Week 3 – Tasting new things

Wow! It’s the third week and it seems that we’re working a long time before it!

Well, but I can that this week I could taste new things. Donna’s menu was really diverse:

Let me start to present my menu:

APPETIZER

·      Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials    by Lindsay Miller

·      The Employment of  CALL in Teaching Second /Foreign Language Speaking Skills  by Julia Gong

My starter was excellent because I tasted the article by Lindsay Miller called my attention because of its title. And she really presented some ideas to use the authentic materials. One of the suggestions that I liked was the activity using TV/video that is focused on students on the elementary level, so the questions are simple and it can be developed into a more complex activity.

After that I could try a little bit of Julia Gong’s article that presented the use of CALL to develop the speaking skill. The way that she presented her ideas showed us both sides of the coin in relation to the use of CALL. Some of the good aspects are the stimulation in the students’ interest providing a better  dialogue and communication. Also, there are some computers that allow students to “talk to” them. But, (there’s always one), this kind of software is not able to understand and produce natural human speech. There’s a long way to get to this point.

 

MAIN COURSE

·      Delicious.com

Before Donna’s suggestion on this website, I didn’t have the idea that we could put all our favorites in just one place and have an easy access to all of them. I can say that it was really delicious to know and use this resource, that’s why this was my main course.

DESSERT

Project task number 2: Project Report for Lorin Salagean Technical High School by Nadina Nicolici

To finish my wonderful week 3, I could try a little bit of some examples of previous projects of our course. And the one that I liked and commented about was Nadina Nicolici’s. One of the things that I liked is the clear way that she presents her ideas and also her simple and objective goals for her students’ needs. Another project that was interesting was Tendouinde Bruno Nikiema’s whose goals are to develop the students’ skills of reading and writing. One thing that I liked in this project is that there’s a research for the students tell their needs in the learning of English language.

So, this was my yummy week. I think I’m getting hungry for the next one...

Week 2 - Run, Claudia, Run!

      

     When I started to think about the week 2, I immediately thought about the movie Forrest Gump where the main character ran and didn’t stop because he just wanted to. It’s the same as I’m feeling about this week. I want to run! I want to read my class plans and run to change my old objectives style to the ABCD’s ones and make them as clear as limpid water. I want to review the Nicenet discussion on websearching and follow Lila’s suggestion on KidsClick (www.kidsclick.org/ ) and have fun playing one of the several options of on line games for children like Funbrain page (http://www.funbrain.com/funbrain/grammar/index.html.) Or maybe follow Julhas’ suggestion about the Dictionary of Open Access Journals and run to access the pages and discover the magic world of Journals. And what about run to review the vocabulary using Khayrul Islam’s suggestion of Wordcentral page (http://www.wordcentral.com/edu/index.htm ) and find meaning, spelling and the picture of a word?   

     Yes, I have to run, because after describing all about my students for the Project Task 1, I realized that I need to run faster. I think about those students that get up very early in their further communities to take a one or two hours boat trip and many times they have to take 30 to 40 minutes walking before getting to school and watch one of my classes. And they have to do the same to come back home.  It’s necessary to run because they need more meaningful classes and they need to be listened. And along all this course with Donna and my colleagues’ help, I’m going to run after this solution.

 

                                               Does somebody want to follow me?

                                                  So, let’s run!!

Week 1

Hello y'all!
It's really nice to talk about the first week of our on line course called Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web.
To start the course our tutor Donna Shaw introduced herself and asked us to do the same and talk a little bit about our teaching experiences. I could know my colleagues that are really experienced teachers from all over the world. Also, we discussed about the use of the Ground Rules. And as a result of this discussion all of us could agree on the importance of this tool to guide our thoughts in a way that we can reach the main objective of the suggested forum.
As our final discussion, we presented our blogs and told how was the process to create it. And I can say that this is one of the things that I learned this week: how a blog is an useful tool. Also the extra material that Donna suggested us could give us an idea how to use the blog to enrich our classes and provide new opportunities to our students to build their knowledge and express themselves.
This was a very profitable week and I see this course as an unique opportunity to share our thoughts and worries about our profession but with a focus on the resource that is the internet.
The first week is over but I'm sure I will learn much more...

A big brazilian hug,
Claudia Borges