A Million Thank You's to Everybody

Tech Log Week 10

Well, our voyage is drawing to a close. It’s time to pack our things, keep all the wonderful moments we’ve spent together as valuable souvenirs, and go back to our daily lives knowing that nothing will be the same again!

The luggage is heavier now, due to the tremendous weight of newly acquired knowledge and all the experiences we carry with us. Images of memorable times spent with new friends will pervade our memory forever. Thanks to our shipmaster’s (Donna Shaw’s) guidance we managed to arrive safely at our new destination: Innovation and Change through Technology (ICT Land!).

It has been a long voyage, with many places to explore - Webquests, Interactive PowerPoints, ANVILL, Learning Styles, Rubrics, ABCD Models, Lesson plans, Wikis, Nicenet, and many, many more – and we always found a safe harbor in all of them. Even if we had already visited a place, it was always gratifying to pay it a new visit and discover new things to do and ways to explore it. I couldn’t have wished for a better voyage! Everything was special, valuable and useful! I can’t wait to put it into practice.

If there were any other places I wanted to visit and explore? Well, certainly there were, as the way to ICT Land is full of wonderful surprises, but the most important is that I received a map with a lot of highlighted routes to follow on my own. Am I not an autonomous learner now?

It’s time to say goodbye but I’ll keep you all in my heart! Thank you for the excellent time we spent together!

Digital World: Teachers Today

Giving Advice

Last Week!

It's Project Day!

Tech Log Week 9

Already week 9! It’s hard to believe we have been together in this voyage for two months now. A week and a half to go, it’s all that’s left. So, let’s enjoy the rest the best we can!

For this week, the discussion focused on Learning Styles and Technology. Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory was not new to me; in fact it had already changed my way of teaching several years ago. I started paying more attention to my students as individuals and not just “bodies” that were sitting in front of me having to learn in exactly the same way. But MI Theory changed me in the first place! I’ve always been a reflective person. I like to think about my actions and analyze what I say and do (pretty annoying sometimes!! LOL) and understanding what my strengths and weaknesses are helps me become a better teacher. When I realized I taught according to my own strongest learning styles I understood what was keeping me away from some students. I couldn’t reach them because I didn’t understand them. From then on, I always tried to integrate activities for all learning styles in my lessons. I deeply understand bodily-kinesthetic students and I think these are perhaps the hardest to “please”. Sometimes there isn’t enough movement in our lessons, I believe. But if we change rooms and have some activities outdoors or just ask them to go somewhere and do something that will be enough. Using technology makes it easier to work with all learning styles. Each student may choose the best option for himself/herself or we can design activities to meet all intelligences. The charts included in this week’s readings give us excellent ideas and Dee Dickinson’s article presents some programs and projects that may also be explored in our classes.

This week we had to post our final project plans. Mission accomplished! It’s been fantastic working with Laura and Natalya and they gave me precious suggestions to improve my Plan. I’m looking forward to receiving Donna’s feedback and to have a chance to implement my Plan.

Learning Styles

Tech Log Week 8

This has been a pretty hard week for me, having to conciliate family holidays with work. It hasn’t been easy I tell you, but I still managed to do things, a bit late this week, but I tried to do my very best.

I really enjoyed working collaboratively with Natalya and Laura-Cristiana. They gave me valuable suggestions and I tried to analyze their Project Plans the best I could in order to help them with their final plans. As our Projects are very different, it was great reading the excellent ideas they have to use technology in class. I think this way everybody gains new insights into classroom technology use. I loved using the checklist, an excellent way to have our students assess their schoolmates, as we had already seen in previous weeks.

The Discussion and the Week Task were deeply related and I consider them to be a sort of wrap-up of this course: the importance of technology to develop autonomous learners and how to create more opportunities to use it in the classroom. I have written so much about this topic that I’m running out of ideas! :-) After all, this is week 8 and we’re coming to an end. It’s only natural that we feel much has already been said… and done!

I created a wiki for my future project and had fun discovering how to work with it. I also created a class on Nicenet and posted the first assignment. These are just drafts as everything will have to be carefully planned and organized before I can start the Project. We’ll see what will happen in a year, when I start implementing the Project.

I loved experimenting with the new tools suggested for this week. I knew some of them and had already created some materials, but I loved ANVILL and EasyTestMaker, for example. I hope we will have a chance to try some of ANVILL’s features. ;-) It’s a great way to have students practice their aural/oral skills and I think it’s awesome that it doesn’t emphasize the importance of having role models! The most important is just to communicate!

I already knew Tools for Educators, but I had never used the Comic Strip Dialogue Maker, so I had fun creating a dialogue. Hope you like it!

Summer Holidays!

Tomorrow is THE DAY!!

A Tribute to Partnership

Tech Log Week 7

This is a different week for me! I’m finally leaving to enjoy my well deserved HOLIDAYS!!!

However I’ll take everything with me to continue working! I have no idea what I’ll manage to do, but I’ll try hard not to fall behind in my work!

Weeks 6 and 7 (so far) have been mostly dedicated to creating my Project Plan. It’s giving me a great pleasure working on it and trying to picture it in my mind. But I confess it’s rather difficult to think about something that will only happen in a year’s time! I’ll be back in school only in September 2012 and so I have to write about something that is going to happen in a distant future. Portuguese schools are undergoing some major changes right now, and so I don’t know how things will be when I go back. Another problem I’m facing is that my Project is to be developed throughout the school year, and so, I’ll have to think about different strategies to use each term. This would take me at least a whole month to design, because I would have to plan my lessons for the whole year in advance. Of course this is impossible! I don’t have that time and I’m going to be on holidays the next 2 weeks. My family deserves having me around without the computer on all the time. :-) I’ll do my best to be as clear and detailed as possible, but some activities and strategies will only come to me when I go back to school.

This week’s topics are Learner Autonomy and the One-computer Classroom, something already discussed in previous weeks, although in relation to other topics. We have seen the importance of students’ autonomy and the strategies we may use to promote it. The novelty this week is the definition of autonomy. Yes, autonomy is important. Yes, it is our role, as teachers, to develop activities that make our students more and more autonomous. But what is autonomy after all? As Thanasoulas shows, the definition really depends on the theories you use to describe it. For me, the most important is to understand “that autonomy is not an article of faith, a product ready made for use or merely a personality quality or trait.” To achieve it certain conditions must be met: “cognitive and metacognitive strategies on the part of the learner, motivation, attitudes, and knowledge about language learning, i.e., a kind of metalanguage.” So, as we can easily understand, autonomy is something that we acquire and learn. It is a lifelong learning process that starts in the family (primary socialization) and never ends. Therefore I think teaching our students to be autonomous learners can be a very difficult task if we are swimming against the tide: other teachers, parents… They will be confused! However, we must never give up no matter how difficult things may be. We want our students to have their own opinions, to fight inequalities, to be active citizens and help change the world for the better.

About One-computer classrooms, well, I believe most strategies and activities we have seen and experimented so far can be used in classrooms where there is only the teacher’s computer. Even the Jeopardy games we created last week can be used as a whole class activity, having students use the classroom computer one at a time. I think teachers are well capable of dealing with this situation as this is probably everybody’s working environment, or was in the past. The most important here is to let your imagination fly! :-)

This week was also time to choose partners to work with in the next stages of our Project Plans. Hard choice, as I would love to work with everybody. It turns up I will work with Laura-Cristiana and Natalya. I’m looking forward to it! I’m sure we will learn a lot from each other!

School kills Creativity

Engaging Students

Tech Log Week 6

After the storm comes the calm! :-) After the work overload of the past weeks, comes an apparently calmer week.

I particularly enjoyed this week’s topics – Powerpoint and Interactive Classes, a way to engage students – because they’re all related to PBL activities I so much appreciate.

Although I make use of PPT presentations a lot, and so there was nothing transcendental for me in this week’s readings, still I managed to learn some new handy hints. I discovered new keyboard techniques I was not familiar with – the B key was a complete surprise ;-) and I tried it immediately!

As for the basics of slide creation, design and composition, two things caught my attention. First, the meaning of Serif and San-serif fonts (quite interesting!) and second, something I must confess I had never thought about – colorblind people. I tend to stick to black and white presentations (with some exceptions, of course, depending on my audience), but I had never ever thought about avoiding certain colors. I will pay more attention to this important question in the future!

I loved creating my own Jeopardy Game! I think students will like it, but I just loved creating it! :-) This is exactly the fun of it – being able to create our own materials, and then see the sparkle in our students’ eyes. I would love to have time to design and create my own materials for all my lessons! One day…. :-)

It’s pretty obvious the potential PPT has in engaging students. Not only is it different from having a teacher delivering the lesson all the time (imagine having to listen to the same person for 90 minutes non stop! Yuck! :-)) but we may create interactive lessons. The students don’t just sit and “enjoy” the “film” (where’s the popcorn?? LOL), they really have to participate – move around, complete tasks, predict, search for information… you name it!

And something really very important is that we need to teach our students how to create their own PPT presentations. Sometimes we just take it for granted that they know how to do it, or that they learn it in ICT classes, but reality is quite different. We mustn’t keep this knowledge to ourselves but share it with our students. I’m sure they will appreciate it and their future presentations will be much better.

I will take the rest of the week to work on my Project Plan, trying to tie up loose ends. I’ll try to write a reflection about that, if I manage to. ;-)

PPT Presentation Techniques

"Blanking the screen" technique, in order to interact with the audience:

APPI Conference, 6 May 2011

Keeping the eye contact with your audience:

APEAA Conference, 13 May 2011

Life after Death by Powerpoint

I just loved Don McMillan's 2008 presentation (HERE) but this one is an expanded version with some more examples. You will laugh out loud!

Tech Log Week 5

This has been the hardest week for me so far! Not because of this fantastic course, but also because of it. :-)

This week was (still is!) particularly intense and strenuous! I’m really looking forward for my vacation in a week’s time! :-) I had (still have) so many things to do that you can’t possibly imagine! I’m still alive, though… although I’m not sure about the kicking part! :-)

Our technological voyage brought us this week to the shores of PBL, Rubrics, Assessment and WebQuest land! What magnificent sights! The PRAW mountain range proved no praw, after all! :-) And, in spite of the altitude, the mountains were not that difficult to climb! ;-)

Designing PBL activities is my favorite hobby. Yes, I consider it a hobby and not work. I love designing and developing original, creative and meaningful projects, and so I have great fun throughout the whole process: creation, implementation and evaluation of the results. Somehow I can’t start working on a specific topic without having a clear idea of how to link it to students’ lives. Teaching something without making students realize the importance it will have for their future lives is absolutely intolerable for me. Of course, I learned this from experience. I will never forget what one of my students said, in my first year as a teacher, 20 years ago! He didn’t like going to school and English was a subject he found particularly difficult. He told me: “Well teacher, tell me what I need English for. I’m going to work in agriculture, as my parents, and I won’t need to speak English to the potatoes and cabbages.” (He said this in Portuguese, of course!) That was my first year teaching and I realized things had to change. Textbooks were not THAT important, we needed to give every student a valid reason to learn English. If we create a link between the subject and our students’ interests and lives they will find a purpose in learning English. Having them involved in decision-making is essential to make them more autonomous and this you can get by using PBL activities. You guide them but they’re the ones to choose the path they want to follow. And they feel so accomplished when people get to see their final product that it makes for all the work you have had.

So PBL is not new to me, but still I enjoyed reading these week’s articles. I got some more ideas to put to work. I particularly liked Susan Gaer’s activities and the way she brought the school community together!

One way of developing PBL activities is by using WebQuests. It is time-consuming to create, no doubt (I’m still struggling to create one!), but it’s the best way to have your students in charge of their own learning. You are the observer and not the “deliverer”. I have never used this resource before, for the reasons I mentioned in our discussion thread, but I’m trying to create a WebQuest now that I will use in the future. The most exciting is that you have everything there. The students know all the steps they have to follow and the expected results. They know exactly how their overall performance will be evaluated and so they are entitled to a choice – they can work more or less, according to the level they want to achieve. They are not mere recipients or spectators, they are in control and they share responsibilities. Alternative assessment methods – checklists or rubrics – are also an essential part of this whole process of making our students independent learners and I think we can conciliate traditional methods with alternative assessment. One thing does not exclude the other. I usually give my students one formal summative test each term (marks 1-5, as explained in the discussion) but then I have formative tests the rest of the term (this is not the usual method, I must say. I’m the only one in my school to do this, for example). So, they know exactly what is going to be assessed in the final test. It’s a way to make them study more regularly and at the same time have them realize if they understood everything; if not, they will have to revise the contents for the summative test. I always give them the necessary feedback, of course.

One thing I especially liked about this week was the fact that we had to think about possible solutions to the problems we identified last week. One small step in the completion of our future plan, a giant leap in the right direction. :-) And have you noticed that we’re reaching solutions in collaboration? This is a brilliant strategy! This e-course is really very well organized, structured and designed. Congratulations to Donna and all the teachers involved. We’re actually doing what our students need to do: identify our own problems (they are ours to be defined), but then find solutions with everybody’s help. We’re not working alone, as our students won’t. We have our instructor’s guidance and each other to rely on. That’s what we need to implement in our classes: we, as facilitators, and our students helping each other, in collaboration, and using all these wonderful technological resources we have been discovering or rediscovering.

So, our ship just reached the open sea and now we’re starting to have a glimpse of the wonderful world awaiting us.

The True Value of Learning

WAKE UP! - IT'S MONDAY!

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Since my lesson plan focussed on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, here's a video I sometimes use in class. Hope you like it!

Tech Log Week 4

Another fabulous week! Time-consuming no doubt, but challenging!

After discussing the importance of technology to improve the aural and oral performance of EFL students, this week the emphasis was on reading, writing and vocabulary. As usual, the articles suggested were very well chosen, and the most difficult task was to leave some out. :-) There are always so many interesting things to discover in each article that it is a shame to be forced to dismiss some just because you don’t have time to read everything you wish. Sad, but true!

However, the ones I managed to read (and I did read a few!) gave me fantastic ideas to try in my future lessons. Keypals, skype, e-books, teaching writing genres using internet, multimedia glosses, internet projects will all definitely have a place in my lesson plans and my teacher sessions. What Donna stated in one of the comment threads or blogs, I don’t remember where, is true: we think we already have a pretty good mastery of technology but then we keep discovering things we had never imagined (I can’t wait for Web 3.0 and The Cloud!!) and new ways to use what we already know. That’s exactly the beauty of it! You may have the same ingredients but cook a completely different meal! :-)

The Project task we did this week was extremely important, not only because it represented one more step towards the completion of our Project Report/Plan, but because it made us look at our classes in a different way. We had to stop and reflect on our students’ needs that technology could help with. Although we didn’t have to comment on possible solutions it’s only natural that we did! So, we’re actually developing our critical awareness, by critical self reflection.

This leads me to the Week Task, which, for me, was highly motivating. I chose a lesson plan I had already used, because I wanted to improve it and make it more technology friendly. I created more opportunities for the students to use their laptops and I can’t wait to implement the new lesson plan. This is something I love doing. I never give two equal lessons; I always change something after reflecting on what happened. I try to get better and better and understand what the best options/solutions for my students are. They are my compass, in my voyage to become a better teacher!

Critical Thinking

This week the comments on our Discussion thread have been revolving around Critical Thinking. Here's a video you can use in class, or in teacher sessions. I think it's quite simple and effective.

What is Culture?

Celebrating our Course

Unity

WE SHOULD WORK TOGETHER

NO MATTER WHAT THE WEATHER
LOVING EACH OTHER
IN UNITY

Like a hurricane moving
a thousand miles an hour
breaking down barriers
UNITY has power
Like the links of a chain
constructed in a circle
we all have a part to play
the part we play is vital
Nothing stops an idea
which time has come
so make UNITY the idea of everyone
Because every community
should work cohesively
think GLOBALLY
and act LOCALLY
Yes tolerance and cooperation
will only serve to benefit
each and every nation
so stand united
because we will fall divided
The time has come to establish UNITY

Because…

WE SHOULD WORK TOGETHER
NO MATTER WHAT THE WEATHER
LOVING EACH OTHER
IN UNITY
Levi Tafari, Rhyme Don’t Pay

Benjamin Zephaniah

I've mentioned Benjamin Zephaniah's work several times in my Nicenet posts. This is one of my favorite videos. You can use it when dealing with such topics as Youth, Relationships, or others you think it may be fit for. I just love it!

Pay attention to the accent! ;-)

Tech Log Week 3

No doubt the amount of work was higher this week: much more readings to do and more websites to browse.

In spite of the workload I found all the assignments highly stimulating and challenging.

The emphasis on aural/oral skills is extremely important, as listening represents “more than forty percent of our daily communication” (Lindsay Miller), and paradoxically it is probably one of the most neglected skills in our classes. In my school we started having this notion a couple of years ago and tried developing more listening activities, but I must confess the teaching of the four skills was not equally distributed. The lesson plans I’ve read this week and the websites I browsed made me understand things will not be the same when I go back to school. ;-) I’ll have a teacher session with my colleagues and show them all we can do, the materials we can use and all the available resources just waiting for us to use them. I really liked the way listening activities were intertwined with the other skills, allowing us to prepare lessons including all 4 skills, which sometimes is not that easy. I learned a way to make listening a pleasure, by simply not asking the students to take notes. They will feel more relaxed if they know there is no testing involved.

The easiest and “tastiest” part of the assignments was creating our Delicious page. :-) I hadn’t created one before because I hadn’t felt the need yet, but I’m sure I will be glad I have one now. I already feel it’s going to be essential, if not for accessing my saved websites - I’m working at home and don’t really need to work elsewhere for now – but to check what other people saved that relates to my interests. I also recognize its potential as a student learning tool and I learned a lot from Steve Mackenzie’s “Social Bookmarking in relation to teaching and learning activities”. Meanwhile I found this other blog post on Delicious Blog that gives further ideas on using Delicious in class. Check it HERE.

Finally, step 2 of our Project Task: scary but exciting! Just by reading the Report Samples we get a hint of the work expecting us over the next weeks… Will I be up to it? That is the question! However, Camila Pagila’s report made me wish to learn more, on account of all the excellent tools she used in her lessons. It really is exciting having a whole unknown world in front of us, just waiting to be discovered and explored.

I’m glad I embarked on this fantastic journey!

Do you speak English?

Another fun video you can use in class (I've already tried it and the students love it) to improve your students' oral/aural skills. You'll find it is related to this week's assignments. ;-)

English Accents

While preparing my text for our Discussion Task this week I remembered this video I find extraordinary! Watch it and have fun!

Tech Log Week 2

This is only Week 2? It seems impossible!! I feel I “know” everybody for a long time and I already got addicted to our Nicenet discussions. :-) Everybody shares their experiences, their motivation and their goals and we all learn from each other. For me, that is the best part of it all. Learning through collaboration and sharing of different worldviews makes us understand the real potential of the web as a communication and learning tool. The way the participants comment on each other’s posts, giving suggestions, praising, encouraging is fantastic and a lesson the whole world should learn.

Week 2 signaled the beginning of our Project Task/Plan, and I’m really anxious for the next steps in this process. I’d love to develop something which would join Technology and Solidarity. I’d like my future students to engage in some sort of web solidarity project, perhaps related to the right of children to education, street children, women’s rights… Don’t really know what yet, but with everybody’s help and Donna’s guidance I’ll do it. ;-)

I was already familiar with the ABCD method and I do believe it is of great importance when writing our learning objectives. Still, D hasn’t completely convinced me… I do think it needs a different formulation. If it “identifies the standard that the learner must meet to reach acceptable performance” (URL), then we could ask what “acceptable performance” means. As Donna said “the degree of mastery is very context specific. It really depends on what and where you are teaching” and I couldn’t agree more. I continue to believe that there is some confusion between a learning objective and assessment. While preparing my reflection post I did some research on this and found this interesting site, which links the learning objectives with the assessment rubrics, as I think they should be: “Ideally, learning objectives should be accompanied by measurable outcomes, which describe ways in which students will be asked to demonstrate that they have achieved the learning objectives. Methods of assessment of student learning can take many forms—exams (written or oral), papers, oral presentations, team projects. Criteria for success (often called rubrics) should be developed so that students understand what is expected of them, and so that they can use feedback to see where they need to strengthen their performance.” (URL) So, a learning objective should be followed by a rubric and both given to the student.

My moment of Zen :-) was the revelation of NoodleTools. My eyes sparkled at the sight of that enormous quantity of search sites. How I reveled in trying some of those amazing sites! I usually present workshops at the annual conference of our Portuguese Teachers of English Association and write articles for its magazines and I already have a fairly good idea of what I’m going to prepare for the next event. ;-) Also, I will use some of the sites to prepare my lessons, as I found extraordinary things, as I mentioned in the discussion thread.

Can’t wait for next week!

Delivery - a short film by Till Nowak

An excellent film to use in class when you are teaching topics related to Environmental Issues.

You can create a whole range of different activities – before, during and after the screening:

* use the film title and/or pause the film at strategic points and have the students predict what will happen next (oral or written activity/pair, group or whole class activity);

* have some worksheets prepared to check their comprehension during or after the screening – you may use film stills and ask them to order them according to the film, for example, or have a multiple choice questionnaire;

* ask the students to describe the old man;

* ask them to identify environmental problems in their own town and write a report on them or take photos and make a slideshow to present in school.

* …

Tech Log Week 1

This is what I’ll call my reflection posts.

The weather was excellent - sunny, hot, not a cloud in the sky -, inviting for a trip.
Got on board, sails on, and there I went, exploring the unknown, under the great auspices of the shipmaster, Donna Shaw!

Well, this is not my first blog, and I had an earlier attempt at blogger, before deciding for wordpress, but then I preferred the latter templates (more original, I thought) and so abandoned blogger. Now I’m back, and I’m pleased with the result, I must say. It took me quite a while to choose the design – going through colors, backgrounds, layouts... – but I like the final result. For now, I mean! :-)
Things are a bit different from wordpress, but I’ll get used to it.

As for using blogs in EFL classes (my case), I’m quite aware of its tremendous importance “as a language learning tool” (Graham Stanley). My wordpress blog functions as a “tutor blog” (Aaron Campbell, cited by Graham Stanley). I use it to present the activities I do with my students (in class or as extra-curricular activities), but also as a learning tool. The sections on the right side-bar of my blog contain links for songs, videos, games, books/online stories/hyperfiction, but also grammar and vocab exercises (everything to do with the topics I have to teach). As homework I sometimes ask my students to do the online self-correcting exercises. Often I use them as exercises in class, as a competition. Each student must come to the classroom computer and answer one of the questions and in the end we’ll see who’s got more points. They just LOVE it, and it’s GRAMMAR, something they… hate!

So, I’m really anxious to learn more and surprise my students next year. I’m thrilled for being part of this e-course!

My first lesson!

After reading Robert Elliot’s article on “Using Google My Maps for Classroom Projects” I was so excited I had to try it myself! 

The activities are just great and I’m definitely going to use them with my students. 

Besides the activities suggested by Robert, I find this idea quite awesome to work with such topics as “English Speaking Countries” or “Countries and Nationalities” (7th graders – 11/12 years old – 3rd year learning English). The students could write a short description of the country and include the flag.

Here you have a map I called “It’s my life…”, after Bon Jovi’s song (not really a favorite…), so that you know a bit more about me! ;-)

Ver It's my Life... num mapa maior

Me

This is me, happy to be here with all of you!

My blog

I decided to name this blog Tech-Log, because I see myself embarking on a wonderful ship journey, and so Tech is for TECHNOLOGY and Log for LOGBOOK.
Hope you like it!