Week # 3 DELICIOUS AND CALL

It is a social bookmarking. I have used bookmarks in books but never as an internet tool. It is very useful because I didn’t have a place to keep all my websites. They were hanging around in my notebooks, pads o wherever I have the place to write a site. Using Delicious is like a phone or address book where you can keep any website important for you. This is my URL www.delicious.com/avanorton  It was added to the Wiki.

I read the article “Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials” by Lindsay Miller. In my face-to-class I used to work with CD-ROM in order to develop the listening skill. I was combining the listening with the speaking exercises plus some video work. Now with CALL I don’t need a CD ROM any more. We use a multimedia program called DYNED, where a computer lab is our main tool in our English classes. The acquisition of the language is based on frequent repetitions where students do speech recognition, pronunciation training and record/play back exercises plus some exercises for reading and writing.   Based on my experience I would use CALL for developing the listening and speaking skills; for reading and writing I would use other tools, internet resources applicable for classrooms.

Regard Ava Norton

Week # 10 Why DYNED? Blended Learning. End of the Course

The university signed an agreement with a company to use DYNED as a main tool in our English class. This multimedia program was settled to be used weekly, three hours in the computer lab and one hour in a classroom. Following these recommendations, students would develop the four skills simultaneously. After a year, we realized that students were developing the listening and speaking skills more than the reading and writing skills.  My proposal, as my final project in this course, is to reduce the hours of computer work to two hours and to have two hours in a classroom. We start doing it this scholar period to see whether it works or not.

These university students are one of the groups that are working under this schema, a blended learning. So they will develop the four skills as we expect. At the end of the period we will see if working 50% with DYNED instead of 75% will be better for the students.

If this schema works, it will be established officially in September.

As a summary of my work, taking this course gave me a wide range of possibilities that we can use in class. All the internet tools can be applied or combined with our English program. I can mention most of them:

-          Outline a course using behavioral learning objectives, following the ABCD model.

-          Web searching options

-          Using delicious to save web links

-          The employment of CALL in English teaching

-          Preparing lesson plans using technology

-          Links to sources for E-books

-          Project-based learning and WebQuests

-          Creating rubrics

-          Creating power point presentations

-          Using technology in teaching large classes

-          Creating a class on a blogger, a  nicenet class, a class survey using google docs, a class website or wiki on Google Sites

-          Be part of a class wiki and to have our own blog

-          How  Learner Autonomy can be fostered

-          Applications for the one-computer classroom

-          Introduction to ANVILL

-          Tech tools that support multiple intelligences

-          Learning styles

-          Create a final report or project

-          Levels of Technology Integration

Some of them will be used in our face-to-face class. Teachers will be trained in those internet tools applicable to our needs.

Week # 7 Self-access: A Framework For Diversity

I am agreed that we all have different learning styles; we all respond differently to different teaching environments; we are different ages, with different attitudes and interests; we respond in different ways emotionally when working with other individuals and groups.

If I would have the opportunity to create my own English course I would include a self-access center. I am a follower of the learner autonomy and I think students can develop this learning method though this center.

I would use it as a class supplement. English course should match to self-access work. Self-access lessons would be scheduled into teaching syllabuses to help students to 'learn to learn independently’. Students would do extra work in their own in other to develop their skills. Materials would be on a computer database with access to the internet. The learning materials would be used by learners at different ages and levels, and with different language needs. Counseling and assessment services would be offered.

Week # 9 Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles

I like how Howard Gardner presents the nine intelligences through his book “Frames of Mind” to demonstrate the intellectual abilities which are linked with the ways of learning. Richard Felder says that students preferentially take in and process information in different ways: by seeing and hearing, reflecting and acting, reasoning logically and intuitively, analyzing and visualizing. According to Felder Teaching Methods also vary: some instructors lecture, others demonstrate or discuss; some focus on principles and others on applications; some emphasize memory and others understanding. How much students learn in a class depends among other things on the match between their learning style preferences and the instructor's teaching style.

These are situations that we face every day in class. I think the key is to find the balance between teaching methods and learning styles. Computers can be good resources with a wide range of activities that we can use in class. Nowadays, the use of technology makes students and teachers interact together stronger than having a class without it.

Week # 2 BROWSERS, WEB SEARCH ENGINES AND ABCD OBJECTIVES

Browsers and Web Search Engines are new tools for me. In the past, searching was a time consuming for me because I didn’t know the correct way to do it. Now, I know.

Noodle Tools provides support to teachers and students during the research process. I am familiar with Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, but most of them are new for me. I had a look in http://education.iseek.com/iseek/ and Twurdy . I did some searching with satisfactory results.

By the other hand I read about ABCD objectives and my understanding were:

Audience is who your learner will be

Behavior’s what you want them to do

Condition is when and where they will perform

Degree is proficiency, effectiveness, too

It has been difficult for me to be part of the course. I am not familiar with web tools but they will be very helpful for my job.

Week # 8 What a Hard Week

What’s ANVILL?  ANVILL is: (A Virtual Language Lab) is a tool that can be used to optimize the speech.

What’s it supposed to do? You can use it if you want to improve your students’ listening and speaking skills mainly, plus many other activities quizzes, live chat, etc

Who’s it for? I will use it with senior high school and university students

It has been this week very hard. ANVILL is a tool that I need to study. I think as I have said in some of the blog. We should know the internet tools exit, there are there. Use them according to our students needs resources. I like http://www.toolsforeducators.com/. It is easy. I made a puzzle. I wanted to upload to class wiki but I didn’t find the right place. Here is the link:

http://www.MyCrosswords.com/Demonstration/User922733150.html

I hope you enjoy it.

Regards

Ava Norton

Week # 6 A Busy Week with Power Point Presentations

In one of the workshop that I attended to CATESOL 2010, there was a class called “Using Tech for Formative Assessment”. The instructor used power point add-in with the ability to use multiple mice.

She had one laptop, a pp presentation in a wired projector with a multiple USB device. We were organized in groups. Each group had a mouse. It was a vocabulary exercise. Each group should give an answer clicking the mouse. I enjoyed this class a lot.

The next half an hour the instructor explained Audience Response Systems (clickers). How it works? A presenter asks a question to an audience (yes/no, true-false, multiple choice) using a pp presentation software add in and USB device. A question is displayed to the audience via a projector wired to the computer. An audience votes using with a hand-held remote that works wirelessly. When the polling ends, the software tabulates the results and displays them in a chart. Here is the link where anyone can see the details of this activity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYmpAZ2xve4&feature=player_embedded#at=242

In this class I realized how useful power point presentation in English Teaching is.

Week # 1 Introduction to Webskills

This is my second online course. At the beginning I thought all online courses would have the same scheme, but they are not.  I started the course in a rush because I was away from home. But since the first day I liked the way that it’s been conducted. I have met many people with experience in English teaching. I will introduce part of the job I do in class.

I teach English to high school and university students.  I have three groups: university, pedagogy and high school students. The youngest students are from high school. This time I am going to talk about my university students. I teach first English level with a multimedia program called DynEd (Dynamic Education) under a blended model class. We spend 3 hours in a computer lab plus one face-to-face hour class.

My main objective is to develop the students' speaking and listening skills in the lab, socialization with reading and writing in the classroom.  The students  do the practice as follow:

1. Answering the exercises practicing the four skills by interacting with the computer

2. Repeating the dialogs, phrases, vocabulary, sentences and so on by pressing the repeat button three times.

3. Voice recording one time

4. Voice monitoring one time

5.  Playback as many times as needed

6.  Additional classroom activities

7. Workbook-based instruction as homework

Our resources are:

A computer lab, headphones, workbook and a multimedia program New Dynamic English. This program has 8 modules. We are using Module 1 for the first Level which contents are:
Present simple tense, pronouns, nouns, adjectives, verbs, wh-questions, prepositions, numbers, time,
dialogs: names, places, family members, jobs, addresses, telephone numbers, etc., through listening comprehension, speech recognition, voice record, playback and video exercises. These activities are done 3 hours in the computer lab and one hour in the classroom.

With 76 hours of practice per semester, students will develop:

• Pronunciation and Oral Fluency
• Listening and Reading Comprehension
• Sentence Structure and Effective Sequencing of ideas

After approving an English level, students will get a Proficiency Diploma certified by the Labor Department.

This is a general framework of my class and this is one of my groups. If you want to know more about DynEd go to its website: www.dyned.com.

Week # 5 How was this week?

This week was very enrichment for me. I have learned about virtual learning environments. There are huge of them with a wide range of applications for different needs and learning styles. Most of them are free and can be used by educators, researchers and so on. The university where I work has the project to create online courses, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and doctorates. English classes are part of this project. So this knowledge will be very helpful for me. My introduction to this field will be easier.

I have read Susan Gaer’s Article about Project Based Learning (PBL). That’s true what she says about getting the students involved in something that they are concern with. In my teachings I use meaningful issues with the students based on real situations and it does really work.

By the other hand, WebQuests are new concepts for me. I read the information and I did my own searching. I am not familiar with them but I tried to do a WebQuestion for my Tuesday class. Here it is:

DAILY ACTIVITIES

Designed by

Ava Norton

avanorton_1@hotmail.com

INTRODUCTION

New Dynamic English 2, Module 3

UNIT 1.-  DAILY ACTIVITIES

-       Kathy’s Schedule

-       Diane’s Schedule

-       Question practice with speech recognition

-       Focus exercises

Audience: High school Students ( 16-19 years old), English II( Intermediate I)

HOMEWORK

Each student will do a search in the internet. When they get  the information, the students  will follow the instructions. Our Objectives are:

-       Understand and use the past tense form of regular and irregular verbs to talk about events that happened earlier today.

-       Understand and use be going to  to talk about events that are assumed to happen later today.

PROCESS

-       Write your own schedule in class through what you did this morning. Focus on the past tense.

-       Search a list of ten verbs.

-       Write in two columns, the present and past forms of the verbs. Use regular and irregular verbs.

-       Describe what you did yesterday.( five sentences at least)

-       Describe what you will do tonight. ( five sentences at least)

For example: I eat breakfast in the morning. I woke up at seven o’clock. I am going to eat lunch at twelve thirty.

Resources:

http://www.azargrammar.com/

http://www.usingenglish.com

http://visual.merriam-webster.com

http://www.visuwords.com

http://www.ego4u.com/

EVALUATION

This is our established criteria for student evaluation:

Participation 2.5…………computer work (80%) of DYNED

Homework    2.5…………DYNED workbook

English Test 5.0…………DYNED mastery test

Total           10.0

This activity will be part of their participation grades. The score will be one point. This rubric is related to this activity and our evaluation system.

       Student Name _________________________________________Date ____________________

CATEGORY	4	3	2	1	SCORE
Completion	I completed all the work	I completed most of the work	I completed some of the work	I completed just a little of the work
Effort	I tried to do all the work	I tried to do most of the work	I tried to do some of the work	I tried to do just a little of the work
Understanding	I completely understood the instructions	I  understood the instructions	I understood part of the instructions	I did not understand the instructions
Mechanics	No grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors	Almost no grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors	A few grammatical spelling, or punctuation errors	Many grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors.
Neatness	My writing is clear and organize	My writing is clear but the sentences are not organized	My writing is messy and the sentences are not organized	My writing is scribbled and very hard to read
Respects Others	Student was consistently quiet  and remained seated allowing others to work	Student was usually quiet and usually remained seated, allowing other to work	Student was rarely quiet and rarely remained seated, allowing others to work	Student did not remain quiet or seated and caused disruption to others.
Internet use	Successfully uses suggested internet links to find information and navigates within these sites easily without assistance.	Usually able to use suggested internet links to find information and navigates within these sites easily without assistance.	Occasionally able to use suggested internet links to find information and navigates within these sites easily without assistance.	Needs assistance or supervision to use suggested internet links and/or to navigate within these sites.

    (1)        4= Excellent         3= Very Good         (.5)       2= Good            1= Poor

CONCLUSION

                      

Students will:

-       be able to understand and talk about daily activities in the immediate past and future.

-        be able to understand, express, and ask about events of today from this morning through tonight.

CREDITS

DYNED (dynamic education)

Robert I tried to do a webQuest but I couldn't. I used the pages you gave us but I couldn't do it. Can you tell me some easy guidelines because I would like to used in my Tuesday class. Thanks

Week # 4 My experience in my last class.

One of my groups are high school students.  They are taking their English class with technology using a multimedia program called DYNED (dynamic education). It is mandatory for the class to bring headphones with microphone.  Half of the students didn’t do it. They couldn’t stay there without doing anything so I decided to split the group of 36 in two parts. Based on what I have learned in this course, the first part started working with DYNED and the rest of the group (students without headphones) was sent to another lab to do some searching.  I asked them to search the components of verb tenses: present, past and future, write a dialog using this information and practice the dialog. They worked in pairs. This topic is the first point of their study guide. Everyone did the job. The students were involved in this activity; even they didn’t take their five minute break. My supervision was enough for what they have been doing.I reviewed their work and it was good, just some students need to improve their knowledge in this topic.

At the end of the two hour class, I remained them to bring their headphones for next class.

INTRODUCTION TO DYNED

DynEd's programs are a step forward in English Language teaching. Based on extensive classroom experience, the latest research into how people learn, and upon data gathered and analyzed over 20 years in the field of computer-assisted language learning (CALL), DynEd courses take full advantage of what advanced technologies and neuroscientific research can provide.


DynEd's ESL/ELT/ELL technology-assisted courses and assessment tools help learners develop all four language skills, beginning with listening and speaking: "the 4-skills path."


There are significant differences between traditional, text-based approaches and the listening-based, iconic approach that is at the heart of DynEd's Recursive Hierarchical Recognition (RHR) design. DynEd's ESL solutions have proven themselves in quality programs around the world and are on the leading edge of a transformation in language education.


Recursive Hierarchical Recognition

Developed by DynEd’s founder, Lance Knowles, this breakthrough language learning approach resonates with how the human brain has evolved to search for, recognize and employ language patterns. Learning proceeds in a recursive fashion, employing the brain'shierarchical memory structure in ways that a linear design cannot.

Fully Interactive 
                          

Learners are active, not passive, when using DynEd's time-based interface. Within a lesson, students can move backward or forward, repeat a sentence or phrase as many times as needed, record and monitor their voices, and see clear visual support that aids comprehension. In addition, learners actively demonstrate the level of their comprehension by completing listening or other tasks that are woven into each lesson and which may even alter the depth of the presentation through DynEd's patented 'shuffler' mechanism.

Multi-modal Learning

Language models are presented and practiced in ways that facilitate comprehension, long-term learning and automaticity. DynEd's unique "iconic" approach coordinates visual information with auditory input in ways not possible with textbooks. This allows the learning sequence to follow the natural path: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

 Blended Learning

 Guided by research, learning theories, and by actual classroom experience, CALL is now moving toward a blended model where the multimedia computer provides the necessary optimal input and practice activities, and the classroom provides the human element where the language models come to life and are extended in a social context. Viewed from this blended model, both classroom and multimedia activities play an essential role. Without the social environment of the classroom, learning is tedious, unmotivating, and too restrictive to meet the needs of learners. Typically, drop-out rates are reported to be 80 percent or more in e-learning environments where little or no classroom support is available. On the other hand, without the effective practice provided by well-designed, media-rich courseware, language learning is slow, painful and discouraging, a fact borne out by the results of traditional language learning models which suffer from a lack of practice and an overemphasis on memorization and conscious rule learning that is soon forgotten.

In our experience, the blended model can reduce language-learning time significantly, in some cases by 50 percent or more, depending primarily on the following variables:
1. Scheduling of practice sessions for optimum frequency and duration.
2. Quality and design of practice sessions, supported by coaching, feedback, and suitable learning tasks.
3. Sequencing of content and an appropriate mix of skills so that the strategic support elements of language are developed in a well-designed learning path.
4. Classroom sessions that provide extension and personalization of the language models, including the assignment of reading and writing exercises.
5. Suitable technical infrastructure and support.

Once a suitable infrastructure is in place, teacher training is generally the most important factor in the success or failure of a CALL initiative. In the blended model, where practice is emphasized more than ever, students need to be coached and monitored. The quality and design of practice sessions must be supported by coaching and feedback, and this is most effective when provided by a teacher who knows the student and has a good idea about what differentiates effective practice from inefficient practice, the kind that wastes valuable time and de-motivates students.