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.

Week 6 Busy Refining Project and PowerPointing!

It may sound weird that I have been busy working on refining my final project for this Webskill and on an Interactive Powerpoint since Wednesday this week whereas nothing has been done well. Based on what was done last week, the project seems to be unsatisfactory for there were details I did not get into. Now, I am questioning myself whether to continue what I have done or to restart the Webquest I began the implementation of, last week. The thing is that my final project and Webquest are dependent on each other. Nevertheless, I keep faith that "Everything's gonna be all right!"; I am sometimes a Bob Marley follower to a certain extent.

Regarding the Powerpoint task of this week, I was overwhelmed by its interactive side since it was a little challenging for me. For that, I really need your support by giving me tips and comment on how I can enhance the way I design my Interactice Powerpoint lesson, which is now in our class's Wiki. I still struggle to use Powerpoint and am far from being professional in designing lessons using this tool, because the only thing  I often do with Powerpoint is photo slides. I sometimes tell students to use Powerpoint for their oral presentations whereas their teacher is not an expert in it. I entirely agree with the author of The Journal's article entitled "Creating an Interactive PowerPoint Lesson for the Classroom", found at http://thejournal.com/Articles/2000/08/01/Creating-an-Interactive-PowerPoint-lesson-for-the-classroom/, saying that "If students use technology to learn, teachers should use the same technology to teach". That is the right thing to do! What do you think?

To conclude, this week's experience has put myself in the shoes of my students as a beginning learner for I had to learn everything about Powerpoint this time. I understand how difficult it is for our students to be introduced something new because "new" means "unkown"; and "unknown" is tantamount to "difficult".

Looking forward to your comments and thoughts.

Thanks for reading me. 

Week 5 Webquests and Rubrics

Despite my delay on posting my thoughts regarding PBL (Project- Based Learning) and alternative assessment, I suppose I have caught up on what is happening on Nicenet, now.

We are half- way through this ten- week- long semi- marathon in Webskills. The actual marathon will be the implementation of a Technology- Based Learning Project in my teaching setting.

This week has taught me to lay other foundation stones to my teaching in an innovative way for two reasons: first, using a well- designed Webquest based on students' needs is self- rewarding to both students and teacher because the main objective of the two of them is actual learning; second, resorting to rubrics makes both students and teacher reassured about what are eventually expected in the learning process.

What I liked the most in this fifth week was creating a rubric with Rubistar, which facilitates the procedures of doing it. If you want to have a look at my simple rubric sample, the link is http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=2405809&

The extra task on starting to create a Webquest for a particular class was a new learning experience for me although I found myself awkward following the different steps of it. Actually, it is a hands- on activity-- we learn by doing. I hope you will give your feedback on my quest that you can view at http://questgarden.com/q/pixD

Thanks for reading me.