WEEK 10: Final Thought about Building the webskills Course

From week 1 to week 10, the days have flown so fast. These 10 weeks have been  full  of learning experiences and explorations. I have discovered a great deal of useful ressources which I have already started using in my classes. 

What I like about the course was the instructor raised awareness about teaching through webskills principles and direct classroom use. We started from the techniques of searching online to assessment and review tools to the learning philosophies and review of teaching the four skills  from the perspective of a teacher who wants to use the web as ressources, nothing has been left out. That is why, I felt I had no respite, but all for good. Although all the topics, that were raised thoughout the course are important and complementary, I favour much the topic of creating student centered activities and th use of powerpoint in class as a teaching tool. This is among my midterm objectives personal development.    I would like to learn a bit more about VBA and produce a few more power point presentation because it is timesaving and there are lots of interactions we can build from its integration. I hope to be able to do that during  the holidays. 

I think one of the challenges about successful online teaching is  how to teach speaking  communicatively using web ressources. This issue has been touched on in the previous week, and this has been the inspiration source of my final project. 

What is wonderful about the course is that at every step of the weekly progress, I have been able to push my limit in teaching with the webskills. I have really gone strides with the use of google website. Even though I am a beginner with it, I have started using it and it has tremendously helped me manage more efficiently an adult class I am currently teaching. I think the use of a google website can be very useful if coupled with a face to face classroom teaching. It can help reduce things that are important to the students but which can be taken care of by the students with little or no teacher intervention. 

A word to my classmates

You all have been wonderful. I have learnt a lot from you all,  and I am looking forward to more exchange opportunity from all the class participants:

To our Teacher Robert

I would like to thank Robert for his help. You have done a marvellous job. Thank you for opening my eyes and helping me improve professionally.

WEEK 9: Learning Styles and Final report

This week was the time to trim my project draft into a final report. Luckily enough this course is so well planned that in the previous weeks I have done the most important parts of the job.

I was glad to be able to submit the project on time as I was too busy coordinating the cultural weekend of our school. In the last couple of weeks I was working with the English club helping them to rehearse a play, a song and poems. I was also coordinating major events with the students government and it's  organization commitee for our Friday and Saturday events. I just had the time to skim over the reading assignements about learning styles. Basically it's about using different learning channel to help our students succeed in their leaning. I think one way I can apply the principles of learning styles with technolgy is to design mini group work project. For example, to address the kinesthetic learning styles, I can devise hands on activities like model building  and ask students to prepare a how to video and upload it on youtube. For visual and auditory learners I would favour the use of video clip and movies or cartoons in class.In general I think video can use it as a language input source. I can use video use techniques like "sound off", " no picture" or "freeze" to stress on one or the other learning styles. In case of a movie or a clip, the students can make reviews and discuss a topic.

WEEK 8: Online tools to enhance learning and Drafts Peer Review

 This week we were required to use an online tool for teaching while writing and improving our first drafts. We went on implementing, our lesson and managed to collect some imformation. Working in the lab was not easy because for some reason the students could not work simultaenously on the ten computer hosts. 
We end up turning off five of them but their were sucessful in doing the job. After I started working and reading documents uploaded by my partner Zainab, from Oman.
When I was writing my draft I considered how the rubric questions guided us towards successful completion of our projects. 
The rubric has been very helpful in that it helped me bridge implementation issues  to my lesson ojectives, my teaching strategy. And it becomes clear to me that, when designing an online lesson, a teacher can conceive the theoretical framework and the teaching principles upon which the lesson will be grounded but it is vital that the teacher anticipates on problems scenarios that may occur during the implementation phasis. This can range from:
finding adequate  schedule for the students
identifying the place where learner will use the ressources.
technical issues related to hardware configurations, internet connection.
identifying levels of expertise of the students and more.
Mapping out these issues is important because the success of the lesson depends to a large extent on those elements.

In my opinion, some solutions include:

• planning ahead of time, the ideal period, if you know the class you are going to teach is a few weeks before the class. 
• finding strategies to have access to the lab on a regular basis if the students don't have access to computers or internet.  
• downloading resources and making them available to them as my partner Zainab has done.

After reading my partner's project which is about helping students improve their pronunciation. I notice that we were working on overlapping skills. It 's like choose different routes and putting more enphasis on some aspects rather than the others. As my objective was to help my students prepare for an oral exam using the resources of the internet, I noticed that whichever resource I needed to use, had to provide some sample of audio or pronunciation of the target language to be effective. 
I believe that by helping her students improve their pronunciations, he is somehow giving them tools to be better speakers.

For the online tool use.

There are sundry of good tools online but I think the purpose and the student's needs should determine the choice: 
I have created a google webstite for adult learner because we needed a class to share general classroom information. 
Second, google website allow much flexibility to integrate almost anything with the use of HTML code placeholders and Javascipt gadgets. It gives room to add lots of teaching gadgets. For example because I want to promote my learners' autonomy with respect to choosing and sharing resources for an assigned oral presentation, I added  a padlet   to share those information.
The use of flash based games  and exercice software generators like hotpotatoes,  vocabulary factory,  jclic, can be used as teaching aids both online and offline. 

WEEK7: Learner Autonomy and One computer classroom

Learner autonomy

This week we have read articles about learner autonomy. A rather simplistic view about learner autonomy is to enable the students to take in charge of their own learning. This involves raising awareness about their learning styles and strategies as Dimitirous menntions in his article what is learner Autonomy and how can it be fostered?

Keeping these ideas in mind, I would try in my class, this approach in my class.
Informative mini project ( inform us about ______________)



On a given language teaching point, I would ask them which skills they would like to work on.

Pair up the students by productive skills to receptive skills

reading speaking

reading writing
listening speaking
listening writing
listening reading

2. After that I give guidelines or tips to perform the task (depending their levels of mastery)
3. I let them produce their final task. (perform or post)
4. Once their produce I can team the students to review the work by providing a template( find 2 positive aspects)

5. Peer teaching: This time, the students will help their peers turn their final product into another skills area where they must have a problem.

This can be conceptualized by using some of the tools we have explored in this webskills class like (powerpoint presentation and or webquest tool)


 NB: Other peer review considerations are possible.

Please make comments and suggestions.




I love this tool/ A Padlet

Please, can you share with me basic information about your project. You could include the title, skills address and the number of students and the Flag of your country. Thanks a lot!

Created with Padlet

WEEK 6: Learning the Robot languages to enhance Language Teaching

This week we have been insanely busy. Among the assigments we were ask to design an enhanced lesson using powerpoint. Another readings probed into the effective stragegies to teach in large classes context. This week I wanted to explore a bit more the possibilities of using Vba to deal with powerpoint presentation. I am quite familiar with hyper linking and that the use of vector images in powerpoint but I thought that some software like abobe or hotpotatoes or platforms such as moodle  offered the easiest way to design quick multiple choice, drag and drop or yes no question traditional activities. This week I was lucky to have a coach to walk me through  the understanding of Vba, and now I think I will consider more this route when making my presentations as it can save a tremendous amount of time. I have caught the virus so to speak. The presentation is available on the wiki.

The other learning experience I have had this week was to skim other the AIML language for the need of my project. AIML is an xml based language used to code the chatbot language. A couple of years ago I came a cross the A.L.I.C.E chatbot. This robot was created by Dr Richard Wallace. Even though I had ideas about using it, I was waiting for a real opportunity to use it. It came with my project which is to give my students more speaking oportunities inside and outside the classroom using web resources. I know it's a very challenging task that's why I would like to give it a try. It's a really interesting topic let's see what the implementattion will yield.

WEEK 5: Alternative Assessment

THOU TEATCHETH THOU SHALT ...
                                                                                                       "Assess alternatively"

Throughout the years, language practitioners have probed into many concepts related to the domain of Testing and Evaluation. These include Summative Assessment, Formative Assessment, Standardized Testing. This weeks reading assignment article develop one such concept of Assessment which is Aternative Assessment. But before making a summary of that article let us give a meaning to the notion of Assessment. Assessment can be understood as the process of making judgment about specific aspects of behaviour, consists of a set of skills by which determines whether or not the learner has mastered the objectives established. (FASTEF training Portefolio 2006)  

The article Assessing Learning, Alternative assessment, exposes the main features or distinctive traits of alternative Assessment. They can be summed up as follow:

Focus on the students’ strengths rather than weaknesses
Authentic tasks for communication goals
Focus on communication, not correctness 
More active role of learners in  assessment criteria determination
Oriented towards learner self-assessment and  peer assessment 
  

• 
  

  This approach to assesment has been further explained in the same article in the critereria to Aternative assessment authentic  Activities design section. The following diagram attempts to represent the relationship between Atlterative assessment and those key principles.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

 
Looking at this diagram, it apprears that alternative assessment caters more for the need of a communicative and learner centered orientation of assessement. While assessment responsability solely resided on the teacher side, alternative assessment integrates an inclusive, progressive and communicative dimension to assessment. But, what are the assessment tools of this framework?

The two commonly used tools for alternative assessment are Checklists and Rubrics.

These are really important tools in the hands of both the learners and the teachers. For the groups, the checklist can serve as a guideline against which the steps to complete for a given project, activity or assignement are to be checked. They are are less descriptive and than rubrics. 

Rubrics on the other hand can be used for many purposes. They have been used in language teaching for diagnostic purposes or errors identification. They have come more into fashion with the development of online learning activities such as webquests. These tools are really handy when conducting a Project basedd learning (PBL). One advantage they have is they can enable students to keep tracks of their progress. Second, following the principles of Alternative Assessement, learners can participate in the determination of the evaluation criteria and cast  reflective thoughts about their own progress and learning skills. By designing a rubric, the teacher can control the level of expertise and difficulty required to perform some tasks and evaluate the learners accordingly.

According to the article,  Assessing Learning, Alternative assessment, rubrics can be grouped into four types which are:

1. Holistic rubrics 
2. Analytical rubrics 
3. Primary traits rubrics 
4. Multitraits rubrics

 The chart below attempts to repertoriate the different aspects of those rubrics.

TYPES OF RUBRICS	Purpose	Advantages	Limitations
Holistic rubrics	Holistic assessment of language	mostly suitable for large scale	Not precise when evaluating  separate or discreet learners problem
Analytic rubrics	Analytic assessment of students’ performance	Offers an analysis of different dimensions of the learner’s performance multiple weighting and separate scoring	non holistic approach Requires more preparation
Primary trait rubrics :	Focus on one criterion	Easy and quick to grade writing or speaking	Information  may not easily translated into grades. need constant adaptation of dimensions if to be reused for a different task (cf : Types of rubrics: Primary Trait and Multiple Trait )
Multitrait rubrics:	Enables the multiple traits rating related to tasks	allow separate scoring Scoring related to task features	Too much focus on the task may be to the detriment of the language dimensions May be more time consuming to prepare and analyze

Please help to improve this chart!

WEEK 5: Webquest and Project based learning

The advent of the techonogy and digital era has revolutionarize the way we perceive reading, writing and the way we search for information. In his article overview of Reading, Writing, and Thinking in an age of Electronic Lietaracy,  William Costanzo  draws on the various research to contend a novel perception about reading and writing through the use of technology. Comparing paper based text to computerized text, he comments as follows on the flexibilty that offers digital text format:

"...By contrast, electronic texts have no set boundaries. Represented in the computer circuitry as moveable bits of data, they can always be expanded, condensed, or ressembled in new configurations. Furthermore, it is as easy to jump between two non-consequitive pages as it is to move in sequence. This is the concept behind hypertext."

 (Selfe and Susan Hilligoss, ed, p 12)

Webquest tap into the very ressources of hypertexting or hyperlinking. Webquest allows teachers to target specific ressources from the web and through the use of weblinks assign different tasks to the learners. Even though there is a typical form for a webquest, many practitioners have adopted the idea more than the form. Therefore some online project may use the hyperlink ressources without incorporating other essential parts such as an evaluation grid,. The question is to what extent can such online webquest-like project be called a webquest?  Furthemore, webquests also make use of the collaborative environment that online platforms offer to link online reseach and Project based Learning.

Issues of design can arise also depending of the learners familiarity with the internet. This is very important specially regarding the method of including link. How much depth should there be in relation to the information to be fetched? Should the new pages open in new windows or not?

value and reliability of website

Here is a webquest I designed  for teachers to learn about webquest. The title is Learning about Webquests The target population is a group of 25 teachers. Most of them have little or no webskills. They context is a English Cell meeting.  I had developped materials related to this but teachers did not do the actual research do to inadequacy of the venue. So I rather used the backup plan which was to present the information with a video projector and distribute the worksheets for groupwork and discussion.

NB:  This webquest is a cell meeting presentation I made after attending the ATES (Association of Teachers of English) convention  in Saint Louis, Senegal, Dec, 2012. I was inspired  by Dr Moussa Coulibaly, researcher at UGB (Gaston Berger University), who presented on "Another way of Making Good Use of the Internet". It's  where I  first watched the video ressources which I am using for my webquest.

Some useful websites where to get free ressources for webquest design:

http://zunal.com: It a website where teachers can have access to templates after registering themselves.

 

http://www.webquest.org/

Week 4 Teaching The four Skills through the web

Week Four: We have been busy reading various articles related to the four skills, mainly Reading, Writing and also the subskill of teaching vocabulary.

Two of such articles I have read focus respectively on reading and reviewing articles about the teaching of reading and writing. The first article about writing by (Jarek & al), Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction, makes a brief summary of previous reseach done in the field of  writing in C.A.L.L. Then its writers address a few issues that impact on CALL implemention. Those include, the classroom settings, the techology materials available, the classroom teaching hours. With respect to the latter, the writer suggests that 4 to six hours be used to teach writing online to secondary school students.
Some advantages to using C.A.L.L for writing in the classes are manifolds. I do aggree with (Jarek & al), who believe that: First it helps to break from classroom routine. Second it brings authenticity in the class. It can promote peer reviewing and collaboration. The reason is the internet abound with suitable resources and webpages with ready made reading activities. The multi-skill building websites we have been referred to includes many of such examples. The http://www.rong-chang.com/reading.htm website and manythings.org are a few of these. Second, the variety of resources will enable the learners to exploit them individually and share with the class. 

But teaching writing specially with large classes poses that problem of giving approriate and timely feedback to the students. This challenge looms up at the very beginning for the preparation of CALL writing instruction. Most of the time the teacher has to help or set up  accounts for all the studetnts. As this may be daunting the teacher should resort to other methods of managing the accounts. This can be detremental to the amount of practice the students may receive. 

The approach  for the improvement of writing is oriented to the genre. Below is a list of genres mentioned

 

•  Letter writing (Friendly) 
• Formal letter (reaction to an issue) Biography 
• Argumentative Essay writing: (For or against) 
• Festival and ceremony description 
• Book or film review 
• Newspaper report

 

Three techniques that can be used to enhance students' perfomance in writing include: Emailing, key paling and webpublishing, according to the authors' article. I particularly find Key paling very interesting and motivating for student. It involves students to exchange or collaborate with their peers from  different horizons. Howver careful planning can be crucial for the success of such activities.  

The second paper I read is entitled Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books. The article taps through the different possibilites teachers can use ebooks to improve the reading skill. It follows the pattern of choosing, reading and evaluating. 

CHOOSING

1. The teacher provides links to a certain number of ebooks.
2.  The students use a study guide temple to decide on the choice of three books. 
3. The students vote for the three best books to read. 

READING

1. In groups of three, the students use the study guide to exploit book
2.  Students read and report online or in class

EVALUATION

1. Groups review the books according to a standard
2. Groups give feedback online

from  Mei-Ya Liang's article Three Extensive Reading Activities

Note on the readings and my Technology Enhanced Lesson Plan:

Among the assignments this week we were required to compose a lesson plan, using a template. My lesson plan draws many ideas from what I have read. It's a blend of ideas from both articles.  The lesson plan was aimed at teaching writing with a Pre-intermedate class. Following a genre approach I target a website with biographies. Then I tried to use it a first hand resource for the students.  In groups, students  will have to read a biography and complete a chart which will enable them to rewrite the biography without copying whole passage. In a final step, they will have to discuss in group to submit an online survay which will serve as a review for another groups biography.