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.