Week 10

Week 10

I cannot believe that this is the last task for this webskill course. Time really flied.
I think I have learned a lot through this course and I really appreciate that I got this opportunity to learn and challenge new field relating with technology. I am so grateful that I worked with my hard-working colleagues and that I was taught by supportive and enthusiastic teacher Donna. Thank you so much for supporting me and encouraging me. Without your help and support, I could not have gone through. I am so happy that I could make it this far. Thank you so much!!

As for my last blogging for this course, I would like to talk about what was the most interesting topic.

I really liked when I made Jeopardy. It was time consuming but I have always wanted to make one since I have known someone who used Jeopardy on the computer before. I think it doesn't necessarily have to be connected to the Internet when students play the Jeopardy which I made, so it is more realistic to me since my school does not offer me the access to the Internet all the time.

I also think learning how to make a classroom website was really useful. Even though I cannot have students use the computers with the Internet access at school all the time, if I have a classroom website, there are a lot more things that I can do and have the students do at home.

Lastly, learning about rubrics have changed my thinking totally. I didn’t have idea of showing rubrics to the students first. But I learned that it is really effective. Donna proved it. Since she kept telling us how we were going to be evaluated, I could do much better than I had expected. I tried hard to meet the expectation and it made my work really easier. I want to use that tactics from now on. I will use rubistar for that.

I don’t find any materials we learned boring or not useful. I think every single thing I have learned is going to help me sometimes in my career.

I would like to say thank you to Donna and my colleagues and I will make a great use of what I have learned from this course for my students.
This course changed my life.
During this course, I have taken TOEFL ibt for the first time and I could get my target score, which will allow me to apply for the graduate program in the U.S.
I think I will try to pursuit my dream of studying TESOL in the U.S.
This course gave me some confident.

I will keep working hard to improve my teaching!!


Kunie Kellem

Week 9

Week 9

This week, I learned multiple intelligences and how teachers can make effective classes for students according to students’ learning style using technology tools.
It was very fun to think about what I can do to cope with different learning styles. However, I also thought that it was such demanding work to prepare for a lot of activities. I thought maybe I can create 2~3 activities on the same topic with different approaches, and have the students choose the activity based on their learning style. Teachers can assess students using different rubrics.
I don’t think teachers can do this for every topic, because it is such a time-consuming work, but every once in a while, teachers should try to do this, which can help students feel satisfied, motivated and give them self-esteem.


About the final plan, as Donna mentioned, it was really hard to create the first draft last week. This week, I only had to revise it some, with the help of the feedback that my partner gave me.
I am so happy that I almost finished my plan.

I cannot believe that this week is the second to last. Time really flied so fast. My new school term is starting next week. I am determined to make a good use of what I have learned through this webskill course.

Week 8

Plan report

I worked really hard to finish the first draft of my plan report. It took a long time, but at the same time, I really enjoyed doing it, because using what I have learned through this course let me feel that I am improving. I managed to make the first draft, and my diligent  partner Danka gave me a positive and useful comments and feedback. Without her feedback, I would not have noticed the mistake I made and could not have fixed it. I found this procedure, checking each other's report in pairs, really useful and effective.
I also realized that the check list and rubric Donna gave us helped me a lot when I created my report. By reading through them, I just knew what I was expected to do and they made my work easier although it took a long time.

Making an exercise/Technology tool

This week I created an exercise, using the website Donna recommended. Some of the websites are really easy to use, but on the other hand, some are a little bit difficult for me.
I created a crossword quiz with "Tools for Educators" http://www.toolsforeducators.com/
It was really fun to make an exercise with this website because I can make exercises with a lot of pictures, which simply make handouts look colorful and fun for students.
But I had some problems uploading the exercises on the class wiki page. Whenever I uploaded them, the pictures disappeared. It took me a long time to fix that.

Through this problem, I realized that using these technology can sure provoke students' learning and have an positive impact on the students. However, teachers have to improve their technology skills to make a good use of the useful technology tools. It is hard sometimes to keep it up, but we have to try. We have to keep working hard to make changes in class.

 

Week 7

Learner Autonomous

I read a few articles about learner autonomous and learned that it is very effective to shift the responsibility of learning to the students. By responsibility, I mean that students choose their targets, monitor themselves, evaluate their work by themselves. They can work individually or in groups. But students should work on learning activities according to their strategies toward learning.

However, I also learned that it is very important for teachers to maneuver students to the right direction.
Sometimes we might have difficult students to encourage and motivate to learn. However, we should take a close look at students interests, needs and strategies for learning, and we should never give up helping them.
Autonomous learning mostly depend on what kind of students they are, but, still teachers have a great role in it.

Padlet

I found Padlet very useful for interactive activities. The only negative thing I found was after you post something and 24 hours passed, you cannot edit it or even delete it. I wanted to change my post because I didn't write any comments on it and just put some links to it. However, I could not edit or delete it even after 12 hours. I was shocked. Otherwise, I thought it a very promising tool for learning setting.

Finding a partner
At first, I was not sure if I feel comfortable to ask for a partnership to someone, so I asked Donna to assign a partner for me. However, Danka told me that she could be my partner and I was really happy to find someone nice to work with. I hope we can help each other and enhance our plans/projects well.


Today my 5-year-old son and my husband left for U.S.A. for a vacation for 3 weeks, which made me sad, but at the same time, will give me much more time to work on this course, so I will do my best!!

Week 6

Implement the technology tool

As a class project, I often have my students make a presentation about some topics. As I mentioned in week 4 and 5, the problem is that we don't have enough time to listen to everyone's presentation/speech since we have other things to do on top of practicing the presentation in pairs for quite a long time. I really wish we had more time, but the curricula is set, and we have to follow it.
Therefore, I decided to use blog for my students to share their presentations and give feedback/comments to each other.

At first, the thing I needed the most was the classroom webpage, on which I can have my students share their presentation essay on the blog. I went through a lot of different webpages, such as google site or padlet. But I thought weebly was the easiest site for me to create the classroom webpage with.
I tried creating one, which I am still working on. Here is the website, http://englishcommunication-minami.weebly.com

What I like about it besides how easy it is to use this site is that I can totally control/manage students sites, too. I can create the students' account and blog URLs. I can put links to students sites on the classroom webpage so that anyone can visit each student's page with only one click.

Furthermore, the weebly site has such a useful help center, so it will make easy for my students to create their only blog pages. https://weebly.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

I will make as many accounts as students' numbers, give them a password, and have them create the details for their websites and share their presentation in their blogs.

ABCD Objective is,
After writing an essay on their favorite activity to persuade audience/reader to join them(C), the students(A) will share their essay in his/her blog(B), and write at least 3 comments to different presenters in their blogs(B) with a passing score of at least 75% according to the annotated rubric.

Here's my rubric for this activity.
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=PrintRubric&rubric_id=2454286&

I would like to come up with some follow-up activities.


Kunie Kellem
Japan

Week 5

Discussion

This week I read materials about assessment, rubrics, and project-based learning.
Learning about rubrics was such an eye opening experience. I had never used rubrics to evaluate students performance before. However, I learned that it will do good for both teachers and students.
Also, I really enjoyed reading the article by Susan. Sometimes I have my students work on some project in groups. They really enjoy it. Learning by doing something they are interested, students are more motivated to work on the project.
Now my challenge will be how I can connect PBL with technology.

Creating rubric

The task of creating rubric itself was not that hard. Because the Rubric star has a lot of templates if you want to use. I wish I knew about this earlier, so that I could have shown my students how they would be evaluated, which could have helped them improve their performance and helped me evaluate students.

Extra assignment 

This week I created my first WebQuest. It was so demanding that I spent a long time on making one. Although it was hard, I was so happy that I gave it a try because now that I know how to make one, I can use it in my class in the near future. Since it is a student centered tasks, I am sure that students will be really motivated and enjoy doing the tasks, using the Internet.
I know it takes time and energy for teachers, but it is worth using.


I cannot believe that week 5 is almost over. I am gradually getting the picture of my final plan in my head, and week by week, through the tasks, parts of the plan are getting ready.
I feel so happy about it and I really appreciate the encouragement/thoughtful words my colleagues gave me.

Week 4

Making a sample teaching plan

It was hard for me to think about a teaching plan and make it relate to technology. But as I read through reading materials for this week and went over the useful websites to use in class, I got some ideas. As I read in "Tips and advice from the Webskills Team: Writing a technology enhanced lesson plan",  the objective and the needs of the class are driving the choice of the tool, and not the other way around. https://sites.google.com/site/webskillsuo/lesson-plan , I really thought thinking about the need of the class was important.
I managed to make one teaching plan but I am little worried to make a final project teaching plan.

Problems in class

Thinking about some problems in my class which could be solved with the help of technology was not hard since when I described my class in Week 2, I was thinking about the difficulties I was facing. But I am wondering how creative I can be using a new technology to solve the problem. I am little overwhelmed by other colleagues' or old participants' creativity. I am not good at it.

Searching websites about reading /writing

I am so happy that I found many useful sites like Breaking News English. I can print out some worksheet and use it right now. Also, I leaned that most of the technology enhanced lesson plans are mix of online tool and offline tool/class. Furthermore, in most of the activities, all 4 skills are integrated and I really think it is important for students to improve their English.

I think I am learning a lot.


Elliott, R. (2012). Tips and Advice from the Webskills Team: Writing a Technology Enhanced Lesson Plan. University of Oregon. American English Institute


Kunie Kellem