Week 8: Teacher Resources Online

A good education is like a savings account; the more you put into it, the richer you are.

I have experienced the effect of motivation during the course time and again. I am at the primary stage of learning webs kills as compared to all other students in the course. I have been greatly encouraged in all my attempts by the course instructor Robert Elliot right from the first week. This week my confidence level was much boosted as I received very positive comments from the peer reviewer Colomba RAZANADRAIBE for my 1^st draft- an outline – of the proposed project. Her suggestions are very insightful and I will be working upon them now as I prepare the final draft.

The preparation of the first draft was a stressful activity since I had to visualize, plan out and write a descriptive account of the proposed plan. Preparation of tasks, sequencing them in an order creating relevant additional documents, all this was to be managed within the time limit. As I see review my WebQuest once again I see lot of possibilities for changes and improvement. It is difficult to achieve perfection or let me put it this way: is it possible to be prefect in teaching? Is n’t there always a scope for further improvement?

I prepared the ‘Invitation to join ‘Listen and learn class’ form as part of task preparation this week. As I tried Google Docs I was just fascinated by the range of facilities available there. I am sure   this website is good enough to make a teacher most resourceful and innovative in the use of technology based tools in the class. The world of web is amazing and unlimited in scope.

Kinnari    

Week 7: Learner autonomy and one computer class room

Dear All,

I was always under impression that it is  difficult to foster learner autonomy in a large class.This week as I went on reading different posts in the discussion thread I came to know about many techniques. I realized that while working in the most traditional set up also one can try out various strategies in favor of students'   active participation and learning. The ESL teachers have started trying them to a lesser or greater extent under the CLT movement and as a result the overall competence level at English has gone up much in the developing countries. All the posts on 'one computer class' were also equally informative. I could not manage to respond there.

Time management was really very difficult this week. There was Diwali and New Year celebrations in Gujarat. I worked with full concentration of  Final Project Proposal writing and preparing a lesson plan on WebQuest. I have been able to prepare one finally after lot of brain storming and trial and error on www.zunal.com

Now I understand that in a country with large population and very  limited resources in the class rooms, it is very difficult to bring curricular changes. The change is taking place but at a very slow pace. For example, I could find only a only one university from India having a number of video recordings  suitable to my purpose.

Nicenet server is down. I was really disturbed and could not decide how to continue.

I am busy giving final touches to the report and will soon send it to my partner.

Kinnari

Week 6 : Creating Student-centered Classes and Interactive PowerPoint

I have planned for an EAP project. It will cover the aspects of academic lecture listening and lecture note taking for university level students who study English as their second language.

This week as part of preparations for the project proposal, when I started gathering more resources, I could find useful resources for lecture note taking. Now I have a small list of useful websites as resource for academic lectures. I must thank to Robert for sharing the websites.

The process of change is always slow in class teaching. The teacher works at multiple levels. One has to find out alternatives and make appropriate choices at every stage in order to introduce a change. When I started exploring websites for listening, I could see that there are very limited choices available for materials selection suitable to the background of my students. Either there is difference in language efficiency level or the content areas of podcasts and videos. I wish to select the materials related to their commerce curriculum, if possible, in order to generate their interest in this project. Although there is a difference in accent, reduced forms, speed of speaking, and lecture organization in the recorded e-materials and the local oral practices, I would consider it as strength of the project rather than a limitation. Rather it will help me to expose my students to a different variety of English. I think WebQuest is a good alternative for implementing change. I am trying to develop a lesson plan on WebQuest focusing on both the aspects simultaneously: academic lectures and note taking. I think I will be able to develop a satisfactory one within a few days.

It was a good learning experience for me to prepare an interactive power point presentation. It involved along process. Appropriate topic selection for a visually appealing presentation, finding out resources from net, organization in points and sub points, and proper hyperlinking.

Technology is a very good supportive tool but in demands huge amount of planning and preparation time on the part of the teacher. Things do not happen as per planning in actual practice. A teacher will foresee the situation of technological breakdown or disciplinary problems in the large classes. But time management at the personal level is a great challenge these days. There is hardly any assistance or support available from administration. Whatever technological tool one may select, whether email, ppt or other tools, it is a great challenge for an ESL teacher in a developing country, working in a traditional environment with limited resources.

Inspite of the situation as above, the ELT scenario in India is fast changing due to globalization. It is all due to increasing use of technology. Teachers have a great role in bringing about a change in the society.

Now we have our great festival of Diwali- the festival of light. It is the beginning of a new year in Gujarat.Let there be peace, prosperity and enlightenment in everybody’s life.

 

Kinnari

Week 5:Project-based Learning, WebQuests, and rubrics

This week I got an opportunity to learn in detail about Project Based Learning (PBL) and alternative assessment. There is an upcoming trend in India towards teaching through PBL. It has been incorporated in some of the state and central education boards’ syllabus. There are mixed responses. The common practice at the school level is that the topic is identified by the teacher and is assigned as home work for independent studies to the student. There is hardly any guidance given to the student during the preparation process. The parents are skeptical about the effectiveness of this approach since as per the current practice, they act as major support for their child for project preparation. Thus there is a huge gap between the theory and practice. I have proposed to prepare the final project following PBL to try to examine how this concept can be actually incorporated in teaching.

I prepared a rubric on RubiStar on ‘Press report writing’ It was a tough job identifying the areas of assessment and preparing the rubric. As part of the assignment preparation I visited NCLRC website I found it extremely informative. There is a possibility of getting the traditional tests either readymade online or in the books and so it reduces teacher’s job. However, preparing checklist or rubric could be much more interesting and desirable because such tools prove to be a source of guidance for the students as well as teacher for achieving the task related objective.

I did try to access WebQuest for the purpose of preparing a lesson plan but I found it tough. I think I will keep trying it and eventually might come up with a satisfactory lesson plan.

Looking to the topics learnt during the last five weeks I am sure that in the weeks to come, I will certainly be more confident about using web skills for the purpose of language teaching.  

 

Kinnari