Weekly Reflection # 5

After to read the articles I have to say that PBL makes a fundamental shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning. Also it increase motivation for life long learning; likewise PBL improves student´s learning and skills as they deal with authentic problems.Wabquest is highly versatil, it increases student´s motivation, they face an authentic task given real resources to work with, and Webquest forces students to transform information into something else. In order to engage students in higher level cognition, Webquest use scaffolding.

In this week I knew how PBL could affect student motivation and behavior in class, Students can work on their own space, I knew to apply Project based Learning by preparing Webquest on http://zunal.com. Also I took into consideration the previous project step I described a technology-related change that I will implement to address the problem.What most caught my attention was Rubistar. Is very interesting to know about the technology solutions, if you want to evaluate you just enter the things and the website creates the rubric automatically with the specifications you previously gave.

Thanks

Weekly Reflection

I really enjoy reading web sites article about how to use a computer in class as a helpful aid, I understand that CALL not only introduces the students to technology , also it brings positive effects into our students’ motivation. Therefore, the teachers need to consider the use of CALL to develop student’s skill in their process of learning.

After reading about technology-enhanced lesson plans, I created one, I have to admit it was difficult for me, so to read Baltimore County Public Schools Office of Instructional Technology gave me some ideas how to integrate technology, and the example lesson plan also guided me.

For my project task, I consider working with my pre service teachers, because one of the weaknesses of them who have intermediate and advanced level is the grammar accuracy when they are producing the language in oral and written way, so my experience has convinced me that students believe learning grammar is boring, I try to make my students use it in a practical way and show them how useful it can be in listening, reading, speaking and writing exercises, so I feel that using technology is a very good way to teach grammar.  

Some people think that a benefit of structuralism is that it treats each language as unique and deals with grammar based on the language itself. I see this is a negative because all human languages have certain characteristics in common. There is a universal grammar that governs all languages. (Noam Chomsky)

WEEK # 3: MY REFLECTION

This week was very productive, I started reading Shahla Yassaei Using Original Video and Sound Effects to Teach English, This article suggests a motivating way to teach grammar with audiovisual techniques. I´ve learnt that video clips are great opportunity to develop our students’ creativity, is better if we ask our students to make their own videos using their cellphones to record topics related to the class, this way our students can develop their receptive and productive skills. The second article that I read is about Teaching Pronunciation to Adult English Language Learners by Kirsten Schaetzel, Georgetown Law Center, Washington, DC, This is an excellent teaching and learning resource especially caught my attention about Factors Affecting the Learning of Pronunciation that I have to take into account when I plan to work with my student’s pronunciation. I checked the three sites: One Stop English, ESL.about.com and ESL-galaxy.com, I found there many interesting activities for teachers and students. I created and began to use my own Delicious site, the instructions helped me a lot, it is amazing how I can store interesting and useful links, and also how to share the links. Also I checked all samples project but I choose Aleyda Linares from National Pedagogical University of Honduras with her project ¨Plan and conduct action research, which involves a change related to technology use in your classroom¨. The author concluded that students enjoyed learning grammar using blogs. This sample project enriched me and made me think about my own project. Thank you for being part of this team, I am learning a lot from all of you. 


 Edith

Reflection about on web skills course and what I´ve been doing during this week.

Since last week, I ´ve learnt many interesting new things through technology and how can we use in our teaching process, I want to share about an activity did in week one that it seemed to me very interesting because I applied with my students, I mean using google my maps for classroom project. My students started creating their own maps, then they added content to that map, I worked on my country level because my students are very pluricultural, so they described their hometowns in written way, they enjoyed a lot.
Also I enjoyed about exploring different search engines most of them are new for me and it seemed very interesting such as www.bing.com, www.flickr.com/, www.zuula.com, etc.During this week also I learned the ABCD methods of writing objectives including Audience (describe the intended learner or end user of the instruction) Behavior (describe learner capability) Condition (equipment or tools that maybe utilized) and Degree (state the standard for acceptable performance); if we consider these four distinct components in order to establish our objective we can design good lessons and our students can understand the lessons and we can evaluate appropriately.Thanks for visiting and commenting on this blog.



By the way, I continue exploring on how to build a blog, so I want to share a link where you can hear the most representative music of my country. Hope you like it.