Week 6: Reflections – Learning is something students do, Not something done to students

Dear Donna, Jodi & e-friends,

Experience with Interactive Powerpoint Presentation

This week I start my reflection with a beautiful statement made by Alfie Kohn, ‘learning is something students do, not something done to students’. Yes, this week I got more ideas on how I can make my powerpoint presentation more interactive. I observed the power point presentations that my respected instructors Donna and Jodi sent us. I also observed other PPTs prepared by my e-friends. I am proud of them they all are praiseworthy. And now I have come to the conclusion that interactive powerpoint presentations are useful for eliciting ideas from the learners, motivating them for learning, letting them for broaden their knowledge with classroom discussion and assessing their own current performance in the classroom.

Dealing with Large Class

The second task I did this week is I consulted with the reading materials related to using technology in large classes. I found the articles very informative. I got more insights for handling large classes. I think large classes are not only the burden but also the fun; it is only we teachers who can make the classes boring or live. I see large classes are full of potentialities so the thing is how we use such potentialities. While using technology, we should involve the learners in interaction. No doubt, as large class is heterogeneous in nature, the teacher should enhance collaboration, participation and acceptance of the individual potentiality. For dealing with this issue I consulted with the following sites including the given ones.
http://www.ehow.com/list_6742683_benefits-teaching-large-class_.html
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/teaching-large-classes
http://www.englishclub.com/teaching-tips/teaching-large-classes.htm

Technology –related changes in my class

Regarding the implementation of technology in my class, I have just started to use interactive powerpoint presentation. I took four sessions to all the learners of English Access Microscholarship Program, Gorkha Center, Gorkha, Nepal. The sessions were all related to the use of technology in communication and learning different matters including English language and culture through internet. I encouraged my learners to create yahoo account/ Google account and facebook account. Now they all have their own accounts. I have added them in my list under Access Program. I gave them some of the important sites for English learning. Now they are familiar to http://www.youtube.com/, www.google.com, and some other few websites. I have also shown them my blog and some sample WebQuests. In my class too I use computers, TV and CD player for involving them listening to music and English language. I am using the listening CDs published by Cambridge University Press as recommended by the Access Curriculum. My learners also watch films once a week. I have started to keep the record of their progress in language learning and using technology. So far I know I have just started to implement the technology in my class so I will share more about the changes in the week to come.

Thank you all.
Kamal

Week 5: Reflection – Less Teaching More Learning

Hello Donna and e-friends,
WEEK 5, I remember, is now about over. As I did in the earlier weeks, I enjoyed a lot this week too. Something special that I knew heartily this week is LESS TEACHING MORE LEARNING. All the tasks that we had to carry out were interesting and would demand meticulous labor from our side. How lucky we are! We got the opportunity to be familiar with Rubistar, WebQuest, WebGarden and so on. I will present what I learnt this week.


Enjoying with Alternative Assessment

I went through the reading materials related alternative assessment, a new approach for assessing the learners’ performance. It is student- focused and has been designed with the activities in which students actively participate. As stated in the article, effective alternative assessment relies on observations that are recorded using checklists and rubrics. So I learnt something about checklist and rubrics.



Reading about Project Based Learning

The next thing I consulted this week is Project Based Learning (PBL). I went through the given reading materials. After reading them, I got more insights on how we can use it in our class. I found it the best approach to make meaningful learning. It assures “Less Teaching More Learning” so it is the radical shift from the traditional teacher-centered approach of teaching. In this approach students keep on doing something while learning. During the project task, students are engaged in producing or creating something collaboratively so they are highly motivated.
For this task, I consulted the following websites:
http://www.globalschoolnet.org/Web/pbl/plan/assres.htm
http://www.sun-associates.com/lynn/pbl/pbl.html
http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning
http://www.atesl.ca/cmsms/home/newsletters/december-2007/project-based-esl-education/
http://susangaer.com/studentprojects/



Creation of a Sample Rubric: Lesson Planning

The task related to creating a rubric is very important for us. I created the rubric in lesson planning. It was new to me so in the beginning I got confused and failed twice but later I followed the procedures meticulously and I succeeded. My URL is - http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=2072696& .
For this task, I consulted the following websites:
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/
http://health.usf.edu/publichealth/eta/Rubric_Tutorial/default.htm.



Creation of a WebQuest: Two Long Term Problems: Overpopulation and Deforestation

This task is equally important for us. It enhances quality teaching and quality learning. As rubrics, it was also a new task for me. I got success only after several attempts. I went through the WebQuests that other teachers have created. Most of them are wonderful and precious for both teachers and learners. I also created one focusing the learners of intermediate level in our context. My URL is - http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=108828. For this task, I consulted the following websites:
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index_sub3.html
http://www.webquest.org/search/index.php
http://www.webquest.org/index-resources.php
http://www.zunal.com/


Continuation of the Project Work Discussion

As given in the weekly assignment, this week I described some potential changes of my class. I expressed how I am engaging my students to introduce technology in their learning.


How I apply the knowledge in my language class:
- I will apply PBL in my language class so the learners who are shy and less active become very active.
- I will use the WebQuests in my language class as they are the strong tools for both teachers and students.
- Rubrics are very important for evaluating the learners so I will create and use them when I have to evaluate their performance.
- I will try to use more and more technology because it enhances LESS TEACHING MORE LEARNING.


Thank you all.
Kamal

Week: 4 - … pictorial presentation of my reflections on the Journey I made during this week ...

Dear Donna and e-friends,

As the earlier weeks, our teacher Donna provided us many articles related to the use of technology in teaching reading and writing skills. Among them, I went through ‘Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction’ by Jarek Krajka; ‘Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL /EFL Students Using E-books’ by Mei Ya Liang; and ‘Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition & Reading Comprehension’ by Andreea I. Constantinescu. I found them more informative.

I tried to find out more about how computer and other modern technology have been incorporated in teaching reading and writing skills.

I am quite impressed with Krajika in that she has tried to explore more about the issues of using internet in teaching writing with reference to different genres. She has also provided the reference websites for most of the genres.

Going through such articles was really a fun for me. And I made it and took part in nicenet discussion with my teacher and e-friends.

Second task for this week was to work for the project work. So I too presented some issues, challenges and possible solutions of using technology in the language classroom I teach. It is really important for me in that it provides some guidelines for the project work I am going to carry out in this course.

Preparing a lesson plan was another important task I had to do this week. I prepared it for teaching 'Organs of Speech' for the students of Bachelors' Degree (First Part), Tribhuvan University, Nepal. I tried my best to incorporate computer technology in that class.

As other e-participants, I would like to make a commitment to use the learnt knowledge in my class.

Now this week is over. I enjoyed a lot. I am eagerly waiting for the tasks I have to do next week.









Thank you all.
Kamal

Week:3 - Reflection - trying to chew some delicious reading texts, trying to know more about the project work and trying to get ideas on how to incorporate computer technology in my English language classroom

Hi Donna & e-friends,

As the earlier weeks, the third week remained very important for me. For this week, I was given some tasks to do. All the tasks were very important and I could learn a lot from them. The tasks were creating delicious blog, reading articles related to the use of CALL in second or foreign language teaching and making nicenet discussion on the articles, reading the project reports given and making nicenet discussion and finally writing the weekly reflection and posting on the blog.

Delicious Blog
Creating a delicious blog was very interesting and important task for us. In the beginning I felt a bit difficult to accomplish this task. I thoroughly followed the guidelines for creating it. I created the blog and added the URL on the delicious wiki. I also added the URLs of our teacher Donna and other e-friends. As I added the URLs, I visited their blogs and knew the reality. What a fantastic world! We have the access of the books or reading materials that one finds. I went through some of the reading materials. I also searched something new from through the cite, http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html . I added the bookmarks of the findings in my delicious blog. From this task, I learned that we can share the reading materials and making our network reading effective. Similarly we can use it in our classroom. We can encourage our learners to create their delicious blogs and share what new reading texts and others fruitful documents they have.

Reviewing the Articles Related to CALL
Reading the articles related to CALL and reviewing them was another task for us. We were encouraged to make nicenet discussion on the use of computer technology and other modern innovation in second or foreign language teaching. Mainly three articles were given us. ‘Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials’ by Lindsay Miller, ‘New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation’ by Maria Grazia Busa, and ‘The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second / Foreign Language Speaking Skills’ by Julia Gong were the main articles for reading. We were also provided the reading resources of lesson plans for teaching different skills and aspects of language. I found all the articles very informative and all of them clearly emphasized the crucial role of technology in language teaching. CALL is really very advantageous in that it makes the learners learn on own pace and it also makes the learners free from any kind of psychologically threatening classroom environment. I went through different resources for the history of CALL and knew how important it is for second or foreign language teaching.

Reviewing the Project Report
Reviewing the project report was the third task that we had to carry out. There were seven reports and I went through most of them. I found all of them very commendable. The researchers have worked hard to come up with the findings they have written in their reports. Among them, I selected the project report carried out by Prem Bahadur Phyak. He carried out his project on the students of M.Ed. second year, University Campus, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. His project was on "Developing the Research Skills on the Students". The students were under the access of computer technology and internet facility. Later he encouraged them and guided them to use that in carrying out their research. The findings were highly positive. I got a kind of insights for carrying out my project work.

The tasks that I mentioned above are really fruitful for enhancing my teaching professionalism. The first task has taught me how to involve my learners to share and read the limited materials. Similarly, I myself can use a lot of materials that my e-friends have collected and added in the form of bookmarks in the process of teaching English. The second task has taught me how to incorporate the computer technology in English language teaching. I will apply the knowledge in my class. I have come to the conclusion that use of computer technology makes my class live and dynamic. The last task has taught me how to carry out project task relating the use of technology in the language class.

Suggestions are welcome.

Thank you all.

Week: 3 - CALL As I Experienced ...

Dear Donna & e-friends,

Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is one of the several innovations brought in the field of second or foreign language teaching. It, in the words of Levy (1997:1), is “the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning.” The application of computers in language teaching started in the 1950s. When we see CALL historically, we can clearly find three distinct phases. These phases are found to have been determined with the approaches and methodologies of language teaching dominant at that time. The early period of CALL was dominated with behaviorism, psychological school of learning and structuralism, linguistic school which were in power in the 1950s and 1960s. The impact of these schools in second or foreign language teaching remained unchallenged until the seventies. Audio-lingual method which emphasized language learning as a matter of habit formation employed the then computer technology in the field of second or foreign language teaching.

The second phase of CALL starts only after behaviorism in learning and structuralism in linguistics were challenged. After 1960s, audio-lingual method lost its faith in maintaining communicative goals of language teaching in the learners. On the one hand, mentalist or cognitive school came as a reaction of behaviorist psychology and on the other, generativist school of linguistics led by Noam Chomsky came as a reaction of structuralism. Similarly, in the early 70s, Halliday brought his functional linguistics claiming that language should be studied in terms of the function it does in communicative contexts. In the 1980s, there came notional syllabus in language teaching. They all paved the way for the development of communicative approach in second or foreign language teaching. The goal of language teaching under this approach was to enhance the communicative ability in the learners. So CALL was guided by that goal and used for maintaining communicative ability in the learners. This period of CALL remained till 1990s.

The third phase of CALL starts with the several criticisms that were laid on communicative approach of language teaching. No doubt, communicative approach had a number of weaknesses. To address such weaknesses, integrative approach of language teaching was introduced and so happened in the use of technology. There were innumerable innovations like animation, graphics, and so on in technology too. Development of different forms of multimedia and internet system paved the way for the development of integrative CALL in the history of CALL. Language teachers started using such innovations to facilitate their teaching and learners learning activities. This phase of CALL is much dominant in the field of using computer technology in language learning.

As mentioned above, CALL has encountered many ups and downs. Now it has been proved that it is a must for language learning and teaching. It is not the end but a powerful means for teacher and learners for carrying out any tasks. It is also a powerful source of knowledge. As Busa in her article ‘New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation’ expresses, ‘CALL applications offer individualized environment where learners learn at their own pace making autonomous decisions on the order of study topics, lesson reviews, lesson repeats, etc’. Similarly, as Julia Gong claims in her article ‘ The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/ Foreign Language speaking Skills’, CALL provides highly motivating environment for the learners. As she says, learners feel away from the psychologically threatening environment of the classroom when they learn through CALL. Finally I want to conclude that CALL is the boon of the twenty-first century and we should use it as much as we can in our teaching learning process.

References:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Papers/CAllELTJ88.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_language_learning
http://www.etthillside.co/up/files/article4.doc
http://www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/bitstream/10077/2850/1/bus%63%AO.pdf.
www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/research/resources/student_res/postscriptsiles/vol3/_1_gong1.pdf.

Thank you all.
Kamal

Week 2- Reflections: Quest for Knowledge; Realization of the Right Path for Writing Behavioral Objectives & Starting for the Project Work

Hi Everybody,
This week is about over. I am amazed how I spent this week! As I did last week, I want to share some experience with you this week too. Sure, I have come up with some very interesting experiences I got form the tasks and activities given to me to do by our respected teacher, Donna. This week has taught me a lot. It has given me a lot of insights in the field of language teaching and use of technology for that. I have perceived this week as the week when I was in quest for knowledge; the week when I became familiar with the new method of writing behavioral objectives; and the week I started to work with the project that we have to carry out in this course.
As mentioned above, this week remained very important for me. I was given the access of a number of search engines and portals. Before this, I was familiar only with a few search engines. I used to search the reading materials and the references I needed in Google and Yahoo before. But now I am familiar with a number of sites. I found iseek Education, Infotopia, Wikipeadia,Wordcentral, YouTube and other different search engines equally useful. I found a number of sites and URLs from my friends for journals, videos and other references. I spent this week moving mouse from one search site another site, one search to another search engine and so on. I did so to be familiar with them and to make quest for the useful references and materials for English language teaching.
I have already stated that I got the opportunity to be familiar with very useful method of writing behavioral objectives. It is ABCD method. I tried this method for writing some objectives and found it very easy and scientific. As the acronym ABCD suggests, I knew that we should address audience (A), behavior (B), conditions (C) and degree (D) while forming or writing objectives. Audience is our learners who we teach to and who we expect to to do something after the instruction. Behavior is the expected performance or the action or the specific task that we expect from our learners after the instruction. Condition is the circumstance or context under which we expect our learners do something. And finally degree is the extent of excellence or level of mastery that the learners show while carrying out the expected task. Using this method we participants wrote objectives, shared experiences and discussed about our strengths and weaknesses in writing objectives. For this I consulted with a number for reading materials using the search engines. I felt it is really the right path of writing behavior objectives.
The third task that I did this week is the starting of the project work that we have to carry out in this course. As I was given the guidelines, I made a description of the learners whom I will carry out my project, the classroom setting, technology available, goal of the course, needs of the learners and the relevance of the project work on that group. We participants shared our situation and plan for the project work. It became very fruitful for us to know each other deeply. It was really a very important task for us and we are in its initial stage.

Finally I would like to wrap up this week saying that I WOULD EXPECT THIS WEEK AGAIN IF IT COULD COME.

Thank you all.
Kamal

Week 2 : My Journey With ABCD Method for Writing Behavioral Objectives

'Aims', 'goals' and 'objectives' are very common terms used in instructional planning. They all are related to the expected outcomes of the instruction. Aims and goals are very general and non-specific and are appropriate for an entire course or syllabus. However, objectives are very specific and apt for the individual lesson of the course.
Objectives are the intended learning outcomes that the instructor intends to be achieved after the instruction. In other words, they are the statements of expected behavior that the students will exhibit in their performance after the instruction. They help the instructor to select content, develop activities, select the method and techniques to be used in the class and develop materials. Regarding the role of objectives, Jones (1997) writes, “Clear objectives can help the instructor design lessons that will be easier for the student to comprehend and the teacher to evaluate.”
While writing or determining objectives, teachers should be very careful. They should know that the objectives they write should be specific, measurable, attainable, reliable and time bounded (SMART). Any sort of ambiguity and vagueness should be avoided to make the statements clear and strong enough for defining and describing the performance behavior of the learners that they show after the lesson. The crucial factor that helps to write such statements is the selection of the verbs that are used to prepare the statements. Non-action verbs like comprehend, learn, understand know, memorize etc. should not be used in writing objectives. Especially action verbs like say, write, read, compare, sing, locate etc. are very much useful because they demand particular behavior from the side of the learners. This can be illustrated with the following sets of objectives:
Set A:
• Given the learners chance to listen to the rhyme “Ding Dong Bell”, they will be able to know the rhyming worlds with 60% accuracy.
• Given the opportunity to read the story “The Kind Ghost”, the learners will understand how the Kind Ghost saved the life of the common people from other cruel ghosts.
Set B
• Given the learners chance to listen to the rhyme “Ding Dong Bell”, they will be able to say at least two pairs of rhyming words.
• Given the opportunity to read the story “The Kind Ghost”, the learners will be able to describe how the Kind Ghost saved the life of the common people from other ghosts in ten sentences.

In these two sets of objectives, Set A does not contain action verbs. So these objectives are vague and it is very difficult to measure the learners’ performance using them. However, the verbs that Set B contains are action verbs and they demand the concrete behavior from the side of the learners.
While writing objectives, the domains and various hierarchies of learning that Bloom and others have developed should be kept in mind. Our objectives should demand any of the learning domains viz cognitive, affective or psychomotor. In other words, our objectives should be capable of addressing either mental and intellectual skills that come under cognitive domain or emotional and attitudinal skills that come under the affective domain or manual or physical skills that come under the psychomotor domain. We should select the appropriate verbs for writing clear objectives from the reference of such domains.
ABCD Method for writing Objectives
ABCD method is a very useful and easier approach for writing objectives. Here, “A” stands for “Audience.” It refers to who the objectives are written to. In our case, audience refers to the learners whom we teach. “B” stands for “Behavior”. It refers to the particular behavior or action or task that the learner is expected to do after the completion of the lesson. In other words, it is what we expect our learners be able to do after we teach a particular concept. “C” stands for “Condition”. It refers to the circumstances or contexts under which learners are expected to perform something. It is the sum of circumstances that enhance the learners to accomplish a given task. The last letter of the acronym ABCD, “D” stands for “Degree”. It refers to the degree or level of mastery that the learners show while doing a particular task. In other words, it says how well the learners do a given tasks. Degree of degree of accuracy can be related to the time limit (5 minutes or 10 minutes) or number of the correct answers or a range of accuracy (60%) or some other qualitative means. One example is given below:

• Given some model blogs and proper instructions and guidelines, the participants will be able to create their own blog within one hour.

Here,
• A = participants
• B = creating their own blog
• C = given some model blogs and proper instruction and guidelines
• D = within one hour

References:
• www.nlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
• http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingoblectives/
• http://www.slideshare.net/ashleytan/writing-specific-instructionallearning-objectives-presentation
• http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/classifications.html
• http://www.ehow.com/info_7946641_format-objectives-classroom-activities.html