PBL

WEEK 5

PBL (PROJECT BASED LEARNING) - ASSESSMENT - POSSIBLE SOLUTION FOR DESCRIBED ISSUE.

Hello everyone!

From Spoon-feeding to Scaffolding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMCZvGesRz8

This week we had the possibility of reading and working upon PBL, project based learning. This methodology implies a drastic change in educational paradigms since it puts the emphasis on the students' active involvement in realistic, meaningful tasks with an objective in mind. This student-centered methodology has the participants engaged in solving problems, resorting to critical thinking skills and collaborative work. On the other hand, PBL advocates "less teaching and more learning", this means, the teacher becoming a facilitator of tools and resources for the students to work upon and transform knowledge, scaffolding learning and promoting learner autonomy.  

As stated in one of the articles we read, PBL promotes the emergence and fostering of 21st c. skills, needed for the upcoming future.

I particularly had the chance of working on mini-projects (short webquests) but I would like to have PBL as the backbone of our curriculum, i.e., making PBL "the main course and not the desert" Unfortunately, it's not our call but I'm positive students will highly benefit from it if we adopted it.

to get more info please visit http://www.bie.org/

Alternative assessment was another topic we explored in connection with PBL. AA is based on authentic tasks to accomplish communication goals, the foundation of PBL; and the information to work upon can be drawn from the World Wide Web. 

In addition, a few characteristics about AA are worth mentioning. Firstly, AA is built or designed around topics which the students find interesting. Secondly, students have the possibility to get to know assessment criteria and they can evaluate themselves and peers. Thirdly, by using AA, students' strengths instead of weaknesses are made to stand out. 

What I found really useful when reading about this topic was the webpage RubiStar, which Courtney kindly shared with us. The site helps you create diversed rubrics to assess different tasks based on numerous templates. Give it a whirl!

This week, we've also been brainstorming solutions for the issue we presented last week. My issue is essentially crowded classes, students being reticent, unwilling to speak / express opinions or to ask question in class. This problem might be put down to shyness, a low level of proficiency in the target language or their introversion exacerbated by fear of ridicule in front of peers.

A technology-related solution is to be found to tackle this issue. As the outset, what I came up with is to take advantage of video conferencing and voice recording tools. Weekly meeting would be set up and arranged. I would organize small groups of weak students to interact off-campus during their free time. This way, i think I would be giving students a voice.

As far as connectivity goes, I reckon the idea is plausible because most, if not all the students, have internet access at home and a PC. If that were not the case, students have smartphones where they can install video conferencing apps (Google hangouts or ooVoo - http://www.oovoo.com/home.aspx?lang=en, for example).

This is just my inital idea that needs a lot of brushing up!!! Suggestions are welcome!

Have a nice weekend!

WEEK 4:

READING, WRITING AND VOCABULARY - TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LESSON PLANNING - ISSUE.

Greetings from Argentina!

This has been a hectic week! So much to learn and share! We began the week by having some insightful reading assigments on productive and recpetive skills along with dimensions (vocabulary) this time. So much was shared in Nicenet that was difficult to keep up! LOL. Really hard work but 100% productive.

I wanted to share the link that I found the most comprehensive when it comes to web tools and ideas for classroom implementations:

http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/Writing+Tools

Bookmarking

WEEK 3 - BOOKMARKING

Keeping up with the spirit of this course, this week we've been offered a chance to explore, work upon and share social bookmarking networks such as Delicious, Diigo, Digg, etc. They are extremely handy web 2.0 tools when it comes to having your favourites sites organized and tagged.

We are now linked and as instructors, we can now benefit from and take adavntage of the folksonomy created by collegues, avoiding wasting time browsing looking for quality CALL material to be used in the EFL classroom.

Mainly, we devoted time to work on Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. By the end of 2008, the service claimed more than 5.3 million users and 180 million unique bookmarked URLs.^[2][3] The site was sold to AVOS Systems on April 27, 2011^[4] and relaunched in a "back to beta" state on September 27 that year.^[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicious_(website)

This is how it works:

I would like to share another bookmarking site which I used to have in the past. That one is Symbaloo which is an alternative more eyecatching tool to bookmark your favourites. This is a more visual tool though it is not as social as Delicious or similar sites, though you can share your profile through Facefook or Twitter or you can also embed the patchwork or webmix, as it is called, in any other platform you're using.

Let's keep sharing and learning!

Computer-Assisted Audiovisual Language Learning

WEEK 3: CALL (Computer assisted language learning)

Let's understand the concept:

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) is succinctly defined in a seminal work by Levy (1997: p. 1) as "the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning".^[1] CALL embraces a wide range of Information and communications technology applications and approaches to teaching and learning foreign languages, from the "traditional" drill-and-practice programs that characterised CALL in the 1960s and 1970s to more recent manifestations of CALL, e.g. as used in a virtual learning environment and Web-based distance learning. It also extends to the use of corpora and concordancers, interactive whiteboards,^[2] Computer-mediated communication (CMC),^[3] language learning in virtual worlds, and Mobile-assisted language learning (MALL).^[4]

(...)

The design of CALL materials generally takes into consideration principles of language pedagogy and methodology, which may be derived from different learning theories (e.g. behaviourist, cognitive, constructivist) and second language learning theories such as Stephen Krashen's monitor hypothesis.

A combination of face-to-face teaching and CALL is usually referred to as blended learning. Blended learning is designed to increase learning potential and is more commonly found than pure CALL (Pegrum 2009: p. 27).^[7]

Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_language_learning

This is how it works...

Personally, I think that at the present time, the use of CALLin combination with Web 2.0 tools is a must in a foreign language classroom. Furthermore, in EFL contexts of language learning such as ours; additional and varied input is essential since our students do not have contact with the foreign language except for the exposure they have from the media or scarce exchanges with native speakers of the language. That being the case, it thus becomes necessary to reinforce their exposure to L2.

Additionally, I am positive that the implementation of CALL in and out of the classroom is highly beneficial for students for a number of reasons: 

•We cater for different learning styles,
•Input is reinforced and recycled,
•Mechanical and Meaningful aspects can be worked upon,
•We live up to our students' expectations,
•CALL promotes autonomy and self-study, enhances creativity, paves the way for collaboration and strengthens communication skills. 

Week 2: Web searching

Week 2: Web searching. 

retrieved from:https://www.google.com.ar/search?hl=es&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1920&bih=979&q=web+serch&oq=web+serch&gs_l=img.3..0i10i24.1254.10370.0.11645.13.12.1.0.0.0.383.2460.5j1j2j4.12.0...0.0.0..1ac.1.17.img.--ceytSzvE0#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=xwO-KxqIzNOucM%3A%3BD5ZqhR-EyW-y-M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Flaparasha.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2012%252F02%252F13.-Search-Engine-Marketing-Service.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Flaparasha.com%252F2012%252F02%252F%3B364%3B300

At this time, we live in a world of permanent change where tecchnology is pervasive and our audiences (our studentes) belong to the digital native generation, i.e., they were born and brought up in a technology -dominated environment. However, they find themselves inmersed in an unfamiliar environment when it comes to education. The botom line is that in most Latin American countries educational paradigms are rooted in ideologies and ideas that were thought for 19th c. contexts. As a result, methodologies / practices have become obsolete for  the majority of our students who don't seem to find their expectations met. Fortunately, things are gradually changing for the better. 

We teachers belong to the digital immigrant portion of the population, i.e., we had to learn to make technology part of our lives. Nontheless, many of us are learning to "speak" our students' language (we will always have an accent, though :) ), we are learning to master technology to make it part of the teaching-learning processes. This is just the beginning of a long lasting journey, but the results have shown to be really promising so far!

Personally, I believe that blogs are marvellous web 2.0 tools for implementing in the EFL classroom. At the university, we have been using them for a couple of years now in combination with CMSs such as schoology or Moodle as part of a blended learning experience. Their main purpose was to provide extra reading and writing opportunities for the students. We've also implemented them as portfolios for their writing assignments.

Welcome to my blog!

I'll be posting thoughts and ideas in connection with NICTs in the EFL classroom.