GOODBYE WEEK

Dear bloggers,

I would like to thank all of you for your time and attention dedicated to my posts, it meant a lot to me and you contributed to give me good time in this session of learning.
I cannot thank Courtney enough for being the right instructor I could expect, honestly my initial goal was that I just wanted to be part of the thing, and Courtney and you participants dear Hulya, Nataliia, Tahsina, Izela, Mukti, Moni, Bhuwan and everybody made me successful; many thanks, this is why I could not help to say in my first post on nicenet this week that I loved learning and I loved the people.
Nonetheless I read lot of good information on Loti but unfortunately I was not able to access to the survey, from the definitions I got on the PDF document I can say my class is currently Level 5 Expansion and my goal is to reach the level 6 Refine by the end of next semester.
My class being online, the teaching and learning activities are fundamentally technology oriented and I aim to familiarize myself and my students with the use of blog, nicenet, padlet, webquest, ANVILL, PBL activities so that students could carry out learning by themselves in extra curricular environment. I also want to maintain collaboration with my colleagues and Courtney.
I wish lot of success to everyone in implementing whatever technologies he/she plans to improve the quality of his/her pedagogic activities.
As for myself, I am always Dirba this is my African first name, after my father converted muslim his mother insisted they give me Dirba ( THE ONE WHO CARE ABOUT THE OTHERS and it seems to follow me).
I will be more than happy to collaborate in any class exchange project.

Best wishes,
Mariam

The Final Project Week

Hello dear bloggers,

I am happy to reach this week of our training in that I have learnt a lot since the beginning and still doing so from what is available on the course platform and also from our nicenet discussion thread. Courtney and our course mates always bring relevant resources to read about, reflect on and post our opinions.
This week 9 consisted in going further about learner autonomy by discussing how to take into account every learner's personal learning style in our teaching profession. Our weekly debates began with Howard Gardner work on Multiple Intelligence provided by Courtney before our mate Krishna from Nepal first post which also clarified the issue of MI and our approach to EFL/ESL teaching to many point of views.
We implemented our own MI evaluation and it showed me the scope of  efforts expected from us teachers to carry out a more successful work.
In addition to the final project the good thing that really got me happy about myself is the new tools I realized on http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html , http://www.easytestmaker.com/default.aspx, http://www.toolsforeducators.com/ and the wall wisher. Now it feels like I have always worked with these tools and I wish to transmit the same motivation in using them to my students.
Now talking about the greatest thing, the final project, I am happy I completed it and hope it will be useful to other beneficiaries of the coming ATDOP web skill training. I will always be grateful to those who contributed to my registration and my training in this course. Me and all the students I will teach after this course will be tributary to Courtney and the University of Oregon for I am no more the same teacher thanks to them.
Another great thing is the socialization between mates on the discussion thread, I like reading the mutual encouraging and support in one another post. All the participants are good in manners and also in skills, this is why I am happy and proud to be part of the group.

Gratefully,
Mariam

WEEK 8 WORK

Hello dear co-bloggers,

We are now at the end of the 8th week of this training and things are moving at a high speed, I am lucky to work with Hulya, she was the first one to post her project plan for the peer check activity. I learnt a lot from what she did about the content, the process and her perspective. From her work you could know she is an experience ELT teacher at academic level.
I spent time trying to mobilize and organize my students participation on my nicenet discussion thread, what I succeeded but still have a lot to do on my Google classroom. I am really not sure how this one works and I hope to make it because I like it. It's very good to work with Nataliia, thanks to her project I created my nicenet class earlier to provide my students with a space to exchange and debate feedback from her reading project and now I organized my own class catch up activity there.
It is only later on in week 8 that I got the chance to read about ANVILL,to  discover a huge opportunity. I can now move my students from their daily platform to ANVILL for activities that integrate the four skills of listening,speaking, writing, and reading. I have just completed my first course on ANVILL.
  I also found out lot of worksheets about many topics in business and science and I created a crossword exercise on tools for educators and I am still trying out the easy test maker. I definitely need to do something on wizard.4teachers about the cards to reinforce my courses input and vary activities for my students and I cannot help not to build up activities on hot potatoes.
The Nobel prize publications are very interesting for the development of my EFL courses for the science institute students, and the subjects from the media about Apple and Steve Jobs, the issue of gas price in the USA are interesting complements for the EFL business course. I like the jigsaw activities and the opportunities to hold oral activities on ANVILL.
I am still fixing up and adding items and information on my final project and I hope to get something great out of these efforts.

Many thanks,
Mariam

WEEK 7 Achievements

Hello dear bloggers,

We have reached the culminating point of our training that requires us a top intellectual fitness condition.
 We completed our usual weekly reading and participating in the class discussions, as well as finding links to add to the wallwisher, planning exchange with peer check counter part, developing the technology tools selected for the project with students, and finally maintaining our daily teacher activities.
 Alike the previous weeks, we learnt a lot in reading about learner autonomy in theory through Dimitrios Thanasoulas and Samuel Sheu works, for the practice we were instructed by Susan Gaer various approaches to implement learner autonomy especially with One-computer Classroom.
One key determining principle promoted  in learner autonomy I praise is the one that promotes  learner self esteem.This dimension of pedagogy is also emphasized in Project-Based Learning approach to language teaching/learning.It is primordial for learner to be recognized as a valuable entity in teaching/learning process so it will develop his sense of commitment in learning and by extension in life.
Once again, we received Leslie Opp-Beckman to our discussion thread and she suggested lot of pieces of advises and resources useful for EFL in general and the implementation of week 7 topics.
I created a nicenet classroom and invited my students and friends.
THE CLASS KEY IS: H88K8H8
 I am agreeably surprised with students participation both in my discussion thread and Nataliia's while being on vacation, as for the Skype In The Classroom Technology I decided to keep it but did not required students immediate intervention less I should be too demanding to them, in addition Courtney advised Nataliia and I about the issue of time zone difference.
I am more than happy to work with Hulya because I trust her qualities of hard worker and self discipline she shows on nicenet discussion thread and I am still putting things together to obtain an acceptable input to send her for peer check.

So glad to share this experience with you dear readers.

I wish you all the best,
Mariam

WEEK 6 WORK

Hello dear co-bloggers,

It's so amazing that we are already done with 6 whole weeks, the good thing about it is that we used the time constructively. I seldom learn lot of skills in  little length of time like I do in this training.
We are adding more and more knowledge with the massive links we take from one another post and put on our delicious pages, and articles  and resources of the week program. This is a must if we want to optimize our competences and be more effective as today's EFL instructors. The only thing I regret is that I don't have enough time to go through carefully all the posts on nicenet and links on the platform for I know I am losing something whenever I don't do that.
This week I learnt about engaging students in large classes management with "using technology(webquest,PBL, CALL...) in teaching large classes"  especially with Donna Shaw and Rick Finnan work.
In fact,the use of online assessment tools with the opportunities offered on blackboard make me dream of easier times in managing my grading work. We definitely need machine help somehow because the application of the new teaching methods brings along more assessments and feedback to provide.
I liked Haidar and Tahsina opening the Week 6 discussion on nicenet with very engaging and concerned tone about the issue of large classes management.
I am getting familiar with names like Courtney, Nataliia, Izela, Hulya, Tahsina, Sharmila, Alina, Mukti, Haidar,Bobby as if I meet them in real time.Nataliia is so careful and cautious, she seems to be the most respectful of the instruction about our posts,she is not too long, too lecture like in her style; she drew our attention Izela and I about the quality of our webquest documents we did not finished properly. Izela is a champion good reader and brilliant thinker. Tahsina always brings relevant observations on my work.
I designed a second  a Power Point document about teaching and learning Argumentation and Persuasion ( a post reading activity), the first one I did was my Education Science Master Degree defense document.
As for my final project work, I continue to think and explore the potential technologies that are more suitable for my third year business class(nicenet discussion thread, skype, dropbox, webquest, rubric, PPT, prezi so on and so forth). After sharing Nataliia's project document, I am more relaxed, I now know I can make it easier than I believed.

Look forward to sharing more findings.

Warmest Regards,
Mariam

WEEK 5 NEWS

Hello dear bloggers,

We are still moving forward in reinforcing our pedagogic capacities through the two key processes that define this E-teacher professional development training:
Connecting teachers through exchange and collaboration.
Familiarizing teachers with the most recent approaches to EFL teaching.

This week 5 program taught us Project-Based Learning, Alternative Assessment, new model of teaching and learning, rubrics, WebQuest and also the  first step in responding to our final project technology related solution.
We share experiences of PBL in Susan Gaer, and Don Doehla works. Susan Gaer demonstrated the value of PBL in educational success with Asian cookbook, folktales book production in adults EFL class for Asian immigrants in the USA  and also the newspaper publication experience with Latino EFL students in America.
Don Dehla experiments PBL with foreign language other than English, he shows in the PBL of recipe book, children stories book, ABC book production how his students' improved at a point to be able to attend a collaborative class with students of the target language countries.
The new model of teaching and learning EFL comes along with  new ways of assessing pedagogic activities, among these new assessment tools rubrics are very objective and have the potential to cover the width of any activity in term of multidimensional view or multidisciplinary scope.
WebQuest is nonetheless interesting so far, we can say it's a completely virtual form of PBL which provides a whole pedagogic kit to develop teaching and learning activities.
We now work closer like teachers' of a same school, we know each other style of redaction, level of teaching, final project domain, give advises and make suggestions. We really care for each other.

Kind Regard,
Mariam    

Hello everybody,

Welcome to the course week 4 blog, After learning about the pedagogic status and the value of CALL in many dimensions with Julia Gong and Lindsay Miller last week, Mei-Ya-Liang and Jarek Krajka are teaching me practical and adequate approach to CALL integration in EFL teaching with concrete examples and references for resources building. I am implementing the procedure of use of CALL to enhance an EFL lesson in the lesson plan template and I moved forward in my perspective of the final project as I am detecting the issues at the origin of my courses that could be fixed with CALL.

Best Regards,
Mariam

week 3 program

Hello everybody,

At the end of week 3 we grew in internet search skill and knowledge about the universe of most recent technological means of teaching such CALL and many others.
The creation and use of blog and delicious and reading lot of final projects of the course former participants contribute to widen our minds in regards to our views about EFL.
I like the projects I read, each of them is unique as it addresses specific needs and target different environment. It help me understand the amount of work am expected to produce.
Reddy from South Africa developed online teaching project I found interesting and inspiring for my own final project. I need to have very good knowledge about uses of blogger, delicious, and nicenet in order to associate them to some other existing tools in my university platform.

Cordially,
Mariam

Hello dear bloggers,

Am bringing my perspective of Julia Gong article about the use of CALL in EFL teaching.

The use of computer in classroom opens new horizons for teaching and learning English as a second/foreign language for teacher and students.

The computer software and internet provide a more comfortable and universal access to learning resources that offers authentic language input for the users (Kataoka, 2000) , however the optimal exploitation of CALL ( Computer Assisted Language Learning) at teaching ends should not be taken for granted. (Levy 1997, 1) “Voice” dictionary for teaching pronunciation is a good reference so far.

“Computer intervenes as an added tool or resource, as a model or real world phenomenon, or system as a training environment to prepare users for real world experience” (Pennington 1995, 11) The appropriate computer use and software packages sound like a panacea to many issues related to the weaknesses of foreign language learning and brings responses to teachers complaints all over the world. With the right use of CALL we are likely to produce a generation of English teachers and speakers with better skills in performance and competence than ourselves.

Call materials are used both to improve the quality of fluency and accuracy in regard of prosody and employment of software oriented in use of discourse genre and topical area in order to stimulate verbal interaction. This is the appropriate situation of teaching EFL that meets teachers need as mentioned by: Runganayagie Nalini Reddy in his final project ETSP Spring 2010 final project” Thematic integration of the four language skills which incorporates issues of grammar (so it is not taught in a vacuum) are an eternal challenge not just to the TEACH Ambassadors but to many ESL teachers in South Africa (SA)”.

As far as mechanical part (phonetics, prosody, and segmental) is concern the following are available: extensive texts, graphics, animation, audio, digital, audio, digitized audio video clips as well as synthesis –by-rule that can convert text to speech (Pennington 1995).The drawback of computer issued speech (technical issues) can be compensate by digitized or video speech even though the latter is less flexible.  No less important option are the speech recognition technology (Healey 1999, 127) and Aist (1999, 133) three dimensions approach to teaching pronunciation.

Another good example of CALL application is SLIM (Multimedia Interactive Linguistic Software) used in the University of Venice (Delmonte, 2000). One difficulty about this technology is its price. For now it is expensive and is not affordable by the general public.   

A common software designed for use of CALL meaningful side is the CONVERSATION where the students can learn by interacting with computer through record of own speech and machine feedbacks. CALL provides students with broader and personal use of resource to learn at their convenient pace with CD-Roms, web documents and BBC News through RealPlayer. The video and audio conferencing, CU SeeMe and Microsoft networkmeeting. Email discussion forum, synchronous discussions are helpful for the development of the learners’ speaking skills. Written chat sessions are also very efficient according to (Pennington 1995, 155), and Phinney (1995) Multi-user object-oriented domains (MOOs).

Teaching material can be conceived and designed with electronic dictionary such as creating interactive CALL ESL programs. This provides a computer based scoring system of assessment more objective than human judgment in pronunciation errors.

CALL necessitates work of professionals in teaching to extract from the relevant parts suitable for each category of learners. Its great promising potential as a medium for teaching and learning of second/language CALL always requires lot of human intervention. Nothing would replace the human-to-human contact and the physical exposure to the culture of foreign language.

Comments:

CALL is all about what teachers and learners of EFL need to catch up and keep in touch with ongoing transformation of modern world. EFL teachers who are not typically English speakers, originally from less technologically advanced countries might integrate globalized world and familiarize with most recent means of communication for teaching purpose.

I have lot of hope to see more brilliant EFL teachers in the future trained with appropriate use of CALL and offer better quality of teaching.

    

 Best Regards,

Mariam

   

Hello dear bloggers,

One essential activity of the week 3 is the participants exploration of many projects completed by former participants to our course.
I liked reading diverse perspectives mainly of Phyak's and Joanna's works posted by many participants on nicenet. I guess their choices are motivated by proximity of interest with these authors' work though I believe it would be more "correct" to chose projects of authors from various backgrounds.
 I am also victim of the same kind of bias myself and this is the reason why I am sharing my report about the work of Bruno Tendouinde Nikiema with co-bloggers as we are running the risk of losing the chance to know about the contents of some authors.

I. Backgound:
 Bruno is dealing with a class of large number of students 80 13th graders between 17 and 24 years of age. The students are attending their 7th year in EFL learning.

II. Issue or Problem that started the project:
Low productivity of students in English language communication after seven years in attending English classes from 7^th   grade level to 13^th grade

III. Initial solution and expected response:

Pilot project was held about writing business letter while making use of resources found in appropriated links.

Taking the students to computer rooms and introducing them to the world of internet was the first initiative in this regard.

Students visited some URLs related to writing and went through samples of business letters before completing their writing assignment. The business letters were meant to address some US academic institutions in order to create awareness about grant opportunities.

Students responded actively and created emails, the ones that were already initiated supported the others.

IV. Response and reflection

 The author rather developed a reflection on the advantages and the possible outcomes of the students being acquainted with information about American scholarship and grants and pointed out the value of diploma obtained from American educational system.

  V. Change

Students became enthusiastic to collaborative work, and showed interest in carrying out classroom groups’ activities.

  Conclusion

The whole thing was quite new to both teacher and students, and the author justified his study as he defined his project as a pioneer work.

Comment

The author emphasized on research about multiple intelligence and learning style and strategies and also teaching and learning overcrowd classes. I think these references are relevant to his teaching environment.

The section of Response and Reflection do not include the students' reaction to the project implementation, maybe the writer did not have the chance to take into account appreciations from the course instructor; he developed only one side of the points that is the Reflection.

 Comparing this part of his work and these of the other authors I read (Aleyda Linares,   Runganayagie Nalini Reddy) I would say he needed to make a development on both Response and Reflection. He rather commented on the potential outcome of familiarizing students with grant opportunities. Without meaning to belittle this aspect of the students training, I was expecting more effective facts in regard to writing original themes that can make students grasp more about general communication skills. 

Our current instructor Courtney draws our attention on shortcomings of all sorts about our works on Jupiter and our posts on nicenet and this can help us fix our issues so far.

Bruno mentioned the good in giving students  awareness about project based learning, cooperative learning, and autonomous learning in the third paragraph of his conclusion. I believe that could be realized with teaching rubric and using them to orientate and assess students work.

About happy teachers Bruno believes,teaching methods should be dynamic and teacher perpetually questioning their approaches to teaching, this is why I completely agree with the final statement of  his conclusion” Only teachers who question their current ways of teaching and want to do something different – to make student learning effective – will reap that joy”.

Bruno's study occurred in 2006 at a time when internet and ICT was less affordable to the general

public than today 2013. And EFL instructors in Burkina Faso are taught the same way they teach the students i.e just grammar basic not properly writing, speaking, listening and reading skills.

Luckily lot of positive chances are going on, private EFL schools well equipped are opening, virtual universities are training and recruiting, even many government run schools are provided with computer rooms with internet access.  

Kind Regards,

Mariam

week 3 news

After creating and using blog, I discovered the web research tips, and search engine with noodletools, along with many others like educationplanet.com and so on. The framework for designing lesson plan with ABCD was nonetheless important as well as the first step to the final project.
Now am glad to use delicious and also read and reflect on articles about the impact of internet in teaching listening skill with CALL, how each of these radio, video and internet are relatively important.
The difference between pedagogic preconceived input and authentic input in teaching listening.

Thankfully,
Mariam

The week 2 program is fruitful in that within few hours I crossed the line of profane internet user to become a specialist searcher to be with www.noodletools.com, Choose the Best Search for Your Information Needs,

 Web Searching Tech Tip .

With the first one I found the path way to specific research for universal topics and subjects of studies. The second one other than clarifying technical concepts appropriated for internet search provides access to various other interesting links.

Among these, teachers already know what links are likely to interest what students or what specific works.

The massive and diverse posts from participants contributed to display the contents of many other links, allowing everybody to complements and enrich what is found personally.

Writing objectives was not an easy task, for it is not easy to make the right choice about what to publish between the multiple activities and objectives we work with everyday.

Teachers' who are used to be in charge of teaching work don't always feel at ease in front of external observations of their work. 

Best Regards,

Mariam 

Hello Courtney

Hello this is my blog, I enjoyed the process and am happy to join the other bloggers.

Mariam