change things to the advantage of their learners.
Thank you all for that!
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Week 6: Engaging Students - Technology Aids; Teaching Large Classes; Creating Interactive PowerPoint Show; Project Task 4
When I first read the assignments for this week, I thought that it would be a little lighter, as I was familiar with PowerPoint Presentations. But, it was a real discovery for me to read about the different ways of application of this really POWERFUL tool, especially to learn about Interactive PowerPoint. The metaphor used by the Teaching Effectiveness Program – unleashing the power of PowerPoint – describes exactly its character: http:// www.uoregon.edu/~tep/technology/powerpoint/powerpoint.html/.
It offers a variety of issues, both pedagogical and technical, to employ this tool effectively in order to engage students in the learning process, especially in large classes, to incorporate classroom assessment techniques and to use methods to accommodate multiple learning styles.
Below is the list of topics, which, in my opinion, provides almost comprehensive information necessary for a teacher to make the best use of PowerPoint:
Very interesting material for Teaching Large Classes, provided at: http:// serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/largeclasses.htm/.
The issues discussed are: Keeping students engaged in large lecture classes, Making technology work for you, Getting groups to work well, and many more… , endless links of valuable sources of information. In fact, for me it is a huge amount to digest. I need time to transform all this into practical things.
However, as I look back, I marvel at how many new technologies I have already learned! Though I haven’t yet created my Interactive PowerPoint show, and to tell the truth, I’m a bit scared to get down to it – still contemplating about the content and the technical side.
As for my Project Plan Task:
I intend to create an on-line course: “Using Multimedia in ELT” in the Moodle. This course covers not only using electronic media, but the focus will be , of course on using technology in teaching.
I agree with Stephen, when he says that our Delicious Bookmarks can serve as ‘a repository of ideas’. One of the links I’ve bookmarked is Onestopenglish | Methodology: using video in English teaching, http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?docid=146399, in which Scott Thornbury gives advice and suggestions on how to use video in English teaching for starter/beginner, advanced, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate levels.
Then There is Free Technology for Teachers written by Richard Byrne, http://www.freetech4teachers.com/, from which I can download free resources and lesson plans for teaching with technology.
I will also look at Teaching Today Web-link-ography at: http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/, a directory of web link resources. As they claim, the links were carefully selected to help teachers find free, valuable classroom resources.
And , of course, I will implement all the techniques and tools I have learned so far, and will learn in the future, including Blogs, wikis, Webquests, Rubrics, PBL, PowerPoint, etc.
It offers a variety of issues, both pedagogical and technical, to employ this tool effectively in order to engage students in the learning process, especially in large classes, to incorporate classroom assessment techniques and to use methods to accommodate multiple learning styles.
Below is the list of topics, which, in my opinion, provides almost comprehensive information necessary for a teacher to make the best use of PowerPoint:
- Best Practices in Presenting with PowerPoint;
- Adding Animation to Your PowerPoint Presentation;
- Adding Interaction to Your PowerPoint Presentation;
- Incorporating Multimedia into Your Teaching;
- Understanding Digital Images.
Very interesting material for Teaching Large Classes, provided at: http:// serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/largeclasses.htm/.
The issues discussed are: Keeping students engaged in large lecture classes, Making technology work for you, Getting groups to work well, and many more… , endless links of valuable sources of information. In fact, for me it is a huge amount to digest. I need time to transform all this into practical things.
However, as I look back, I marvel at how many new technologies I have already learned! Though I haven’t yet created my Interactive PowerPoint show, and to tell the truth, I’m a bit scared to get down to it – still contemplating about the content and the technical side.
As for my Project Plan Task:
I intend to create an on-line course: “Using Multimedia in ELT” in the Moodle. This course covers not only using electronic media, but the focus will be , of course on using technology in teaching.
I agree with Stephen, when he says that our Delicious Bookmarks can serve as ‘a repository of ideas’. One of the links I’ve bookmarked is Onestopenglish | Methodology: using video in English teaching, http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?docid=146399, in which Scott Thornbury gives advice and suggestions on how to use video in English teaching for starter/beginner, advanced, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate levels.
Then There is Free Technology for Teachers written by Richard Byrne, http://www.freetech4teachers.com/, from which I can download free resources and lesson plans for teaching with technology.
I will also look at Teaching Today Web-link-ography at: http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/, a directory of web link resources. As they claim, the links were carefully selected to help teachers find free, valuable classroom resources.
And , of course, I will implement all the techniques and tools I have learned so far, and will learn in the future, including Blogs, wikis, Webquests, Rubrics, PBL, PowerPoint, etc.
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