Week 3 : Skill-building Websites for Oral/Aural Skills and Saving Bookmarks with Delicious

Hello everybody,

We have done a lot of readings and searching since the very start of Week 3. I believe that my Yellow Group colleagues have enjoyed learning the course as I do. While some early bird colleagues have finished the tasks, I was still hesitated about where to start with! 

For Task 1 :  I decided to read the two articles written by Lindsay Miller on “Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials and the other one was “The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills” which were prepared on the course website. In addition to these, I looked through to the websites listed for some of the lesson plans and read “Movies,Films,and Actors” by Kenneth Beare on http://esl.about.com/od/conversationlessonplans/a/l_film.htm

And “Dramatic Dialogues” by Lindsay Clandfield on http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/speaking/lesson-plans/pdf-content/speaking-skills-lesson-plans-dramatic-dialogues-worksheet/teachers-notes/149698.article After reading, I posted on the Nicenet. I do agree with Donna mentioned that technology can be used by the teacher in preparing as well as used with students in the class.

Task 2 :  Reading a sample of final project report as we will be creating a similar report individually by the end of the course which due on Week 9 of our course. I read the lesson plan of Camelia Pagila from Academician Marin Voiculescu, Romania,  on

http://umbc.uoregon.edu/eteacher/projects/200904_E-Teacher_Pagila_Romania.pdf. After that, I posted on Nicenet discussion.

Task 3 : Using Delicious.com to store useful links. This is a very wonderful website where one can join setting his/her own delicious and store his/her favorite links.

Doing all the activities above have made me agree with Morgante Pellon who posted the article about “Top 5 Qualities of Good Teachers” on http://myfla.ws/blog/2008/05/24/top-5-qualities-of-good-teachers/ - about what make great teachers; Passion, Creativity, Flexibility, Integrate, and Connect. I think those qualities have been with the Yellow group members  already and we are on the way keeping shaping them better and better with the support of the    the U.S. Department of State (DOS), and the Interactive Web” (Web Skills) course with the American English Institute in the Linguistics Department at the University of Oregon (UO AEI).-How can we thanks them enough!  

                            Holding the English Camp for 100 students from schools around the area.

My last activities for Week 3 were changing my Duck ID password and posting my picture to Photo of us page. 

Yaowapa

Thailand. 

Week 2 : The ABCD learning objectives framework and effective web searches

Week 2 :  The ABCD learning objectives framework and effective web searchs

Date April14-20,2014

Hello everybody,

This is the second week for our yellow group to discuss and suggest about the web search engines we usually use instead of google.  For me, it is quite difficuly to recommend any other web search engine to Google since it is my favorite, and also, it is by far the most popular in Thailand.  However, I have occasionally tried Yahoo and Ask, and Safari on my iPad which I find is convenient and quick to use. Additionally, I tried using Chrome but I have to spend more time with it before finding the answers I need. I would like to give a special thanks to my colleagues-Brahim, Husni, Albani, Jirawan, and Zenaid for greeting me and inviting me to visit a bunch of good web search engines and some indispensable websites. Also, a special thanks to Donna who suggested Noodles.com as an effective web search tool to use. I found Noodles to be interesting and a useful tool, that I can see myself using more of in the future. "Finding the Best Search for your Information Needs" looks very neat, and it has a well categorized topic. Moreover, I saw some of our colleagues added some beneficial websites with the logo from the websites to their blogs. Amazing students.

I was excited when Donna’s new email appeared informing me about finding grades there in Blackboard5.

To be continued. It's time for exercise.

Chumphon Wittayasan School-Surin/Thailand :  The English Department is on the 3rd floor. 

The second discussion on the Nicenet program gives us opportunities to describe our classes. I have really enjoyed reading my Yellow Group members describing their classes, I felt like I was visiting their classes. Moreover while reading I have to go back to the first week Nicenet to remind myself of the Week 1: Discussion - Introduce yourself, and jot down as the memory tips.  Being in the group with different experienced exchange teachers from different school levels and institutes around the world is wonderful. I have learnt a lot from them too.

The Blackboard5 is great too. I was excited before visiting it and it is smart way to set the scores there for students to go and find out by themselves.

The Week2 most important task is the ABCD Behavioral Learning Objectives- I think this task is difficult to do, although teaching is routine in our lives. I have spent a lot of hours doing the readings from the the websites suggested on Week 2. Also, I have seen several pleasant writings by my experienced exchange teacher and colleagues in Yellow Group before trying to write my own one. I do agree with Donna and other members that it is hard and takes time to write it but is worth the effort.

Yaowapa Loytalay

Thailand

Week 1 : Greeting from Thailand

Hello everyone,

Creating a new blog is challenging.

Week 1 :  Introductions and orientation to the course, creating an academic blog on April 7-13,2014

The night before the course started, I couldn't sleep well. Perhaps I was very excited about the web skill course. Moreover we have school reunion on April 12th that students from the year 1968 will get together and do activities with all the staff at school, such as; playing sports, fund raising, and partying. I am extremely  excited to meet my former students, however I have to focus on my blog and finish it before it is due tomorrow. Unfortunately, I got confused while working on my blog and lost direction, however I started it again and found my blog.

Dr. Donna Shaw, our group's instructor and course designer has informed us about the course via emails before it started. Therefore, we feel excited and realize that it is not too difficult to follow her instructions.

Time flies and  it is hard to believe that our first week is going to reach the end tomorrow. I think the Week 1 : Introductions; creating an Academic Blog have made my vacation a very precious period of time. I enjoyed staying at home learning something interesting, and useful for myself and my students.  The course has been organized so professional and enjoyable. I like all three discussion topics, although I had wasted a lot of hours working on my new blog. I miss the English proverb,"Where there's a will, there's a way" so I re-read as suggested on the instruction of the course. Finally, I finish my new blog which appears very simple, yet not very attractive. However, this blog is not my first blog as I have created two blogs previous to this. You may visit them at http://ericsurin2.blogspot.com and http://cwsacademic.blogspot.com. Those two blog were built a few years ago without developing much, and I did not use often with my students but they are for promoting my school activities.

We have done a lot of readings before exchanging ideas in the Nicenet program. Moreover, getting to know the expertise of teachers from schools in different countries is wonderful too. I have more time to visit the class, so I can get to know other members of the yellow group after the first week of the course. I frequently shape my new blog and make it looks nicer every week. I look forward to the upcoming training in Week 2 as I find effective web searches to be an interesting topic to learn from Dr. Donna Shaw.

Yaowapa

Thailand