Week 5 Solutions

This week I discovered the notion of alternative assessment and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of PBL. I was glad I could share my forum rubrics with my coursemates. It was interesting to see what kinds of assessment could be used by my colleagues. The rubistar website is a great invention itself as it allows teachers to get access any types of rubrics.

Finally, I had an opportunity to share my solutions for the issues mentioned last week. The links I would like to use are www.prezi.com and www.squidoo.com. Now I need to decide which one would be more profitable for my class. Both would be too many, probably!

Moreover, I would like to share with you this video "Filter Bubbles". It made me wonder what kind of information we actually get and who decides what to "absorb".

Have a wonderful weekend and a very easy week!

Tatsiana

Week 4 Planning

Hi all,

For me, Week 4 was a lot about planning. I planned a CALL lesson, outlined the problems in our classrooms, evaluated websites for future lessons, etc. Planning a lesson was a bit of a challenge as I'm used to f2f classes or online classes only and I've never had a chance to plan "mixed" lessons. This involved a lot of reflexion and analysing of the means and resources I could use, their compatibility and value for the class. The other thing I found not easy was to outline the problems and NOT to give the solutions. I'm a very active person and when I see a problem I always try to find the way to solve it. During this week, I was given a chance to practice a different attitude to life - a more relaxed one! Moreover, I must admit I enjoyed reading the articles and analysing the websites, which I find most attractive in this course. I copy the links in my delicious page or bookmark them so that I could use them in my future work.

It's all about planning! (Some further advice for teachers on planning:)

And a piece of unrelated to teaching music: Croatican Rapsody by Maksim Mrvica.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Tatsiana

Week 3 Be Yourself

During Week 3, I created the Delicious page and added my favourite bookmarks there, discovered the alternatives to this website (diigo, zootool, etc) and the link to the website “Englishbaby” which I can use for my online classes and as an advice for my students for the future. Moreover, I read the article on speaking skills “The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills” and investigated the websites on teaching speaking in Larry Ferlazzo's blog. All the resources I've come across this week, I'm going to pass to my students so that they could use them for the independant/autonomous study. In addition, I analysed the sample project by Aleyda Linares, which was very useful for me. Now I have an idea what my project could be about and I know it should be something the least scary and least complicated for instructors and students.

Here is a very interesting link for your reflexion: How Language Transformed Humanity by Mark Pagel.

And the song... to remember we should always stay ourselves... as other roles have already been taken! (c) Be Yourself!

Week 2 Describing

This week was full of descriptions. I described 2 classes, abcd objectives and analysed the search engines. It was very interesting to compare classed in different countries: their size, name of subjects, level of students. However, the abcd objectives seem to be the same everywhere: grammar and vocabulary practice, need in mastering of speaking and writing skills, etc. I believe it will be even more interesting to see which tools my coursemates will choose to satisfy these objectives.

The majority of my coursemates agreed that the most popular search tools are youtube and google, we use them mechanically, not realizing there are other options. These options can be much more accurate, productive, and reliable. My groupmates research results proved that once again. Finally, I would like you to watch this video.

Did you know that technology changes the world? It has already.