WEEK 10: Final Reflection

This course is really a useful one for English teachers. To be honest, I was very lucky to participate in it. Time went too fast, I would like to learn more and don’t want to say goodbye to Robert, my helpful online instruction and other E-classmates whom I’ve learnt a lot from. Frankly speaking, I’m not an expert at computer or an English teacher of many years of experience. After attending this course, I’ve felt more confident and experienced in technology-enhanced teaching.

I think the topics which worked well were skill-building websites for English skills enhancement, project-based learning (Webquests), learning styles and multiple intelligences and the use of alternative assessment (Rubric). From these topics, I’ve known more useful weblinks, resources or materials for teaching English skills, used rubric and webquests as project-based tasks for encouraging students’ collaborative work, critical thinking and learning autonomy, explored students’ learning styles in order to use appropriate technological tools for multiple intelligences.

In my opinions, I think the most useful topics in this course were ground rules for discussion, academic blogs, writing ABCD learning objectives, technology tools for creating student-centered class and teaching with online tools in which ANVILL is a good tool for communicative development, easytestmaker and hot potatos are best to create online and offline tests.

Tools that I will use in class are reflective blog (forum, discussion), webquests, rubric, ANVILL (voiceboards and Quizzes and Surveys). In addition, I would like to use conceptTest, quickwrite, Jeopardy game to create an interactive PPT. Students are expected to get interested in the interactive PPT lessons; motivated and confident when take part in the forum/discussion and learn autonomously.

Tools that I suggest we could look at are Delicious (save good bookmarks of skill-building websites for English skill development), rubric for alternative assessment, PBL (webquest), appropriate technology tools for learner autonomy and multiple intelligences.

Thanks to this E-course, I have a new inspiration of teaching English skills with technology enhancement. It helped refresh my mind, at the moment I feel more confident and eager to apply what I’ve learned from this course to my teaching. Until now I’ve felt satisfied with the way the instructor lead the participants to the world of technology-enhanced teaching. I would like to send my deepest thanks to Robert, who did a good job. For the most part, he’s by our sides and give encouragement, advice whenever the participants need help. Moreover, a sincere thank goes to Jesse, Racquel and Jeff for their contribution to the discussion. Their ideas are so great and effective. This online course was a great opportunity for me to share experiences, knowledge, thoughts or plans with other teachers all around the world.

Thanks for everything!

All the best,
Phuong-Mai

WEEK 9: An overview of the course “Building Teaching Skills through the Interactive Web”

The topic of week 9 is rather interesting with technology and multiple intelligences. I read the articles “Tech tools that support multiple intelligences” and “The impact of different learning styles on classroom performance” and have a clear perspective of the great impact of different learning styles on classroom performance. I’m planning to use the learning styles assessment chart which helps me to determine my students’ learning styles. Based on that chart I can have a clear vision of my students’ habits as well as their learning styles in order to choose appropriate multiple intelligences with the help of technology.

In my opinions, I think it’s important for teachers to explore students’ interest as well as strengths and weaknesses in each intelligence in order to find appropriate and good multiple intelligences for students’ learning development.

This course is coming to an end but the knowledge I’ve got from it will go with me forever. In fact, the E-skill course is very helpful for my technology-enhanced teaching. In addition, I’ve learned from other participants’ ideas and information share. It’s really wonderful I’ve had chances to share experiences, knowledge, thoughts and plans with teachers all over the world.

You can have a look at the overview of what I tried and what I will continue to learn after the course is over:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PUED0P4_4EXRhfEYVrrZLNOX_IV933Bs8gFR8C9-CyE/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

Hope we can keep in touch!

All the best,
Phuong-Mai

WEEK 8: Teaching with Online Tools

This week I’ve known more online tools for enhancing learning. Among those tools, ANVILL which puts the main focus on oral/aural language practice is a good tool for communicative development. Some of the tools in ANVILL are Voiceboards, LiveChat, Quizzes and Surveys and Tcast. Most of these modern web-based audio and video tools are very motivating and useful for learner autonomy encouragement.

I like Voiceboards that is good to encourage multimedia communication in which teachers or learners can easily post or respond to an oral/aural assignment. Especially, teachers can address students to Voiceboards for students’ speaking skill enhancement because students are able to practice their pronunciation at home on their own. There are discussions, audio journals, pronunciation exercises, and other forms of oral language practice added to spoken language in Voiceboard.

Planning to make a survey using Google docs will be one of the first steps of my project which is helpful for me to get to know my students’ interests and needs in English learning. Moreover, to better understand students’ reading competence I would try EasyTestMaker tool to make a test that all the formatting is done, word banks are randomized and answer keys are created too.

In addition, I downloaded the program Hot Potatoes - at http://hotpot.uvic.ca/ to use it on my computer. It can help me create matching, cloze, scrambled sentence, and multiple choice exercises and crossword puzzles. I’ll explore it for my test making. I believe that it won’t take me much time to create a test as using Hot Potatoes and EasyTestMaker. I’ll try them both. ;-)

Best,
Phuong-Mai

WEEK 7: Teacher and Learner Autonomy

My university has transformed from semester-system to credit-system for nearly 2 years. I think it’s pretty out-of-date in comparison with the educational development of other universities in the world. It is in the semester-system that administrators or selection committee didn’t have the right to choose our own textbooks, had to focus more on quantity than on learning and teaching quality and also put pressure on teachers and students. As a teacher, I can see the difficulties in encouraging teacher and learner autonomy in that educational system. Over the past 2 years, applying credit-system in the curriculum and technologies in teaching and learning, both teachers and learners in my university have known the importance of learning autonomy, especially teachers’ role in guiding and instructing students to learn autonomously. As mentioned in Thanasoulas’ article, it’s right that autonomy is a process, not a product.

To encourage learner autonomy, teachers have to foster teacher autonomy first by updating themselves with a variety of materials, resources, and methods to meet the learners' needs. Using various materials, new methods and updated resources in teaching can draw students’ interests and motivation. This results in students’ need in exploring the world of learning.

I definitely agree with Thanasoulas’s ideas that teachers should act as a facilitator of learning, a counselor, and as a resource to get students learn autonomously inside the classroom. I plan to use retrospective self-reports that include semi-structured interviews and structured questionnaires to raise awareness of learners.

In addition, outside the classroom teachers can encourage learner autonomy by introducing interesting books and on current newspapers, English programmes on TV &/or radio or recommending students to read along with subtitles in English as watching. Moreover, asking students to write journals/diaries on their personal blogs is one of the best ways to enhance students' self-study. Even shy and unmotivated students can write whatever they like and share with others.

I think teacher and learner autonomy is not very difficult to enhance provided that we as teachers are whole-hearted to encourage students to learn autonomously with or without the help of technologies.