It's June and we are doing the wrap-up for the course. I can't believe how fast the time has flown; I can't believe how many topics we've covered in these 10 weeks! Wow! I have learned so much about using technology in teaching... and now I need to sit back, debrief, and make sure that my plans for implementing changes in the classroom are organized and well-formulated so that they actually come to fruition. According to my self-evaluation, most of my instruction is at Level 1 Awareness on the LoTI framework for integrating technology in my classroom, so to move myself towards Exploration, Infusion, Integration... will be a process that needs to be undertaken with care.
I think the best thing that I could do to continue this process of IT integration would be to speak enthusiastically about it to my colleagues at the university so that eventually they would join me in making technology work for them as well. I have already spoken to one teacher who was ready and excited to make changes, and will begin exploring some of the topics and sites over the summer after exams are finished. So that's good. Obviously, if courses are still taught so that students can pass the exams, and if the majority of teachers still hold to traditional instructional styles and assessment methods, then it will be more difficult for me to implement technology change for just my small group of students. It would be important for change to occur system-wide, and we CAN do that -- one step at a time, one teacher at a time. So as others see success in my classroom and with new strategies using digital tools and resources, they hopefully will join the bandwagon. This is the theory anyway. And hope springs eternal....
It will be very strange not to be logging on to Nicenet everyday and reading my classmates' comments and going to their blog sites. An emptiness will rule my cyberworld for a while. Like, what did I ever DO with my time when I wasn't on-line reading and reading? I will still go to my classmates' blogs, just to see if anyone has any interesting new ideas or comments - because this is from where some of the most helpful interaction of the course has come. And this is why I want to integrate blogging into my classes. I hope that my students will create the same kind of community that I have found here online from the Spring 2010 folks of "Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web."
Thanks to all of you :)
Au revoir et a bientot !
Ellen
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Week 9 Online
Wow! I am SO exhausted from being trying to create something useful and interesting for my students online.
After reading about setting up a class with Nicenet and after my experience with "Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web," I was sure that creating a class with Nicenet would be easy for me to create and for my students to use. But I wasn't completely convinced that it was the venue I wanted, since I was not thinking of class discussion but specifically for my 3rd year students a place to give information and share ideas about their Internship Project.
And after seeing that my colleagues were using Google Sites to create their class sites I figured that it must not be so hard. Well, it's easy to create it, but it's not easy to design it as I want. Not being so computer-savvy, I thought that maybe a template would work better, but I spent hours perusing all the available templates and even starting to create with a couple, but I could not get the template to function as I wanted. The class site template was not right for me, because I don't have a group of students that meet everyday and I wasn't really looking for the atmosphere of a class site, but of a project site, like a company, except that everyone does his own individual internship and his training program report is not a team project, so that template wasn't right either. So finally, I just used the blank template and deleted my previous sites.
I think Google Sites will work for my students because it's free, and already I hope to start the blogs with them from blogger.com. Once they have their emails and their accounts, many other things follow. So, why not Google for us amateurs?
Internship Project Place was thus established as a site for my students to get all the information they need to put their projects together: everything from getting advice on what to wear on the job to how to present their projects orally with PowerPoint. It is at this point rather a skeleton, or outline, of what I hope to provide for them, but I have many months to get the documentation together. Most of it is not ready at my fingertips to just cut and paste, so it will take some time.
For example, I wanted to insert some photos of the university but I don't have any! So I thought I would go take some, but time is running out and I it'll just have to wait! So the site is a bit disappointing for me as I inspect it with a critical eye, but it will become more attractive in the coming weeks. In my mind's eye, I see it as I want it! So I'm sure this site will become more interesting as time goes on and especially as I have more time to work with it. Also, next year, the students themselves will help to post items there that they feel will be of use to them. I can see that it will evolve as the Internship Project itself develops, as it is only the 2nd year that the University has required this training period for the Applied Language students. As we become more IT-knowledgeable at Manouba, the possibilities are endless!
After reading about setting up a class with Nicenet and after my experience with "Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web," I was sure that creating a class with Nicenet would be easy for me to create and for my students to use. But I wasn't completely convinced that it was the venue I wanted, since I was not thinking of class discussion but specifically for my 3rd year students a place to give information and share ideas about their Internship Project.
And after seeing that my colleagues were using Google Sites to create their class sites I figured that it must not be so hard. Well, it's easy to create it, but it's not easy to design it as I want. Not being so computer-savvy, I thought that maybe a template would work better, but I spent hours perusing all the available templates and even starting to create with a couple, but I could not get the template to function as I wanted. The class site template was not right for me, because I don't have a group of students that meet everyday and I wasn't really looking for the atmosphere of a class site, but of a project site, like a company, except that everyone does his own individual internship and his training program report is not a team project, so that template wasn't right either. So finally, I just used the blank template and deleted my previous sites.
I think Google Sites will work for my students because it's free, and already I hope to start the blogs with them from blogger.com. Once they have their emails and their accounts, many other things follow. So, why not Google for us amateurs?
Internship Project Place was thus established as a site for my students to get all the information they need to put their projects together: everything from getting advice on what to wear on the job to how to present their projects orally with PowerPoint. It is at this point rather a skeleton, or outline, of what I hope to provide for them, but I have many months to get the documentation together. Most of it is not ready at my fingertips to just cut and paste, so it will take some time.
For example, I wanted to insert some photos of the university but I don't have any! So I thought I would go take some, but time is running out and I it'll just have to wait! So the site is a bit disappointing for me as I inspect it with a critical eye, but it will become more attractive in the coming weeks. In my mind's eye, I see it as I want it! So I'm sure this site will become more interesting as time goes on and especially as I have more time to work with it. Also, next year, the students themselves will help to post items there that they feel will be of use to them. I can see that it will evolve as the Internship Project itself develops, as it is only the 2nd year that the University has required this training period for the Applied Language students. As we become more IT-knowledgeable at Manouba, the possibilities are endless!
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Reflections Week 8
Learner Autonomy is the topic for the bulk of this week's readings. Many Nicenet comments led to a discussion of teacher autonomy and how these two are linked. And I do not disagree, but I also see that certain behaviors are linked to the educational system one finds oneself in and it's base in the socio-cultural environment as a whole. In my context, conformity is valued in many aspects of life, and education does not escape this. It is difficult to get students to break out of their molds of teacher-directed behavior. My learners usually want to have the teacher do all the work, and teachers, by their tradition and personalities, like to be in control. So the circle goes around and around until something or someone tries to break out and be independent. And certainly the goal of this course is for us to be the ones to break through to more student-centered approaches to learning and instruction.
Deborah asked us to post concerning this question, "What do you do with your students to make them more self-directed?" This question really made me think about the ways in which I have been guiding my students, but it also made me wonder, "Can we MAKE someone self-directed?" The jury is still out, despite the research on learner autonomy. We can certainly provide a conducive environment and many of the tools, but rather like "leading a horse to water" I doubt whether we can make our students drink.
Yet I see that technology can provide huge impetus toward learner autonomy. When students discover that with the internet for example the world is at their fingertips and they do not have to wait for the teacher or complain about lack of books and materials (because the library doesn't have them or they can not afford them nor can the system....) But when they see the wealth of interesting material waiting for them on the web, I think they will begin to change their minds about depending on the teacher or the system to spoon-feed them all the material.
One thing I would like to try with my students next year is to survey their own learning preferences and styles and to work more on their personal strategies to be in control of their own learning. I have found some interesting surveys online and I think it would be a great way to begin the new year. Students could start to gain a new perspective on how they can best be responsible for their learning and be encouraged to change some of their attitudes about education. It's a start, but without one step we can't take two!
Deborah asked us to post concerning this question, "What do you do with your students to make them more self-directed?" This question really made me think about the ways in which I have been guiding my students, but it also made me wonder, "Can we MAKE someone self-directed?" The jury is still out, despite the research on learner autonomy. We can certainly provide a conducive environment and many of the tools, but rather like "leading a horse to water" I doubt whether we can make our students drink.
Yet I see that technology can provide huge impetus toward learner autonomy. When students discover that with the internet for example the world is at their fingertips and they do not have to wait for the teacher or complain about lack of books and materials (because the library doesn't have them or they can not afford them nor can the system....) But when they see the wealth of interesting material waiting for them on the web, I think they will begin to change their minds about depending on the teacher or the system to spoon-feed them all the material.
One thing I would like to try with my students next year is to survey their own learning preferences and styles and to work more on their personal strategies to be in control of their own learning. I have found some interesting surveys online and I think it would be a great way to begin the new year. Students could start to gain a new perspective on how they can best be responsible for their learning and be encouraged to change some of their attitudes about education. It's a start, but without one step we can't take two!
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Reflections on Interactive PowerPoint
This week I finally created my first PowerPoint presentation - a lesson on writing summaries - and I tried to make it interactive with the things I have been learning in this course. It's nothing so fancy or filled with gadgets, but for me it's a big step. I used ConceptTest and Think-Pair-Share to involve my students in the lesson and at the end a question to go away with to post on their blog or it could be a QuickWrite to hand to me before they go out the door.
It never really occurred to me to use PowerPoint in the classroom so I was rather surprised that students on US college campuses are already speaking of "Death by PowerPoint." In contrast, my classrooms don't even have a way to shade or block out the bright sunlight that floods in from the windows, so I can't imagine when I'll use PowerPoint very much. Since our course materials are very drab photocopies, I'm sure that a bit of color would be attractive to my students and they would find a presentation on PP new and different and therefore interesting if I could manage to find one of the classrooms that they use for movies or media etc. I was also thinking on the lines of uploading review lessons, quizzes or games and/or linking to a class blog site so that students could check out something that they missed in class.
One of the things that seems to keep coming back in the readings is the idea of student-centered classes. So if we want to see our students engaged in their own learning, we need to take the attention off the teacher. This is problematic with PP presentations unless we consciously make an effort to involve the learners. I like this idea of the MinutePaper or QuickWrite to assess student learning; this technique after the PP or after any lesson would be beneficial for helping the student review and think through the concepts learned, and also beneficial for the teacher's understanding and analysis of what her students do or do not catch from the lesson. And the information she elicits from the students can help to plan the next lesson and/or could be addressed on the blog before the next lesson even begins (since for example in my case I have a week before I see them again).
"So what's the most important point you learned today?"
It never really occurred to me to use PowerPoint in the classroom so I was rather surprised that students on US college campuses are already speaking of "Death by PowerPoint." In contrast, my classrooms don't even have a way to shade or block out the bright sunlight that floods in from the windows, so I can't imagine when I'll use PowerPoint very much. Since our course materials are very drab photocopies, I'm sure that a bit of color would be attractive to my students and they would find a presentation on PP new and different and therefore interesting if I could manage to find one of the classrooms that they use for movies or media etc. I was also thinking on the lines of uploading review lessons, quizzes or games and/or linking to a class blog site so that students could check out something that they missed in class.
One of the things that seems to keep coming back in the readings is the idea of student-centered classes. So if we want to see our students engaged in their own learning, we need to take the attention off the teacher. This is problematic with PP presentations unless we consciously make an effort to involve the learners. I like this idea of the MinutePaper or QuickWrite to assess student learning; this technique after the PP or after any lesson would be beneficial for helping the student review and think through the concepts learned, and also beneficial for the teacher's understanding and analysis of what her students do or do not catch from the lesson. And the information she elicits from the students can help to plan the next lesson and/or could be addressed on the blog before the next lesson even begins (since for example in my case I have a week before I see them again).
"So what's the most important point you learned today?"
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Week 6 Reflections
This week we are reading about learning styles and alternative assessment and of course how this can all relate to our teaching with technology. Through the posts and blogs of other colleagues I have been directed to some sites for questionnaires about learning styles (bookmarked now!) and I am excited to start next year in a different way - inviting students to reflect on their own styles and helping me to help them in creating lessons for the various types of learners.
And for all that I read and reflect on, I am constantly trying to relate this to my own Project to implement technology in my classroom. Unfortunately, this will be next year, and I'm a bit nervous about this because I feel the momentum and excitement NOW for introducing changes and I don't know what will happen if I lose the momentum. I certainly hope I don't.
So, I am looking at everything these days as how it relates to blogging, because that's the one major change I would like to implement in my teaching. Since students very rarely finish outside reading or writing tasks, I like the idea of using blogs to provide feedback for the lesson, and to assess what the students take away from each session. I think the blog will be particularly helpful in monitoring the development of their writing skills as the year goes on, because instead of checking the papers and handing it back to the students, the archive of the blog will always be there for us to evaluate. Another thing that I thought of doing to address the issue of student engagement during the lesson was to have them answer specific questions from the classroom presentation, and write about it in their blog. Also, they could answer the more general question, "What new thing did you learn today?" More reflective students would have all week to come up with the answer.
Also for Technology Project I am thinking about creating another rubric for the blog so that I can present it to them at the beginning of the year. This task will be time-consuming for me. But it is very necessary because students need to understand exactly what is expected and how I will evaluate them. Also there is the question for blogs about corrections, and how to deal with errors. I need to read and reflect more about this issue.
And for all that I read and reflect on, I am constantly trying to relate this to my own Project to implement technology in my classroom. Unfortunately, this will be next year, and I'm a bit nervous about this because I feel the momentum and excitement NOW for introducing changes and I don't know what will happen if I lose the momentum. I certainly hope I don't.
So, I am looking at everything these days as how it relates to blogging, because that's the one major change I would like to implement in my teaching. Since students very rarely finish outside reading or writing tasks, I like the idea of using blogs to provide feedback for the lesson, and to assess what the students take away from each session. I think the blog will be particularly helpful in monitoring the development of their writing skills as the year goes on, because instead of checking the papers and handing it back to the students, the archive of the blog will always be there for us to evaluate. Another thing that I thought of doing to address the issue of student engagement during the lesson was to have them answer specific questions from the classroom presentation, and write about it in their blog. Also, they could answer the more general question, "What new thing did you learn today?" More reflective students would have all week to come up with the answer.
Also for Technology Project I am thinking about creating another rubric for the blog so that I can present it to them at the beginning of the year. This task will be time-consuming for me. But it is very necessary because students need to understand exactly what is expected and how I will evaluate them. Also there is the question for blogs about corrections, and how to deal with errors. I need to read and reflect more about this issue.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Reflection on Rubrics
I was so happy this week to finish the rubrics for the internship project. I just wish that I could have discovered RubiStar earlier! I have shared this site with some other teachers and I hope that they can benefit from it. It certainly does make a difference when the problem of formatting (rows/columns etc) is already done for you, because this is probably part of what scared me off from making my own rubrics before. Checklists are okay, but a rubric obviously can give more complete info for both the students and the teachers. And, if the criteria are identified clearly, a student can understand how they receive their grades. The feedback then provided to the students to evaluate their progress and/or performance will be more helpful in the long run.
As I spoke about in my nicenet post, the scoring system is somewhat problematic. Over the years I have learned to adapt to the system: an excellent score for my Tunisian students is a "15" and teachers rarely score anything higher. Logically, to "pass" with a score of 10 out of 20 means that a student is successful but has only mastered half of the information or has only scored half of the points on a fill-in-the-blank for example. Which is not logical. Obviously, there are times when a student perfectly meets the requirements, and does exactly what we have asked him to do. I will have to wait and see what the teachers think about the rubric this week and if they want to make changes to the point system.
As I spoke about in my nicenet post, the scoring system is somewhat problematic. Over the years I have learned to adapt to the system: an excellent score for my Tunisian students is a "15" and teachers rarely score anything higher. Logically, to "pass" with a score of 10 out of 20 means that a student is successful but has only mastered half of the information or has only scored half of the points on a fill-in-the-blank for example. Which is not logical. Obviously, there are times when a student perfectly meets the requirements, and does exactly what we have asked him to do. I will have to wait and see what the teachers think about the rubric this week and if they want to make changes to the point system.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Week 5 Reflections
This week we have been reading about project-based learning and WebQuests and thinking about ways that these might work in our classroom. I had never heard of a WebQuest before taking this course, but I am fascinated by the avenues of learning that this could open for my students.
After gaining some understanding of what exactly a WebQuest is, I searched for a WebQuest that would be appropriate for my students and could be modified easily for my situation and goals, but I was not convinced that what I was finding could be adapted to my students (although as I've said before, I hate re-inventing the wheel and I'm sure that there are already WebQuests out there designed to meet similar situations such as my own - I just need to keep searching!). I do have an idea for a tourist agency Webquest where the students play the roles of Tour Agents for English-speaking tourists, but as I feel it requires more time than I have right now in actually creating an excellent tool, I just described my project as a technology-enhanced lesson. But I like the idea of dealing with local content (geography, history, sites, traditions of Tunisia) that would be already familiar to my students and thus lessen the degree of difficulty for content and background knowledge, and motivate students to share the beautiful things of their country with others.
I have also been reading on student autonomy and I do agree that as teachers enter the role of facilitator in the classroom and the in the learning process, it can become one of the keys to motivating students to own their learning. I would like to say that whatever methods or technologies I use, that I hope I am creating a learning environment and learning opportunities for students, not just feeding them information. I have always been convinced that if students enjoy what they are doing then the process of learning new material comes so much easier.
After gaining some understanding of what exactly a WebQuest is, I searched for a WebQuest that would be appropriate for my students and could be modified easily for my situation and goals, but I was not convinced that what I was finding could be adapted to my students (although as I've said before, I hate re-inventing the wheel and I'm sure that there are already WebQuests out there designed to meet similar situations such as my own - I just need to keep searching!). I do have an idea for a tourist agency Webquest where the students play the roles of Tour Agents for English-speaking tourists, but as I feel it requires more time than I have right now in actually creating an excellent tool, I just described my project as a technology-enhanced lesson. But I like the idea of dealing with local content (geography, history, sites, traditions of Tunisia) that would be already familiar to my students and thus lessen the degree of difficulty for content and background knowledge, and motivate students to share the beautiful things of their country with others.
I have also been reading on student autonomy and I do agree that as teachers enter the role of facilitator in the classroom and the in the learning process, it can become one of the keys to motivating students to own their learning. I would like to say that whatever methods or technologies I use, that I hope I am creating a learning environment and learning opportunities for students, not just feeding them information. I have always been convinced that if students enjoy what they are doing then the process of learning new material comes so much easier.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
