My reflection on Week Three

My third week on Web Skills

          Web skills! It gets better with this course every single day as each day opens up into a whole new surprise. The exposure is something beyond expectation. Now I feel different and changed my somewhat limited perspective of our world into a wider scope. The web is undeniably a very big world with stocks and piles of resources of every sort, and means of communications.  One can simply say, “Man has digitized his world.” Accessing to information has now become at a click further.

          The reading articles for this week were supportive to our learning. To begin with the article on the use of authentic listening materials at fostering the listening skill was indeed very helpful. I believe it brought some perspectives to our teaching endeavors.  Authentic materials such like TV, radios and other related materials apart from what they contribute at keeping students abreast with the current news and updates they also are very instrumental at boosting the language proficiencies of the learners. The article was on the pros and cons of each authentic material and was very informative. Actually such phenomena were never new for me because in my teaching experience I had implemented such method.  It was when I was an English teacher in Holy Savior High School in Asmara. They were 12^th grade students and it means a lot to them to become successful in the mastery of the four basic language skills because they were in their transitional time for tertiary education.  Thus, to help improve their listening and there by boost their speaking skills, I let them watch the BBC news. The class was in the afternoon so they had to follow the GMT news from the BBC news desk. They followed this twice a week for a half semester. It was like a pilot program, and I found it   very rewarding particularly at enhancing speaking in class. For the post listening involves their views on the eventualities of the events they followed there in the news. Yet, such method also has its limitations. One of which is time constraint, for to include such a method as an ongoing learning process, it requires a lot of time. Either the students must come to school to learn nothing but English. As a solution the teacher may assign the task of following the news to be done at home, still this also deprives the pre listening activities (brainstorming questions) students must have before going on with the listening. The second reading article that I read was on computer assisted language learning (CALL). I found that article timely and important for teachers looking to see the significance that technology has to their language teaching. Integrating technology into ones teaching makes learning simple and enjoyable.

          The websites we had to search for this week were quite different from the previous week. This is because they are particularly focused on English language teaching. We have come to identify websites that we can use as resources in our teaching endeavors. Each web site has its qualities and area or skill it emphasized and all organized to serve the various English learning levels. Especially there was this particular website: http:www. Esl-lab.com, which stood out for me out of all the other sites. One particular reason I liked this site is for it targets the listening skill across all learning levels. It also follows the right approach to implementing a listening lesson beginning with some brainstorming questions as pre listening, then the listening itself usually in the form of dialogues which makes it rather interesting to follow, and finally provides post listening questions.

          The task assigned to us for this week involved getting our Delicious page and linking it to our course’s wiki. As one of the tasks required of us to do, I have read it during our first week when we had to search the whole course website‘s contents. Back then there were a lot of words I couldn’t find a single meaning for. One of such words was the word “Delicious.” After all, I understand the word delicious as a common compliment after taking a morsel of food. Still I can’t get it how such word ended as a name for a page. I would greatly appreciate if anyone who has an idea on it to write me as a comment. Anyways it seemed quite scary at first signing into Delicious, but practically it is much easier than signing up for a blogging. Whenever I access into certain websites I commonly come across this message that says “Book mark us”, I never understood until now that the purpose of delicious is to bookmark websites that you think will serve you a purpose in life. It also makes it easier for you to sign in from the URL there in your delicious rather than trying to remember each URL or write it on the piece of paper or mobile phone, and if either of them gets lost  get frustrated; simply to explain a bank of URLs’ that someone can access right away from. In short, it was quite a privilege for me to open my delicious page successfully and link it into our course’s wiki. I had a great time and experience!

          Last but not least, the project task #2 was something enlightening. It gave me a glimpse of what my project report must look like. I read a number of projects there in our course website for week 3, and out of all I specifically chose to respond on one project from Burkina Faso entitled  “Working with a Large Class of Grade 13 "Terminale" Students” by Tendouinde Bruno Nikiema. The action research basically focused on how technology can overcome the barrier of large class size at attaining certain instructional objectives. The teacher in that research explains how he has used the email at boosting learners’ writing skills. The stages he followed to study the significance of that technology has helped him arrive safely at achieving something at the end. He managed to instill team work and self-motivation amongst his learners, the two qualities that are cherished a lot at creating supportive learning class room.

          To conclude, like the past few weeks, this week has also been quite interesting and remarkable at broadening my outlook towards the web and my general perspective of the world.

Daniel's Week 2 Reflection

Week 2 Reflection:

Dear Donna, and classmates:

            Here follows my reflection for this week, please read it and, I really appreciate your comments on my thoughts.

            As the week opened, and  as I read the instructions from my mail, a sense of fear started to shroud me; I really felt a chill down to my backbone. My instructor, Donna, had nicely presented all the things we are expected to accomplish some of which by Wednesday 11:59 and some up to Sunday 11:59 Oregon time. Yet, I have to admit that the tasks and assignments as I read them made me panic for a bit of a time then. Anyways, later I started with vigor and interest to accomplish all the tasks laid ahead of me.

            The first of the tasks was looking for reading sources for week 2 from our course web site. After accessing that site, I understood our week 2 will emphasize on learning objectives. As I have attended to several workshops and given a workshop myself to middle school teachers on how to write clearly attainable objectives, it was easy for me to grasp the whole idea. Bloomfield had clearly explained the three domains of learning: the cognitive, psycho motor and affective domains. And learning in general is the manifestation of an outcome in terms of these three integrated domains. The cognitive domain, for instance, goes in levels starting from the basic understanding level to the higher levels of synthesizing. And each learning objective varies in terms of the specific outcome it requires from the learners. Another good thing I have come to learn from this course is the way an objective gets to be written through the ABCD for. As an Instructor I always state my specific objectives for the lessons I teach. Although the ABCD are apparent in the objectives I state, but I do not specify each in the way we are doing for this course.

            Example:

By the end of the lesson: students (A) are expected to define (B) the steps to effective   writing when asked (C) in simple and grammatically correct sentences (D).

In short, the ABCD method helps a teacher never to miss out a very important component of the objective. The psycho motor domain is also very essential as it deals with the fine and gross motor skills of the learners. Yet, what I can’t see is how this domain can be practical when dealing with technology enhanced learning. May be some of you my classmates can comment on this. The affective domain, very essential but difficult to assess, is the best strategy one can use to attain with attitudes and emotions of the learners. I would also suggest using either Likeret type or Semantic differential type questionnaires the right tools to assess the degree to which a learner feels or has an attitude of a certain learned outcome. I sometimes use these types of questionnaires. For instance, in my city Asmara, there are a number of secondary schools whose Math teachers always complain with lack of interest amongst their  students towards that subject. And my believe is that teachers must work on the affective domains of such learners before proceeding to the other domains. Often, I advise Math teachers to include in their objectives the real life relevance and application of a certain concept that they intend to teach, that at least will instill some level of motivation on the learner        s and help them level up their interest and efforts into the learning.

The second of the tasks involved searching the given web site: http://www.noodletools.com and express one’s impression on it due by Wednesday 11:59 Oregon time. My knowledge of the web was rather limited before. This is due to the fact that I used to access the internet only from Google, yahoo, face book and planet papers.com. However, accessing http://www.noodletools.com has opened up whole new options for me. Now I can search for a particular piece of information from a number of sites. It would also help me choose the site that best provides the information. In general, I had a really constructive time searching through the websites, and some of the sites have actually become my lifetime partners. I was also privileged to read all my class mates posts and some websites they have indicated I found them to be really instrumental at enhancing learning. For example, dogpile, esl.com and choice history.com can be noted here. The good thing that I am growing fond of about this e-learning is that it opens up an access to read each other’s posts on one topic and learn from each other a great deal. I am very lucky that I have a very supportive learning community, and I have expressed that in my response to one of my class mate’s post.

The third task involved a description and one ABCD objective. This part actually marked the beginning of our project for this course. And this is because it lays the foundational ground to the upcoming tasks. It, of course, is understood teaching must begin with an objective, and if we have to enhance learning through technology it is undeniably true we should start with clearly defined and attainable objectives. This part actually got me to think deeply until I come up with a view that on how involving a certain technology into my class would subsequently ease things out. I teach English in one institute called Institute of Religious Studies (IRS) here in Asmara. I teach my students the course Advanced English composition (ENG.232). The course intends to upgrade the ability of the students in their speaking integrated writing skills. There are 30 students in the class and all of them are EFL learners. They are trying to learn to the best of their abilities, but at times are observed to be challenged specially during presentations on their reports.

The fourth task was literally getting started with the course project. It goes with the background of the learners. I think this is where we most of the teachers fail at delivering the lesson to the learners. We fail to analyze their backgrounds; instead, we start from an ideal student perspective. The ensuing would be a discrepancy in the learners’ outcome. Some of them would become high achievers, some modest, and some low achievers. However, I believe there is a possibility that every student can learn on equal footing. And I think the main intention of analyzing one’s students’ background is to achieve such equal learning in class.

To sum up, It really has been a very constructive time for me this week. It helped me see that one must not necessarily have all the technological gadgets and resource to be able to enhance learning through technology, one can simply start with what s/he already has and inspire students into learning to the desired level.

Best Regards!!!

Daniel

Week 1 Introductions and Ground rule for Discussions

My reflections on Week 1Introductions and Ground rules for Discussions:

My name is Daniel Berhanu, you just can call me Daniel . For me this year has started with so many pleasant surprises. One of which, I could join to a very wonderful an online Web skills training with so wonderful and very supportive instructor, Donna, and a very enthusiastic and motivated class mates. I have been introduced to my wonderful instructor,  all my class mates I have read all your wonderful introductions and you all have a very colorful backgrounds. It gives me a pleasure to know you all. I also have posted my introductions at Nicenet and my reflection on the ground rules for Discussions as well. I have read the Ground rules, indeed they are very guiding and helpful at creating a supportive class room community. I thank you Donna for your dedication and support that you have been able to demonstrate this few days. Indeed it is going to be a very successful class for all of us.

Thanks!!!