Week 8 Exploring, Creating, Planning, Reviewing, and Submitting ...

We were assigned to become explorers this week as many things were to discover or re- discover thoroughly so that we could end up with creating something new, using the tools presented. Among many things to re- discover were: Padlet, with which I came up with http://padlet.com/wall/q41wrcb5mf   -- a page for my Advanced 1 Certificate students to post their written versions of stories they listened to online; HotPotatoes, which is a very practical tool for creating interactive teaching materials like this one http://uk3.hotpotatoes.net/ex/115628/EKVXSKZA.php-- used as a warm- up before dealing with a topic relating to "traveling places". Even if I know it will not be very difficult to open a Nicenet class, I have not tried it.  

The heaviest tasks of the week were to draft the final plan using a template  and to review a coursemate' s project following a rubric. Fortunately, Samarat is a quick responder to mails related to the peer review; so everything went smoothly with our fast communication. Thank you, Samarat for being supportive, attentive, and helpful!

Submitting the final action plan report is believed to be the apotheosis of this Webskill course; however, the implementation of the plan seems to me the  highest point in the development of this course's outcome. I hope I will be able to put my plan into practice in my teaching setting prior to  the last teaching term of this year.

Hoping to interact with you, soon.

Week 7 Helping Each Other

Many things are occurring this week; and we will see the days quickly pass. We have this wonderful sharing experience with the class Padlet where all participants in this course become Wallwishers. There were already many things posted about Learner Autonomy and One Computer Classroom on the second day of this week. I personally consider this common page very enriching because you see and learn a lot (exaggerated!) at a glance. Students will also find it more fun to use if their teacher creates one for the class. Unfortunately, I have not done that, yet. 

Two new things (No! Two new people) that bring freshness to this course are Rachel's contribution to the course and a partner who will be peer- reviewing the final project to be implemented by the end of this course. I am thankful to them!

What I am planning to do this weekend, if time allows, is to read more previously- submitted final action plans (as Sean suggested to me) of former Webskills course participants, in addition to possible readings about PBL and peer- project tips so that I can have clear ideas of how to fine- tune my partner's project and mine.

I may want to start with this reading today: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED427556.pdf

Happy pair/peer- working!

Week 6 On a Second Thought...

On a second thought, after weighing the pros and cons before my dilemma to whether re-start my final project or continue what I have begun, I believe in continuing.

The refining of the final project for a course I will probably teach next term is in progress as follows:

The problem to solve, I had mentioned the week before last week, is that only pictures from magazines are available at Pre- Advanced students' disposal for picture analysis practice in class and outside class in my teaching setting.

What I plan to do in order to help my class solve that problem is the use of Google Images as an image search engine. I think it will be useful in resolving the issue because I can take my students to our computer lab when I plan to make them practice "picture analysis", and let them search for topic- based photos to be downloaded for later use. This lab session should logically go with my topic- based "picture analysis" lesson plan (including Pre-, While-, and Post- activities). This alternative will take the place of  old magazine picture use for students' practice in class that my teaching colleagues and I are used to.

This sixth week, I want to give more details about the lesson plan mentioned above.

To start with, every time I plan to have students practice picture analysis, a Pre- activity would be to discuss in class what topic/ situation the class is interested in this session. Once the topic is defined, students can go online using Google Images and search for pictures related to that topic. The question that remains unanswered is how my students will be able to analyze a picture if they are not taught/ trained to do so; the reply to that big question is: each session of picture analysis always comes with a skilled- based mini lesson, which helps students reach their goal. For example, if one session's focus is on accuracy for learning the basics of how to speculate on past/ present/ future events, students can go to  http://www.slideshare.net/eoi.soraya/modals-of-speculation  and http://english4all.pro.br/LEpastmodals.htm before getting photos to analyze at http://www.google.com/imghp . Other possibilities to introduce picture analysis to students, at the beginning of this classroom/ computer lab project are the resort to http://www.cyberbee.com/quicklessons/photo.html; http://english-tonight.com/8-ways-you-can-use-pictures-to-speak-better-english/ and http://efllecturer.blogspot.com/2011/09/describing-photos-comparing-contrasting.html . For students to be familiar with sentence- connectors, they are advised to go to https://elt.oup.com/student/solutions1stedition/ui_unit_page/unit7/grammar/exercise2?cc=us&selLanguage=en and (especially) http://www.eslbee.com/transitions_and_connectors.htm .

When students gradually feel comfortable analyzing pictures through those steps, the kind of follow-up activities they can have is like using this rubric, for them to measure themselves what efforts have been made and will be made:

This is how SS' work will be evaluated:

	Worth 5 points	Worth 3 points	Worth 1.5 points	TOTAL SCORE/ 35 points
What the chosen photo shows	setting + people + activity  (3 elements)	(2/3 elements)	People or setting only
What are described in audio	People and their feeling, place, time, activity (5 elements)	(3/ 5 elements)	Only 2 elements
How listener follows the narrative	Coherent and logical	Logical, but not coherent	No logic; no coherence
What are/ is speculated on	Possible past, present and future events (3 elements)	2/ 3 elements	Only one element
Vocabulary content	Extensive	Enough	Insufficient
Linking words	Frequently used	Fairly used	Scarcely used
Oral delivery	Very fluent and clear	Clear, but not fluent	Hardly understood

That is all I can give as far as this project is concerned.

Thanks for reading and commenting on it.