Week 6 Reflection

One's knowledge about teaching and learning increases day after day. This week is also full of wonderful things to learn. Here are some:

Reading :

Curiosity made me check that then I found it is very useful

http://tep.uoregon.edu/technology/blackboard/docs/Online_Assessment_Blackboard.pdf

The idea of Blackboard's Assessment which provides instructors with tools for building online assessments using different question types and can provide students with immediate feedback, are automatically graded (with the exception of essay questions), and scores are logged into the online Grade Center appealed to me so much and I will convince my school owners to adopt that.

The fact that It offers two assessment options : Tests: Tests are created to check the knowledge and skill level of students enrolled in the course. The tests option allows the instructor to assign point value and feedback to each question and that when a student completes a test it is submitted for grading. The results are recorded in the Grade Center automatically. Surveys: Surveys are useful for polling purposes, valuations, and random checks of knowledge. That is great!

Even being so honest Weighing The Pros and Cons to clarify what is nice and what might not appeal to some is to be taken into consideration.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS

Increase student engagement in the curriculum

Provide detailed and immediate feedback

A painless way to integrate technology

Location and time independent

Automatic score recording

More frequent assessments

A time-saver

Practice with technology-based test formats

Introduction of website and media

can

POTENTIAL PROBLEMS

Accessibility

Students require some technology skills

Cheating

Impersonality

Technology Problems

Time Commitment

But it comes with some Bright Ideas to help you do your work professionally.

The idea of Improving Lectures with Technology Successful Lectures with Computer Projection

at this site Center for Media and Educational Technologies Consulting group (CMET Consulting) &.Portable Computers and Projectors for Classrooms http://libweb.uoregon.edu/cmet/ Center for Media and Educational Technologies is also great to show to the school owners.

I was also so much interested in that part about Improving In-class Discussions and dividing them into Priming, Integrating, Reinforcing.Here is what Sherie & Jodi have been doing with us, I GOT THE SECRET :).

This pdf is amazing

http://tep.uoregon.edu/technology/blackboard/docs/discussionboard.pdf

Online educators who use discussion boards successfully estimate

that their interaction with students can be as much as three times

the interaction with face-to-face students, and that peer-to-peer

interaction is even many times more than that.

Sample Activities

Web Field Trips

Brainstorming

Problem-Solving

Writing Groups

Case Analysis

Collaborative Writing

Cooperative Debate

Discussions of Course Readings

Research Bank

research topic.

Worth reading and studying.

Also The Problems with Large Lecture-Style Classes

http://umbc.uoregon.edu/eteacher/webskills/material/engaging_students_handout.pdf

 Added a lot to my knowledge although it needs a lot of time to study and apply.

This part is also worth reading and studying:

Enhancing Lecture Classes

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/eli/osu-hedp/large_classes_engaging_students.html

Collaboration

Small-group Informal Learning Activities

Think-Pair-Share

Think-Pair-Square variation

ConcepTest

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/eli/osu-hedp/large_classes_engaging_students.html

Quick-thinks Re-order the steps

Paraphrase the idea

Correct the error

Support a statement

Minute paper

Scripted Cooperative Learning

Concept Maps

 

Presenting With PowerPoint

http://tep.uoregon.edu/technology/powerpoint/docs/presenting.pdf

The idea about Best Practices in Presenting with PowerPoint has also added a lot of ideas for me to take into account when giving a presentation:

Think about goals and purpose of handouts.

Minimize the number of slides.

Don't parrot PowerPoint.

Hold up your end.

Time your talk.

Give it a rest.

Mix up the media.

Hide your pointer.

Make it interactive.

Mix up the media.

Hide your pointer.

Rehearse before presenting.

and even Know Your Moves

These are so important steps that we all should do.

This week's material was so beneficial but it will be better to record and to revise from time to time later.

Good Luck to you all.

Week 5 Reflecion

It is great to learn everyday something new; I really do not this course to come to an end. We learn and learn for the sake of learning and to make our learners enjoy what they learn. This week we have learned about  Rubrics which are a wonderful way to clarify expectations for holistic grading, such as for writing or speaking. I like this sentence that "the rubric becomes a kind of contract between the teacher and the learners, so that learners know that if they do the things associated with "excellent" in the rubric, they will get an "excellent" mark." It is nice to imagine yourself signing a contract with your student on the terms and conditions of your work as a teacher. This really proved to me that the students are more motivated, and this really makes assessment is easier. It is also a great idea that students must get the rubrics when they begin the task. I have already decided to do that with them.
The article about Alternative learning; alternative assessment: http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/assessing/alternative.htm with Recommended Internet tool for creating rubrics: RubiStar http://rubistar.4teachers.org/
also proved to be very beneficial to me. Now I can create my own rubrics without waiting for my seniors to get them to me.
Second we learn something that appeals to me a lot  which is Project-based Learning (PBL).


Although I had some experience about it, this added a lot to my knowledge. I learn that "in PBL, learners are given instructions and resources (scaffolding), then they work in groups create a project. This is similar to problem-based learning, where learners work to come up with a solution to a specific, usually real-world, problem. If the task is authentic and the audience is broad, this is especially effective."

The article "Focus on Basics: Less Teaching and More Learning" by Susan Gaer gives some background information about project-based learning: http://www.ncsall.net/?id=385
I enjoyed it a lot too. She seems to be a professional teacher who is dedicated to her work.
Also The "Student Projects Sampler," also by Susan Gaer, provides a number of examples of webquest-style project-based learning: http://susangaer.com/studentprojects/
gave me a lot of ideas for what to do in the future about my projects and activities.



WebQuests which are a form of PBL that follows a fairly specific pattern where the teacher creates the task statement and designates the resources (learners do not "just search") and learners work in groups and have a specified product and the teacher produces an evaluation in the form of a rubric for students to use as they are doing their project and for self-evaluation when it is finished. The teacher evaluates with the rubric as well, also added to my career as a teacher, I created my own page on http://www.zunal.com/ and I am going to use more of this website in the future.
I love this course, and I am waiting for more to learn.

Week 4 Reflecion

Hello everyone,
This week has been a tough one for me and for Egyptians because of the unrest and the sad circumstances that Egypt is going through, but let's all pray to God that things become better and that peace and love prevails in Egypt and all over the world.
As for our work this week, I have learned again a lot of useful things about Skill-building Websites for Reading/Writing Skills and Technology-enhanced Lesson Plans."Technology Enhanced Lesson plans" from the University of South Carolina: http://www.ed.sc.edu/caw/lessons/lessons.html. This is a useful website with some lesson plans added, I liked some but frankly for some I did not think they were that nice, or they did not appeal to me. Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction (2000)http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krajka-WritingUsingNet.html 
and the Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books (2004) http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Liang-ExtensiveReading.html were also of good use to me to add to my knowledge.

This website Breaking News English  http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ was actually number one to me with listening activities and a full series (11 pages) of activities to use offline, including pre- and post- activities, pair and group work, vocabulary building, and more and other links that need a long time to explore, recommend and use, it deserved to be added to my Delicious page.
Other websites such as Lauri's ESL Website - grammar, vocabulary, listening exercises. The Flash ones are especially interesting. http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/ ESL Independent Study Lab - Michael Krauss http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html Activities for Students (be selective about what you choose) http://a4esl.org/ Many Interesting Things for ESL Students http://www.manythings.org/
and also the Additional Resources: E-mailing to Improve EFL Learners' Reading and Writing Abilities: Taiwan Experience (1999) http://iteslj.org/Articles/Liao-Emailing.html  Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension (2007) http://iteslj.org/Articles/Constantinescu-Vocabulary.html Microsoft's "Lesson Plans for Teachers" page, for augmenting your lesson with technology: http://www.microsoft.com/Education/en-us/teachers/plans/Pages/index.aspx. Though I did not have the chance to check every single link I find them useful for later use and worth being added to Delicious.
 The discussion board was full of ideas that are useful too and again it proves that two heads are better than one when you find that your classmates are always ready with new ideas. Thank you everybody.
The template of the lesson plan also proved to be very useful and it was great to read the lesson plans of  my classmates too and the nice comments of our instructors Sherie & Jodi that are always encouraging and informative that help one to learn from. 
Let's pray for peace and love to spread all over the world and let me add two more links to my favorite singer wishing all love and peace to everyone.

First We Need The Love - Zain Bhikha feat. Rashid Bhikha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9bPskkCvnc

Heal the World - Zain Bhikha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-59ngOqbCk 

 Hesham

Week 3 Reflecion

Week 3 Reflection

It is great to learn something new everyday, to be more accurate, every moment I read the stuff provided in the amazing online course. At first, Delicious.com Social Bookmarking. What a wonderful way to save your favorite web links online, share them with others, and have access to what others have saved and shared. I have always kept my nice favorites or bookmarks on words files and always sent them to my students or shared them on the Facebook, but it never occurred to me that there could be an easier way to keep them, categorize them, even divide them to some to be private and others to be public for everyone, this is awesome! This is also a good way to share bookmarks that everyone might find either students or teachers. Here is my link on Delicious. I promise to add more and share more of the nice links of my mates here.
Here is my page, go and check, my friends.
http://www.delicious.com/mrheshamenglish

This was actually my surprise of Week 2 reflection, but it turned to be outdated as I thought of creating a page on the Facebook or Blogger to share nice links that we all find and make it longer and longer day by day.

The three articles that I read and studied carefully also added a lot of ideas to me about improving my students’ pronunciation which is one of the biggest problems to non native speakers everywhere.

Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials (Word .doc file)
http://www.elthillside.com/up/files/article4.doc
New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation (right-click on the link to download it)
http://www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/bitstream/10077/2850/1/bus%C3%A0.pdf
The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills (right-click on the link to download it)
www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/research/resources/student_res/postscriptfiles/vol3/vol3_1_gong1.pdf

That was amazing, we were asked to choose one but I read them all and enjoyed them a lot.

Also the amazing links that were provided
Speaking lesson plans (teacher resource)
Speaking lesson plans at One Stop English

Conversation lesson plans at esl.about.com
Communicative lesson plans at ESL-galaxy.com

This helps a lot and one can refer to the other parts of these professional websites for more.

Also, Listening (student resource) such as Randall's Cyber Listening Lab: http://www.esl-lab.com/ , Listening RealEnglish video - advanced; multiple dialects. http://www.real-english.com/reo/1/unit1.html

and for  Pronunciation Robert's site of useful resources for teachers and students of pronunciation. https://sites.google.com/site/pronunciationstuff/ and the most amazing of all Pronunciation Tips from the BBC - exercises, videos, quizzes. This works best with teacher guidance. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/ all need hours or days to explore learn and give to student to learn.
For Speaking Best Sites to Practice Speaking English (Larry Ferlazzo) - high use of tech. It is a teacher site, not a student site. http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/the-best-sites-to-practice-speaking-english/  and the Additional Resources all added a lot to my knowledge.
Reading the final project report, and commenting on that report in nicenet and describing what the person did in his/her project, and discussing what I liked about the project gave me a good chance to think of my project too and to learn from previous experiences pros and cons and to draw an image to what I am going to do. I hope all my friends here had similar opinion and I hope that we keep learning and helping one another even after the course ends. 
Wish You all the best in life.
Hesham, Egypt

Week 2 Reflection

As I always say and tell myself and others, "We live and learn", "Never too old to learn." It never occurred to me that searching for information on the internet would be an important topic to discuss. Now after many years of using the internet in nearly everything and every day, I learn how to use the net for searching professionally this time. The week starts by learning ABCD, this time it is not the alphabet, it is The A.B.C.D. method of Writing Objectives. I liked the two quotes,

Jones, 1997 – "Clear objectives can help the instructor design lessons that will be easier for the student to comprehend and the teacher to evaluate".

Lohr, no date – "A properly written objective tells you what specific knowledge, skill, or attitude is desired and what method of instruction and criteria for learner achievement are required."

This is one of the most important things of what we have been learning at the AUC since I started my studies their (The Can-dos of the students and teachers objectives of each task assigned.)

The idea of deciding Audience, Behavior, Condition and Degree of your learners before you start in this link , http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/ , is essential.

Also, Typical Problems Encountered When Writing Objectives and the idea of Blooms taxonomy has inspired me a lot when thinking of objectives of my tasks in my classes.

The part I liked a lot was this page

http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/classifications.html

About Classifying Objectives. According to Bloom's Taxonomy, there are six levels of learning are in the classification. The lowest level is remembering. The remembering level is followed by five increasingly difficult levels of mental abilities: understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating (the highest level).

To my disappointment, I discovered that in a lot of Egyptian schools we deal with remembering which is the lowest level and when we feel we did something great we move a step up toward understanding and applying, thus, neglecting and even not encouraging creativity.  Hopefully in the future, I am going to reconsider that to reach creating which is the highest level.

 The next great think that I have learned is how to search the net in the right way. "Hey, Mr. GOOGLE, you are not my main and only way to search anymore! :)" I said to myself. There are better ways to do that.

http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html

Here is the way to do things.  You can "Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need", to decide as they said it. I love this website which gave me ideas that are useful to me and to my students. There are many other websites for searching other than Google.

Also the idea of thinking about my project, to think about a class that would benefit from making a technology-inspired change, and to describe my students and class setting now and how it will be later discussing  the technology I and my students have access to now, both in and outside of school and thinking of how it will be later has inspired a lot of ideas later which are ……..

Let it be a surprise ….

Next episode … :) I wish you all the best in life.

Week 1 Reflections

It is a great feeling to feel like a student from time to time. Though I have been working as a teacher for about 17 years now, still doing some studies, doing some online, a teacher and a student on the same day, I love that, “Never too old to learn.” So far I have learned from nearly everything in this course, even the course description. The plan of the page with very clear and well organized points, the learning objectives for each week, the readings, the  Ground rules for discussions gave me ideas to use in my class, even the online discussions - comparing rubrics shows the professionalism of those who prepared the. Creating a blog at Blogger gave me more ideas on how to make another blog for my students as I am always in contact with them through the Facebook, email and my previous blog, (http://mrheshamenglish.wordpress.com/) yet this gave me more ideas to do later. Also Blogging for ELT http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/blogging-elt, this was great as to show the benefits of having a teacher’s blog then one for the class and personal ones for the students with great ideas and extra links. This will prove to be of great use to my classes in the future. I have enjoying every bit of my work so far and I hope we will all be working for the good of all students all over the world.