Building Teaching Skills

I finally discovered how to embed vids in blogger.

I have done a Ppt about the E-components the book series we teach with has got. We have finished the semester at the university and we will start again the second week of September so I am not teaching at the moment. The idea of doing this power point presentation is to show it to students the next semester so I can make them realize of how many things they can do as extra-curricular activities to support their learning and at the same time promote autonomy. It is very important to teach students what they can do to complement their learning; sometimes not even teachers realize of the materials there are available. In my opinion, in Ecuador, teacher like to spend a lot of time planning and writing on the board, it is amazing that some teachers still go to their classes and the space for writing on the board is limited to them, Many of them know that there is a vast amount of information, teaching ideas, lesson planning and so on available out there. However, some are teachers refuse ...

I have thought of some techniques and technology that could help when teaching small and large classes Teaching large and small classes is very linked to classroom management, as we all may know, the best number for a class is probably 12 Ss because they can be divided into different groups, for instance, we can make 4 groups of 3, 3 groups of 4, 2 groups of 6. Having 12 Ssas the average numbers of students in class makes it a lot easier for them to hear one another in a whole-class activity. Unfortunately, we cannot choose the number of students in our classes. Most classes are large and I think that the larger the class is the more necessary is to implement technological tools is, one of the differences between large and small classes is the time we have got to monitor students, I think even having 30 students we can still walk around the class during the lesson and spend a few moments listening to each groups and take some notes but with a larger class so we should keep track of ...

Well, in my opinion, one of the biggest problem students in Ecuador have is autonomy, some students, not to say the most, think they cannot survive in class without the teacher and I believe that Internet –based projects can be like an extension of the kind of individual- lesson work. How can this motivate students? Clearly, using technology can be very motivating because of the wide range of stimulating activities Ss can do, a good example can be playing language-learning games. Many learners simply like using the computer without realizing how useful It can be to proceed at their own pace, furthermore, they have the chance to make their own choices in multimedia exercises and other materials. The “Interactivity” of the language can be also very beneficial since web-based exercises are interactive than paper-based ones. Three great websites I love to work on are: 1.       “Touchstone Arcade”   Cambridge Universy Press. http://www.cambridge.org/us/e...

I have read about WebQuests a nd definitely think that they are great, I discovered there are two types of WebQuests Short-term WebQuests and Long-term WebQuests. 1.       Short-term WebQuests:  These aim at making students understand the most significant new information and make sense of it. They might last for three of four classes and will involve learners in browsing different sites to get information and use it for achieving the aims of the class. 2.       Long-term WebQuests: These aim at making students analyze a body of knowledge deeply, they should show that they do not only understand the information but can debate and produce something out of it; it could be a product, report, a presentation and interview survey and so on.  The process for WebQuests involves research skills, analyzing skills and word processing skills. Interesting note: Bernie Dodge, a professor of Educational Technology at San Diego S...