Week10 Interactive, Learner-Centered, Preparation

I cannot believe ten weeks have passed since April. They were busy but exciting and so precious weeks.

I have learned new technologies through the course. The first tool I found very useful is this blog. Reflecting the past week, I can make sure what I have learned and organize my ideas.

As for PowerPoint, I liked the topic of interactive slides. I think it very important to keep in mind to make them interactive. I enjoyed creating quizzes, games, and questionnaires through the sites. Once we are familiar with those sites, we can use each activity separately and as elements integrated in one lessen. 

Padlet as well as Delicious is also the new technology I want to use. It is very easy and convenient to use once you created one. Nicenet and Class Wiki will be also helpful communication tools through writing and reading.

Writing objectives and rubrics is an essential topic associated with the idea of learner autonomy.

I read some articles with different titles through the course. All the articles implied the importance of interactive, learner-centered perspective. And I recognized teachers need preparation. So all the articles in different titles are combined as a whole.

This course will be closed soon. I will explore some of the sites to know further in detail. I am thankful for everything to Ms. Donna Shaw and all the participants. I also want to show my gratitude to the staff of Oregon University providing me with such a wonderful opportunity to participate in this course.

Week 9 Submitting the Final Plan Report

I finished writing my final plan report and submitted it. After I received the checklist by Anna, I added a lot of changes. Her advice was very helpful to me to find what I should add and how I should change some of the part. I am very grateful to her.

I know I need a lot more improvement in my final plan report. But I was able to make my own plan report anyway. I am thankful to all the participants for being enthusiastic and cooperative through the course. I was also astonished to find that Dr. Donna had given us everything we needed as assignments or tasks to finish the final report. She led us to the goal.

I read articles and browsed some sites on learning styles. It was a very interesting topic to think about. At the same time, it is very difficult to make a lesson plan reflecting the idea of multi intelligence for the ordinary class at high school level. I think teachers should keep in mind the idea of multi intelligence and tell the students to find their own type. Making good use of it is necessary. 

Week 8 Reflections

I am now working on revising my plan report. I cannot believe this course will close soon. I have been encouraged by other participants’ comments, discussion and our instructor Donna’s warm and appropriate advice. I hope the participants will keep in touch in some way.

I explored the sites for useful tools to create quizzes, crossword, board games, and so on. I have heard some of them, but I have never used on my own. I enjoyed making questionnaire, comprehension questions though there were some complicated steps to understand and took me time. I am surprised and amazed to know that there are so many helpful tools teachers can use. I am a little confused about how to use, when to use, and what I can use them for as well. I need more experience and time to make myself more familiar with these tools. I want to try to create something with Quizlet and HotPotato now.  

http://quizlet.com/  

http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

                              

As for the draft project report, I changed my report to the plan report. I have some more points to think about in timeline and responses. Anna gave me very thoughtful and helpful checklist this week. I will make changes in my plan report to make it with more details.

Week 7 Learner autonomy / Padlet / Finding partners

I mainly read articles on learner autonomy. I found a lot of similar situations or problems to solve while discussing the topic. Teachers all over the world are wondering how they can motivate students. Utilizing web skills in teaching will have good effect on learner autonomy.

 This week’s task taught me how to use Padlet. It is a very convenient tool to share materials with others in class. I would like to implement Padlet in my class and tell other teachers about it.

 I worked on writing my final project. I first created a blog for my students. But I found  we cannot use the blog in the computer lab at my school. Every blog or SNS related sites are blocked in the lab. I told some of my students to access the blog at their homes. Most of them were able to open the blog, but they did not post their comments because they did not know how to do it or they hesitated to create their account. There must be some way to use the blog in the computer lab. However, my main new technology is Webquest.

I must finish modifying my Webquest. Every participant found partners this week. I will try hard to accomplish the Webquest and the first draft.

Week 6 Creating Student-centered Classes and Interactive PowerPoint

Readings and resources for this week is about engaging students – technology aids and interactive PowerPoint. Both of the topics are helpful to make my class interactive. I focused on interactive PowerPoint because I do not know much about creating my own slides and using effectively.  My class is done with handouts, a white-board, a textbook, a loudspeaker connected to ipod touch for sound materials. Before I read these articles, I thought PowerPoint is mainly for lectures giving the audience main points to follow and have them concentrated. I found that I should realize the usefulness of PowerPoint for increasing the interactive atmosphere in class.

This week I made my own slides with hyperlinks for the first time. I tried to make my own quizzes with buttons at first, but I couldn’t. I will keep trying anyway. In this task my topic was learning English with easy math. Some of the students do not try to read English. I think they will read the questions and try to understand them to answer without translating them into Japanese. It took me a lot of time to choose a topic and to figure out how to make the slides interactive. However, I am sure I will be better as I continue making more slides and using them.

As for implementing technology-related change in my class, I could not begin this week and will not be able to next week for whole the class due to school schedule. I would like to try some of the changes to part of the students while working on my plan.

Resources

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-interactive-quiz-powerpoint-masters/

http://www.joe.org/joe/2003april/tt2.php

http://www.unf.edu/~tcavanau/publications/necc/Interactive_PowerPoint.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQra4baNwP8

Week 5 Rubrics, PBL, and WebQuest

After reading Alternative Assessment, I created rubrics using one of the rubrics sites. This is my first time to create my own rubrics. I use evaluation sheet with categories or check lists in evaluating oral presentation. Rubrics is with detailed description for categories and levels. I think implementing rubrics in my lessen will benefit students’ learning. As required accomplishment is clearly written, students will feel secured and make efforts to reach their own goal. They can also feel that they are judged fairly based on the description.

Project Based Learning is a very interesting and useful approach. It also has the aspect of cooperative learning. Though preparing goals and procedures needs time, students themselves will go on working on the project once students start to engage in the project. Students will learn more with less teaching. It is a very effective approach. The problem of implementing PBL is flexibility in time and contents.

A WebQuest is a very significant tool as well. This is also learner-centered and students will proceed guided by procedures designed by teachers.  One of the aims of my  learning web skills is to motivate students to study and learn, I think this WebQuest is a very effective tool. I am not sure I will be able to accomplish creating a lesson with a WebQuest, I will try. I really wish to use it.

Resources

http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/assessing/alternative.htm

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/

http://www.ncsall.net/?id=385

http://susangaer.com/studentprojects/

http://www.webquest.org/search/index.php

http://zunal.com/zunal-help/help-about-whatiswebquest.php

http://www.webquest.org/search/index.php

Week 4 Reading / Writing Skill Building

I browsed several reading/writing web sites. They are interesting and appealing. They can be helpful tools for students to have themselves engage in reading or writing. I think reading and writing need more autonomous and active attitudes to be developed. In other words, students should be guided in proper way. Most of my students tend to think they are not good at listening and speaking. However, they need more time and effort to be developed in these two skills. Without reading and writing skills, their listening and speaking skills will not improve. It is significant to implement procedures using those sites to motivate students to keep learning.

In designing a technology enhanced lesson plan, I wondered who the audience and what the level should be. In this task, I imagined the audience as the students now I teach.  

Week 3 Aural / Oral Skill Building

This week, I read two articles about aural/oral skills,"The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Forign Language Speaking Skills" and "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation."
In terms of teaching and practicing speaking, I think the most beneficial point for learners is that they can learn in stress free environment. My school I work at has a room with 40 computers with the Internet access. Students learn how to use computers in information technology class. However, language teachers are not skilled enough and too busy to design lessons utilizing those computers. Right now I do not use the room with the computers. Usually each teacher have to move around to each classroom to teach. On the other hand, students are familiar with communicating through portable phones with the Internet access. So I believe if I could have knowledge about useful web sites and how to implement them in class, I would have new way of teaching style which will be beneficial to students.

I found a lot of interesting sites for learning language skills. I enjoyed them very much. I need more time to browse and see other ones. In addition, I need to focus my objectives on the project work. I feel I have much to teach and I am confused with objectives and course design. So reading finished project reports is a precious experience for me to know clear image of our project reports.

I found I failed in publishing my comment to another participant's blog. Probably I pressed publish button skipping the previous procedure. I hope I published my comment successfully this week. I feel I am getting better manipulating a computer  little by little.

Week 2 The ABC Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches

I went to the recommended site for finding helpful search engine. Though I found a lot of interesting engines, I am sure I need more time to find suitable ones for my work to move on. This task is very helpful to get to know the new way of finding search engines and to know how other participants are utilizing them in their teaching.

Our second task of describing students is also an interesting task. There were some difficult points to explain the situation clearly. I recognized all the  participants are working enthusiastically for their students and better education.

The other task of writing objectives with the A.B.C.D. method is  essential and helpful one. We need a clear vision of the students, their behavior, the learning conditions and what I expect. When my first description of the project  need some changes in the process of the project, I will be back to this writing objectives with the A.B.C.D method so that I will not get lost.

Week 1 Reflection

    Now I am on the final task for week 1. At the beginning of the week 1 tasks, I was so worried about my schedule of  starting  new academic year at my workplace. In fact, I almost fell behind in spite of step by step informative instructions. I also made some mistakes in doing tasks. In the first discussion, I clicked "Send a personal message to" though I had read the instruction to click "Reply."  While finishing some tasks, I felt I somewhat got used to studying on line.

    Discussion is not easy task for me, but it is a good way of improving my English. I read assignment resources and the other participants ideas and reorganize my thinking. This course gives me precious opportunities of reading and writing.