Week 8: Google Sites. What a great idea!

I have decided to do a Google Site just like the one we are using for our E-course, I always like to challenge myself to learn and do new things, I tried blogger for the first time few weeks ago and I think I doing fine I know how it works and how to manage it now, still need to know some features better, but will do it soon. Now, the Google Site I am working on is challenge for me as well, it is the first time I am working on this platform.

I will use this Google Site publish all information and materials needed for the live and playback version Webinars. This will certainly help not only students but teachers and all those who will be willing to join us for the webinars because they will be able to read all tasks and download the materials to be used in the classes or workshop sessions.

This Google Site will be used by English major students mainly, English learners in general and teachers from the UTN and other institutions.

I mentioned before that one of the learning problems students have in Ecuador is autonomy, this Google Site is going to help students a lot be more autonomous. Owing to, they will have clear tasks with their goals and deadlines, I will have to monitor and keep track of their work so that they will push themselves a bit to do things on time.

Parents and Teachers play a vital role in students´ autonomy, so when parents are not around or responsible for it, it is our job to make learners realize of it. We should start teaching students how to be autonomous since the very first day of class, it should be the first rule in class, I do it and to tell you about it, at the beginning some students hate me somehow, others are surprised and some even think I am a bit crazy but at the end of the day, all of them thank me because of they see that I was right and how much autonomy helps them not only in learning English but all subjects and even in their lives.

This is the URL of the site I am creating, I have not finished yet however, I have already done part of it.

Google site URL: https://sites.google.com/site/caiutne/

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Google Sites: Simple, secure group websites

Week 8: Videos in Plain English, Part 2

Podcasting in Plain English

                        Social Bookmarking  in Plain English

Wikipedia  in Plain English

Week 8: ANVILL is great

I am surprised; this site is simply great, what I most like of ANVILL,  is its flexibility; it has got something for every language teacher and the great opportunity for language practice. I definitely think that this site motivates students to do things by themselves making them more autonomous because of when students find many things to do and things they like, they feel eager to go and give it a try. I have used www.agendaweb.org which has tons of stuff for learners of different ages and that is what students like, many options to choose from.

 It is hard for all students to have access to internet connection either at the campus at home, here in Ibarra, Ecuador; few people have got internet connection at home. Some will not able to afford it but the main reason is internet speed, it is very slow and princes are a bit high so I think this could be a constraint that would make difficult to use this technology.

The solution to overcome this problem is that the government start having a better control of those internet providers, in the speed connection and cost so that people will feel more confident about it.

I like to use www.englishconversations.org  for getting real conversation in real life contexts, this site is great and when I checked Voicethread I starting thinking of doing a mini project with students, this will be very simple, I will just ask them to go to the site, download audios they like, download the scripts, burn audios on the CD or passed them to their cell phones or MP3 player, print scripts out and make a booklet and finally present to the class what they have done, why they have done it and what will they do with it having in mind the most important “Autonomy”

I also like the ANVILL Voiceboards,  for distance partnering. I will try to do something similar to this in the future.

Week 7: Videos in Plain English, Part 1

Google Docs in Plain English

Wikis in Plain English

Google Sites: Simple, secure group websites

Week 7: One Computer Lesson Plan

One Computer Lesson Plan

Name of the lesson:CD-ROM dictionary demonstration
(Name, type of student): University students aged 23 (average), intermediate to advance.
Interaction: Pair-work; step 2 is a teacher presentation, using an electronic projector; step 2 involves learners working in class in pairs.
Duration: 60 minutes

Materials:CD-ROM dictionaries

Other material:Browser; Computers with internet connection to run online dictionaries
Rationale: Learners usually use a bilingual dictionary owing to unfamiliarity with other options. The knowledge of a CD-ROM can encourage students to explore features the CD and build up their confidence in using CD-ROMs. Learners do usually realize of all those features that most dictionaries have got, so a demonstration from the teacher can point them towards the most useful features for their needs.
Introduction: Start briefly explaining the following:

1.      Finding and spelling words

2.      Headwords

3.      What a star mean in some dictionaries

4.       Word with same spelling that have different homonym numbers

5.       American spelling

6.       British spelling

7.       Alternative accepting spelling

8.       Cross reference

9.       Idioms

10.   Phrasal verbs

11.   Derivatives

12.  Abbreviations

13.  Related words

14.  Part of the speech

15.   Countable, uncountable , singular and plural nouns

16.   Transitive and intransitive verbs

17.  Bold words

18.  Preposition

19.   Participation situation

20.   Subject labels

21.  Highlighted collocation and others.

Objectives of this lesson:To demonstrate features of CD-ROM dictionaries
Procedure: This activity is three steps over the period of time:

1.      Ask students to share their experience of using a CD-ROM dictionary.

2.      Show students some key features in the CD, such as searching for a word. Point out the searching on a CD-ROM dictionary is faster than using a hard –copy dictionary. Demonstrate some of the features listed above in the “Introduction:” part. You can choose a word like “make” (see picture)

Show them key features like Advance Search, QickFind, Superwrite, Excersices, pictures, study pages. Smart thesaurus word building, verb ending and extra examples,

3.      At this point students should get hand-on experience on using the CD-ROMs. They can browse the dictionary freely on do a more controlled task, such as taking the CD-ROM guide tour.

4.      Follow up: 

1.      Give each student a difficult relevant text; they summarize the text in 250 words. In order to do the summary, learners use a CD-ROM dictionary to look at the unknown words. When they are done with this debrief the task: did they find the electronic dictionary useful? Which features of the electronic dictionary were useful?

2.      Group students into small ones, assign each group to a different a CD-ROM dictionary, they meet in groups to discuss about what they liked and what did about the CD.

Week 7: One Computer Options

One Computer Options

Hello All

After reading from some people who are using one computer in their classes and having a look at the “Wordprocessingand Internet ideas” I am reflecting on it.
First, why use word processor? I think word processor can be used in many ways, for instance; both teacher and students. Teachers can prepare, create, store, share and so on materials for their classes. Learners can use aword processor both in and outside the classroom to practice grammar, writing skills, filling in and other language points; they can also present their work.
I got to know that Microsoft Officehas got more than 300 million users? Wow! Is it true?
Secondly, what activities can be done with one computer in a class? All those ideas by Dr. Judi Harris are simply great. I think those 25 ideas could solve many problems for those who do not have computers labs or lack of them and at the same time became what some of us need to motivate our students through teaching them something very interesting and may be  totally new to some. What i have been doing the most in classes with one computer is what ELT people call “Technology-based courseware”, for example; CD-ROMs, these are primarily designed for learners to work on alone as follow-up to a lesson, either at schools or homes, i have got many of them, for all levels and different ages, for example, face2face, English in mind, cutting edge, skyline and tunes just to mention few. How I use them in class is simple, just set the compute with a projector and do one class where all student participle and interact, at the I take some minutes to explain that all we did in class can be done home by themselves and that the class was just to make them realize of how to use the CD-ROMs and to promote autonomy.
Another type of activity I do is DVDs, where we can preview and or review language from the student´s book, provide natural conversation in realistic situations, expand students´ cultural awareness, provide engaging and motivating entertainment. The ones I use come with the video resource books (VRBs) great material, such as, worksheets, teaching notes, cultural notes, highlighted in the video quizzes, scripts, answer keys and much more.

E-Portfolios is what I am doing as well, before I used to keep traditional paper-based portfolios but from last semester I tried the digital ones out, it did not work perfectly the first one but I am sure the second is going to be a lot better. Before I just tried it via emails but this time around I would like to try Google sites/docs, WIKIs and/or Nicenet, let see how it goes.