Week 9: Reflections

Week 9 : reflections

We are moving towards the end of the course and our project report should be finalized and submitted on June 6^th at noon. This has taken a good time from me this week. I had to review my peers report and finalize my own on the light of their feedback. Collaboration makes our work better. There always things you can’t see but others can. As the English proverb says: “Two heads are better than one” and we are working in three which makes it even better. Nilufar and Garunyawun have shown a great sense of collaboration and help. I have learned from them. Thank you very much!

The second issue that has been tackled in the course this week has to do with creating class online platform and creating exercises using web tools. I have created my first class website: http://sites.google.com/site/mernaoui/, posted some activities and uploaded some tasks for my students. I have also used a web tools in Tools for Educators to create two exercises that could be printed out and done offline. These could be found in the wiki.

These are amazing things that would bring more motivation and interest to our classes, foster our learners’ autonomy and help them improve their English.

Hamid.

Class Website & Creating Exercises Using Webtools

Hello,

I created a class website of which I have tried some features. Here is the link: http://sites.google.com/site/mernaoui/
I also added two documents that I had added to the wiki. The first is "spelling and reading worksheet" and the second is "Word Bank Worksheet_clothes". These are worksheet that could be used with my elementary students. I used Tools for Educators website to create them. The first activity is about spelling and reading daily activities. The students need to read a simple sentence and circle the picture that matches with the sentence. The second exercise is about vocabulary of clothes. The learners are to take words from a word bank and write it down the appropriate picture.

I would use the two exercises to teach mainly vocabulary related to daily activities and clothes. This would help the students enrich their vocabulary and enable them to talk and write about clothes and daily activities later on.

On the class website, I posted a project that I created while studying WebQuests. I tried the activity there using links to other resources. The project is about English speaking countries around the world. The students will need to visit certain websites and some research to do the project. I have gone through all the class website’s feature and I found them really interesting and easy to use. It could be easily customized and the content you put there determines the effectiveness of the tool. Google sites are free and offer a variety of facilities. It depends on how we use them to achieve our goals.

All the activities are designed for elementary students. The tasks are simple but aim at prompting the students to learn English while doing something different from what they usually do in class.

Learners autonomy is well encouraged because to do the tasks, they have either to make searches, read, classify, observe, compare… by their own. These are a kind of training to their brains, critical thinking. Instead of leading them step by step to perform the tasks, they are to use technology and resources to perform the tasks.

Yours,

Hamid

Integrating Internet learning platforms & online/offline exercises

Using a combination of tools that are all “free” would make our classes more appealing as we will have more chance to tap on all the different learning styles and provide more authentic materials to our students. I think the technological tools discovered this week focus on two major issues. The first is about the integration of online platforms to promote discussions and deliver lessons, assignments. All the suggested ones (Nicenet, Blogger, Google site) are free and simple to use. The second issue is about creating exercises that could be used online or printed out to do while the students are offline. Giving word puzzles and games would bring more motivation especially to the kind of students I have. People, mainly teenagers, like to play while learning.

Instead of sticking to the old monotonous method of “chalk and talk”, I am thinking of creating a variety of task types and mixing both online and offline exercises. Such tools would raise my students’ motivation and interest and maximize their exposure to English outside the class. They will have some enjoyable time to study English more than the two hours they officially have at school. Assigning online or offline exercises can also foster their autonomy because they have a great potentiality as far as critical think, problem-solving, creativity are concerned.

Some of the constraints of applying the project are related to some of the learners’ skills with the computer and the internet. They are not many but I think some assisting and guidance at the beginning of the school year would make them do the tasks successfully. The second constraint is related to the availability of computers and the internet connection. Classrooms at my school are not equipped with computers or the internet connection. The only equipped classroom is devoted to computer studies. Therefore, as I don’t have the chance to use the internet in class, I am more interested in making use of the internet outside the classroom. A good number of my students have access to the internet at home or in cybercafés. I intend to give tasks and projects that they’ll have to do online or print them out and bring them to class. Being an offline or online task depends on the nature of the tasks and the activity. To encourage the lurkers, all the activities should be graded based on rubrics shared with all the class.

Yours,

Hamid