WEEK 10 - The end of a great journey

How to describe all the intensity of this 10-week course? That's a tough one! A great amount of things have happened and now... mixed feelings! :) :(

On the one hand, I'm knackered and I need a rest – not just because of the Webskills course, but because the end of the year drains all teachers, I guess. I need to recharge my batteries for next year, so a well-deserved two-month summer holiday should do it for me! I can't wait! hehe ;)

On the other hand, I've enjoyed sharing ideas, exploring new resources, trying things, asking and giving advice, reading opinions, seeing things from different perspectives, failing, learning, succeeding... the list is endless! And most importantly, I have gone through all of that with an amazing group of people: both mentors and colleagues. A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU OUT THERE!! I'm definitely going to miss all of this... but not for long, because when September comes, those same experiences will come back flashing through my mind and I'll make sure I apply the knowledge acquired in the Webskills course to keep working towards a better teaching practice.
So it's not a 'goodbye', but a 'see you soon' :)

My list of pet resources that I didn't know about before or I had never tried even if I had heard of them:

• Delicious
• ANVILL
• Nicenet
• Rich Internet Applications, Michigan State University.
• Hot potatoes
• Vocaroo
• And last but not least, blogging, using Google docs and the course wiki

Happy teaching everyone and enjoy your summer!! :)

WEEK 9 - Learning styles

I must say that it's been such a relief to hand in the final project this week! I think it's been a very useful project because, as I mentioned last week, it has forced me to apply some of the interactive resources in my teaching context and I've seen how it will help my students in the future, as well as allowing me to reflect on the changes I can carry out next year to make their learning experience even more effective.

On the other hand, I'm really happy that I finally found some time to explore other resources from past weeks that didn't get my full attention before. Firstly, I watched the ANVILL recorded webinar and fount it really interesting (what a shame I missed it!), so now I'm going to make it my own personal aim to actually open an account and start playing with it to create some resources, come up with some ideas, watch tutorials and think how I can apply all of those into my own teaching context next year :) I believe it will be a great tool to get students to speak outside of class. They never have the chance to practise their oral fluency, accuracy and pronunciation, so ANVILL will be a great way to achieve this. Hopefully they'll appreciate the effort, will show some interest and will be willing to participate.

Secondly, another resource I've really liked is the "Rich Internet Applications" from Michigan State University  http://clear.msu.edu/clear/ria/   I came across it in one of our old Nicenet threads. I think I'll keep backtracking Nicenet in case I missed any other good websites shared by colleagues. You can never be too sure! :)

As for learning styles, it's been interesting to discuss different issues related to them on Nicenet this week. Even though I did one of my PGCE projects on learning styles, I have read some fresh ideas and views on the subject and some of the articles have made me wonder about the whole thing again. However, I'd still say that having a mixture of activities in class is the best option for us as teachers. We all have students with a variety of learning styles, so they can all benefit from a range of resources targeted at different styles. I believe it's good for them to practise all skills in different ways to train both their strong and weak learning styles and thus become better learners.

WEEK 8 - Teacher resources

This week has had two distinctive parts for me: I spent the first half of the week doing my project report and the second half exploring teacher resources.

It was very nice of our teachers to be a bit lenient with us during the first half of the week – not having to post on Nicenet, I mean. Writing a draft of my project wasn't too hard, I think, but that was because the results weren't ready, so it wasn't a full draft. I'm not sure I've ticked all the boxes requested and I definitely have to do a lot of work on it to have a decent final project: articles, bibliography, results, changes... I wish we got some kind of temporary grade for us to know if we're missing too many things or we're doing fine. Jodi and Celeste told us not to worry too much because we would get an email if we were NOT in the right direction, so I guess no news is good news! :)

Mª Luisa very kindly commented on some aspects of my project, especially on the language/grammar/structures part of it, but I still have doubts about things like assessment of the recordings, so I asked her straight away. And I just managed to send her my feedback and checklist of her project, so I hope she'll find them useful!

As for the second half of the week, we had some very interesting conversations on Nicenet and we had the chance to meet Jeff. I think we should be really honoured! I didn't manage to attend the webinar and I was really looking forward to it, because I'd like to learn more about ANVILL and I think discussing it F2F in ANVILL would have been far more useful and efficient than reading lots of instructions on paper. But I'll try to do my best. I wonder if we can watch the recorded session... We also spent some time exploring different websites and software to create activities online, but to use both online and offline. And obviously, this has meant... more delicious links! :) I've downloaded Hot Potatoes and I'd like to use the software to prepare listening and reading activities for my students to do from home (multiple choice and true-false).

NOTE TO SELF: Remember to do the Webquest now that I have more time...

WEEK 7 - Learner autonomy and one-computer classes

I must start saying that students' autonomy is quite an issue in my case. I've mentioned it before that most of my students do their homework on a daily basis, but only few of them do something else – listening to the news in English, reading for pleasure, revising and working on their learning strategies, etc. I want to believe that it's due to lack of time on their part, but I think we can also try to encourage some attitudes and help our students realise that they need to work on their learning strategies, something they're not always aware of.

As Thanasoulas calls it, I would say I have a mixture of learners with an 'instrumental orientation' and an 'integrative orientation' because most of them want to learn English either to increase their chances to find a job or to be able to communicate with people when they travel abroad. So maybe the motivation is there, because they enrol and go to class of their own free will. So what's the problem then? Self-esteem may be an issue with some of them – I can feel it when they participate (or rather 'they are forced to participate'). But I really think the main issue is the one brought up by Samuel Sheu: teachers in some countries have their hands tied when it comes to teaching flexibility, especially because of curriculum constraints and exam requirements. I'm not trying to look for an excuse, but in some cases we are kind of forced to cover a ridiculously great amount of grammar points in just one year and that doesn't allow for free teaching and learning and for focusing on communicative activities... the same real-life activities that will allow our students to go out there and hold a conversation with a native speaker. There's nothing I can do to change the educational policies in my country, but I'll continue to do my best to encourage independent learning! :)

Regarding the other topic discussed this week, unlike most of my colleagues who seem to yearn for computer labs where they can teach on a daily basis, I'm very happy to teach in a one-computer class. Actually, I may sound a bit old-fashioned, but I don't think I would like to teach in a computer lab every day. Of course, modern technology can enhance the teaching and learning process and also motivate students (especially teenagers, I think), but as they say, "too much of a good thing"... So I'm willing to explore the ins and outs of using ICT in TEFL and apply/use those ideas I find useful in my teaching context, but I think overusing it wouldn't be a good idea. I believe technology has to be a facilitator, but not the main focus in ALL the lessons.

WEEK 6 - Playing around with Power Point

This week has been a good eye-opener in terms of the use of Power Point. It's a very common resource in my everyday teaching, but I had nearly forgotten how nice it is to create interactive activities to catch students attention rather than just 'throw' information at them. The documents we've read and the tips we've been given show its endless potential in the EFL classroom. This whole PPT topic reminded me of the time I started teaching a few years ago. It feels like I stopped being creative with PPT the time I started teaching adults – or maybe it's all due to lack of time, I'm not sure. The point is that this week has encouraged me to go back to those appealing and fun activities. In fact, since my academic year will be finishing at the end of the month, I've been preparing some nice revision activities: prepositions bingo, a jeopardy game on PPT, etc. I can't wait to put them into practice! I'm sure my adults will love them and will appreciate the hard work :)

And last but not least, I've done some work on what will be part of my final project: pronunciation. Tomorrow I'm giving my 4th year students (upper-intermediate) the task to record themselves at home using Vocaroo. I'll have to show them how to do it and I'll let them choose any paragraphs from the readings in the book. We'll see how they go about it... I just hope they'll be willing to participate! On the one hand, showing them how easy it is to use Vocaroo and the fact that I'll give them individual feedback on their pronunciation might engage them. However, some might feel shy and reluctant to do it since we all know that recording your voice is not everyone's cup of tea (especially if they're not used to it!)

As for large classes, after reading some of my classmates comments and problems getting students attention I've realised how "lucky" I am to have "only" up to 30 students in class. It's not an easy task for a teacher to deal with so many students at the same time, plus it also involves more marking and paperwork, but it's good to know we have some good technological resources at our disposal to "ease the pain".

WEEK 5 - Half-way through the course

Since we're starting the second half of the course tomorrow, I'd like to do a brief recap. It's hard to express the amount of things learnt and shared in these first 5 weeks of the course. What I'm most enjoying is the wealth of experience we have in the group: we help each other all the time, we share tools and websites that may seem obvious but are not always known by all teachers... We try, we fail, we try again, we succeed... and we never stop learning!

I don't want to sound like a moaner, but it's been a tough week trying to keep up with the pace on Nicenet and the completion of different tasks. From the article on alternative assessment I agree that students should be familiar with the assessment criteria (or 'rubrics', as I've learnt to call them) used by teachers in the different language skills, so that they know the standards they should be aiming for. That's why I just don't understand why our "Education Department" (I'm talking about the government) won't let us share those with our students. OK, yes, I've briefly told them before about the kind of things we take into consideration, especially in the oral and writing exam because these are more subjectively assessed, but they won't let us give them the rubrics as such. They are like the best-kept secret!

As for PBL, I'd like to create my own Webquest, although I haven't had the time to do so this week. I'm hoping to get it done before the end of the course, for that extra point :) I wonder if it can really make such a big difference (as Susan Gaer says). I guess it can, but it may be more appropriate to secondary schools where students can meet outside the class to finish any project or collaborative work. I think adults (or at least my adults) are more independent and have more time constraints: they work in the morning and come to class in the afternoon-evening... so when could they get together and do some groupwork? But hey, maybe I'm missing something here and I could try to give them an individual task like an oral presentation on a topic. That could work! So I'll have to consider that option in my future planning.

WEEK 4 - And more web sharing!

This week I managed to upload my favourite links from Firefox to Delicious because I finally found the way to do it! However, I still need to tidy up and I never seem to find time to do so :( It's been quite hectic because I travelled to London last weekend and came back on Tuesday – I was lucky to have a long weekend... although time caught up with me! I did my best to manage all the tasks due today, but this time round I've felt a bit lost with Nicenet posts. I'll need to go through them, check links and add some more to Delicious (I've only added a few this week). I would have liked to contribute more, too.

With regard to the use of CALL in writing, reading and vocabulary, I've come to realise that the fact that I didn't have any writing websites saved in my favourites meant I had never found any... or worse: I had never bothered to look for them because it's a skill that maybe we tend to overlook in my kind of school. The curriculum we follow focuses more on the other skills and I guess I usually think: "if they have the right vocabulary and grammar tools, they can manage to write as long as you give them some simple structure tips". But then, again, this course has taught me that my students need much more than that to write correctly. Things that you may take for granted, like punctuation or paragraphing, are a problem for some of my students. Maybe because they aren't very good at writing in their mother tongue either. It's no surprise that, in average, the lowest mark in their mock exam last month was in the writing part! So I'll need to get down to work to try to find ways to improve their performance.