Week 10 Refecltions

Hello everybody,
this is the last entry of the blog for this course.
It has been a great experience follow this course, plenty of readings, new tools and ideas abot ohw to use technology in your classrooms.
In my last post I want to thanks Donna and all their team and aslo thanks to all the collegues around the world for sharing this geat experience.
I hope to implement my plan next semester and I am sure I will think in all of you when I will do.
Best regards from Barcelona.
Cristina
Barcelona Spain

Week 9 Reflections

Hello,

The course is almost finished. We have been working hard in the last two weeks preparing our final project o plan report. 

In my case I have written a plan report, due to in my country we are at the end of the course and it will not possible to implement the project until September. But, with the tools and techniques we have learnt in the last weeks, I hope I can introduce a lot of changes in my “Jazz in English" classroom.

I would to give thanks to Donna and all their team for their patience and good work. Step by step they are carrying on us to the end of the course giving always fast feedback and good ideas for improving our knowledge about how to use technological tools with good didactics.

Week 8: Reflections

This week we have been working in a different way, all of us have started our final project o plan introducing some technological tools. Moreover, we have to do peer review of a partner interested in our work. The key point is that we have a lot of resources for doing this kind of work: rubrics, check lists,…
For me, it is the first time I work as a student in this way in a distance course and I think is a very good way of learning

Week 7: Reflections

This week we have working with Padlet.  A nice and easy tool for sharing ideas, collaborating.  I think I am going to use Padlet it in my virtual classrooms. I have been watching most of the post-its in the padlet classroom and it is a very good way of sharing thoughts with others. Moreover, you can use videos, images, articles and other any resources. So, it is a rich way of collaboration.
The discussion in Nicenet were also interested, because learners autonomy is an important matter in language classrooms. As I mentioned in my post, the use of e-portolio can help to work learners autonomy.

Finally, I am working in my plan report choosing good articles and tools for improving oral communication in virtual classrooms. I have read articles like Speaking matters and Getting the most value out of peer assessment.

Week 6: Reflections

Hello everybody,

The post of this week is about my final plan. I have chosen a final plan Report due to my students finished their courses last week, now they are doing final test and preparing more exams for accessing to university. So for this reason I cannot implement my project this semester, but my intention is do it next semester in September.

My classroom is a virtual classroom, we use moodle platform in our entire course. Most of the students are adults. I teach them music in general, but I teach one subject in English, Jazz in English and one my worries is how to improve oral skills of my students in this subject.

For this reason I am doing some readings and I am exploring the net for choosing the best tools, they should be free and easy to use. Moreover they should work well with moodle.

This week, I have read the following papers:

Fundamentals of Oral Communication (Online)

https://www.csi.edu/facultyAndStaff_/webTools/viewCourse.asp?courseID=1129&facultyID=394

Web tools and oral-communication

http://www.slideshare.net/yasencion/web-tools-and-oral-communication

http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume15/ej57/ej57int/

http://www.wiziq.com/tutorials/communication-skills-improvement

I have explore the following tools: Vocaroo, Voki, Voicethread, Voxopop, Tolkbox and also the tools from SeapApps.

The thing I have not yet done a decision about what is the best tool for improving oral communication in my classroom. I hope to do it in the next weeks and write the final report.

Cristina

Barcelona, Spain

Week 5: Reflections

Hello,

this week we have been working with new tools for assessing students like rubrics, alternative assessment and project based learning.

Assessing is difficult matter when we are teaching. So any tool that can help us in this process is good for  us and  also for our students. Moreover, this kind of tools offer a different vision of learning and help us to motivate students through self-assessment, peer to peer assessment, PBL.


This week I want to share with all of you one image that illustrates on of the topics of the week.

Font: Problem based learning
 http://rwnc.org/?page_id=332

Week 4th Reflections

Hello,
this week has been a busy week for me.
However, I amd discovering new technology tools that can help me in my virtual classroom improving oral communication among my students. My intention was to use langblog a blog with audio and video, but our trainer suggested me the use of Vocaroo.

I think I have to explore a bit more on the net for testing new tools that can improve oral communication and speaking time of my students.