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/