Wow I can't believe we are already to the end of the term. Time sure does fly by when you are learning about technology and how to use it in a classroom. Looking back I have learned so much.
Even though I Google about everyday, I did not know that Google had so much more to offer. We worked with Google docs and reader, pages and gmail. These are all things that I will continue to use in and out of the classroom. In addition, we collected many resources which will be helpful for when I am a teacher.
Out of the things that we have used in the class I can see myself using blogs with my ELL (English language learner) students. It will be a great way to learn writing skills, social norms, voice, etc. I will also love to use Podcasts. They will be a great way to practice speaking, listening, and pronunciation. I may use a WebQuest in a future classroom. They would be a great thing to have for the students to do when there is a substitute teacher in for the day.
Above all it wasn't the resources I obtained or getting to use all of the great sites, it was becoming comfortable using technology. It is funny I say this because I have a smart phone, a tablet, a laptop, a desktop, a Playstation, I play World of Warcraft, I social network, I blog, I listen to Podcasts on my iPod; so why would I say I wasn't comfortable with technology? I am comfortable messing around with technology on my own, trying new things and such, but to be able to teach it to someone else or incorporate it into educational lesson plans seemed overwhelming and intimidating. This class gave me ideas on how to use technology in a classroom and how technology can be used educationally which gave me the confidence to use it in a classroom. I believe this was what I got the most out of the class.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Podcast
This is a podcast made for an ESL classroom on a natural conversation of two people making pancakes.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Week 8: Learning how to read: Literary Review
Article: Teaching ESL Reading Using Computers by Saad AlKahtani.
In the author's research Saad AlKahtani set out to
see if computers could replace teachers in the classroom; whether or
not computers could be an assistant to learning English or the one
and only teacher. What he found was that there is not much research
done in this area and the little done concludes that
“computers have not yet gotten to the point where they can make a
real difference in language instruction”. The article discusses research done regarding the benefits of computer based reading
programs in English language learning classrooms followed by three examples of programs that could be used in the
classroom.
So computers are yet to replace a
teacher in language instruction but what the author found is that they sure can
help. Most of the research done concluded that vocabulary was
retained and understood easier through computer based reading systems. It is the combination of visual and audio learning which helped increase vocabulary
understanding and retention. Research also found that students' reading speed and comprehension increased after
using reading systems on the computer.
What are these amazing computer
reading programs the author speaks of? He reviews three of them in
this article. The first is the MacReader, second StoryBoard, and
last but not least, Reading Galaxy. He briefly goes over the activities,
features, and benefits of each one. Most of them have exercises
where students read stories, articles or teacher prepared materials.
They have activities that go along with each text: comprehension
questions, Cloze exercises, jumble word exercises, vocabulary
definitions, a feature that can time the speed of the reader. Another feature is word
guessing. This feature allows the reader to guess words in the story or article strengthening their reading skills.
The programs sound very interesting.
I would love to try them in my classroom with my struggling readers.
The combination of listening and reading is a great benefit to ELLs.
I would like it if the programs had voice recognition as well but
since these programs are not designed specifically for ELLs it does
not. Another benefit of computer based reading is that the students
will be able to use them outside of the classroom. This is an
excellent way to encourage independent learning.
Note: Looking for the programs online I was unable to fine two of them. I am not sure if they don't exist anymore or if my search wasn't good enough. Let me know if you find anything. Thanks.
Note: Looking for the programs online I was unable to fine two of them. I am not sure if they don't exist anymore or if my search wasn't good enough. Let me know if you find anything. Thanks.
Week 6: Midway Point: Where I am thus far
Looking at the class objectives (see below) I have noticed that we are on our way to covering them all. In class thus far we have discussed the affects technology has on our society, students, and our personal lives. Furthermore, we have brainstormed problems and solutions to current issues and adaptations of technologies with different classrooms and students. We have be exposed to a variety of online resources that are applicable in every classroom, including ESL.
I have enjoyed using the new technology we have learned so far. Some of them include blogs, Prezi, Scratch, Google docs, Diigo with many more to follow in the preceding weeks. I can see how each of these technologies can be helpful to a teacher and to students. Of course I am thinking of how they will be used in an ESL classroom since this is my specialty. Everything that we have touched on so far could be used and beneficial in an ESL classroom.
I have enjoyed this class immensely. It is incredibly beneficial for a modern, up-to-date teacher of an ESL classroom. This is my last class in the graduate program and I feel that when it concludes I will be prepared to use technology in my future classrooms as well as when student teaching.
Objectives/Outcomes:
1. Demonstrate the understanding of how technologies can effectively promote student learning
2. Evaluate and use a variety of current technologies to enhance content instruction and to advance students in technological literacy
3. Design meaningful and authentic digitally based learning experiences with multiple and varied assessments
4. Reflect upon and demonstrate effective use of digital tools and resources
5. Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of safe, ethical, legal and moral practices related to digital information and technology
6. Illustrate through application how state and national standards are implemented within the curriculum (e.g., NH Curriculum Frameworks, ISTE (NETS-Teacher/NETS-Student) and NH-ICT Literacy Standards for K-12 Students (306.42))
7. Demonstrate an understanding of the use of adaptive technologies and other digital resources to personalize and differentiate learning activities for every student
8. Evaluate, adapt and reflect on emerging tools and trends by participating in local and global learning communities and by reviewing current research and professional literature
Monday, October 3, 2011
Week 2: Second Life to real life
Article: 16 WAYS TO USE SECOND LIFE IN YOUR CLASSROOM: PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES AND VIRTUAL ASSIGNMENTS by Michele Ryan
The article read is an organized summary of information collected in a doctoral research project done at Lancaster University in the UK. It is a guide for technology-craving teachers who are deficient in implementation ideas. Ways in how to incorporate Second Life into a regular classroom are broken down into sixteen practiced ideas. Each approach gives a summary, how it was used in actual classrooms, and implementation suggestions.
There is a growing demand and requirement over the years for more technology to be used in the classroom. Ryan states that even early on in his research he realized that "overcoming pedagogical challenges was, perhaps, of greater importance than overcoming technical barriers". What he is saying is that he found loads of teachers willing and wanting to use technology in their classrooms but confused on how. The outcome was a user-friendly guide to utilizing Second Life in the classroom.
As I am studying to teach English to speakers of other languages, I looked at how all sixteen ways are applicable to ESL classrooms. Since there are many ideas I thought they would be best reviewed in list form. Each example will give examples for how it can be used with ELLs in order to increase comprehension.
1. Adding a Visual Element (Data Visualization): creating 3D objects to demonstrate ideas, abstract concepts, data, etc.
2. Interactive Library: the teacher and students could create a place to find information, practice vocabulary, etc. by watching videos, taking quizzes, playing games, reading and adding to the classroom blogs, finding examples of content discussed in lectures, and much more.
3. Connection Device: it is where students can practice communicating with others in the class, students at other schools in the state, nation, or around the globe. Students can work in teams with other schools, learn new dialects, meet other ESL students, practice conversational norms and registers.
4. Role Playing Device: with their avatars students are able to work through fictional situations. Since there are no real-life consequences students are able to take greater chances using multiple attempts.
5. Simulation Device: where students are presented with situations which they can work through a process using trial and error.
6. Games for Learning: teachers can create educational games, such as scavenger hunts, within the worlds to find differences between cultures, vocabulary words, answers to trivia questions, etc.
7. Soft Skill Development: Second Life can be where ELLs practice social skills in a non-threatening environment. Using their own or anonymous avatars students can practice critical thinking, problem solving, team building, and collaboration.
8. Research: students can study the different worlds within Second Life. They can study the different economies, cultures, and races which can result in writing a research paper.
9. Virtual Tourism and Field Trips: students are able to visit practically any place they have ever imagined. ELLs can educate the other students on the county where they are from by traveling inworld.
10. Social Device: again students are able to practice communicating, the language, social skills, social norms, language norms, etc. through chatting and interacting.
11. Create Anonymity: using avatars, students may feel more comfortable taking risks, asking questions, or talking about touchy or confidential matters. They may feel more empowered and be able to overcome fears.
12. Machinima Creation (Video Filmed Inworld): students can create e-portfolios or inworld presentations.
13. Recruitment: Second Life can be used as a way to promote ideas or research.
14. Build Awareness and/or Promote an Event: similar to the above idea, students can use Second Life to raise money, promote an event, showcase work, educate people on their ideas or research.
15. Building for the Sake of Learning How to Build: simply put, students learn how to build things.
16. As an Open Learning Environment (Virtual Action Learning): students will be able to learn from others, just like in the "real world".
With clear learning objectives, Second Life (SL) can be used in a variety of classroom lessons. Whether it is for extensive projects or just here and there, SL can develop and sharpen many different skills. Working with other administrators or having students create projects for future classes would be helpful because planning lessons can be time consuming or require advanced computer skills.
In an ESL classroom I believe the most beneficial aspects of SL are the visual and interactive. Visual aids are valuable to all students when learning new concepts. Interacting with others in the non-threatening world of Second Life allows students to take risks and learn from others. With this short guide, even though I have never used SL, I feel confident that I would be able to include it in future lessons.
I have included a couple of videos. The first one supplies an overview of how Second Life works. The second video goes over how Second Life can be used for educational purposes.
The article read is an organized summary of information collected in a doctoral research project done at Lancaster University in the UK. It is a guide for technology-craving teachers who are deficient in implementation ideas. Ways in how to incorporate Second Life into a regular classroom are broken down into sixteen practiced ideas. Each approach gives a summary, how it was used in actual classrooms, and implementation suggestions.
There is a growing demand and requirement over the years for more technology to be used in the classroom. Ryan states that even early on in his research he realized that "overcoming pedagogical challenges was, perhaps, of greater importance than overcoming technical barriers". What he is saying is that he found loads of teachers willing and wanting to use technology in their classrooms but confused on how. The outcome was a user-friendly guide to utilizing Second Life in the classroom.
As I am studying to teach English to speakers of other languages, I looked at how all sixteen ways are applicable to ESL classrooms. Since there are many ideas I thought they would be best reviewed in list form. Each example will give examples for how it can be used with ELLs in order to increase comprehension.
1. Adding a Visual Element (Data Visualization): creating 3D objects to demonstrate ideas, abstract concepts, data, etc.
2. Interactive Library: the teacher and students could create a place to find information, practice vocabulary, etc. by watching videos, taking quizzes, playing games, reading and adding to the classroom blogs, finding examples of content discussed in lectures, and much more.
3. Connection Device: it is where students can practice communicating with others in the class, students at other schools in the state, nation, or around the globe. Students can work in teams with other schools, learn new dialects, meet other ESL students, practice conversational norms and registers.
4. Role Playing Device: with their avatars students are able to work through fictional situations. Since there are no real-life consequences students are able to take greater chances using multiple attempts.
5. Simulation Device: where students are presented with situations which they can work through a process using trial and error.
6. Games for Learning: teachers can create educational games, such as scavenger hunts, within the worlds to find differences between cultures, vocabulary words, answers to trivia questions, etc.
7. Soft Skill Development: Second Life can be where ELLs practice social skills in a non-threatening environment. Using their own or anonymous avatars students can practice critical thinking, problem solving, team building, and collaboration.
8. Research: students can study the different worlds within Second Life. They can study the different economies, cultures, and races which can result in writing a research paper.
9. Virtual Tourism and Field Trips: students are able to visit practically any place they have ever imagined. ELLs can educate the other students on the county where they are from by traveling inworld.
10. Social Device: again students are able to practice communicating, the language, social skills, social norms, language norms, etc. through chatting and interacting.
11. Create Anonymity: using avatars, students may feel more comfortable taking risks, asking questions, or talking about touchy or confidential matters. They may feel more empowered and be able to overcome fears.
12. Machinima Creation (Video Filmed Inworld): students can create e-portfolios or inworld presentations.
13. Recruitment: Second Life can be used as a way to promote ideas or research.
14. Build Awareness and/or Promote an Event: similar to the above idea, students can use Second Life to raise money, promote an event, showcase work, educate people on their ideas or research.
15. Building for the Sake of Learning How to Build: simply put, students learn how to build things.
16. As an Open Learning Environment (Virtual Action Learning): students will be able to learn from others, just like in the "real world".
With clear learning objectives, Second Life (SL) can be used in a variety of classroom lessons. Whether it is for extensive projects or just here and there, SL can develop and sharpen many different skills. Working with other administrators or having students create projects for future classes would be helpful because planning lessons can be time consuming or require advanced computer skills.
In an ESL classroom I believe the most beneficial aspects of SL are the visual and interactive. Visual aids are valuable to all students when learning new concepts. Interacting with others in the non-threatening world of Second Life allows students to take risks and learn from others. With this short guide, even though I have never used SL, I feel confident that I would be able to include it in future lessons.
I have included a couple of videos. The first one supplies an overview of how Second Life works. The second video goes over how Second Life can be used for educational purposes.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Week 1, Post 2: Why integrate technology into the classroom?
As I mentioned on the previous post, technology is the new age. Children, adults, grandparents are incorporating more and more complicated technology into their everyday lives. Future jobs require technologically savvy individuals. Day to day living requires more technological knowledge. So if schools exist to prepare children to be contributors to society then technology training has to be a major component to the lessons. In order to become beneficial to our future country, students need to be creating, thinking outside the box, learning how to be hard workers, analyzing, and inventing using up-to-date and different forms of technology everyday.
As teachers it is important to make learning meaningful to the students. Whether it is math, science, health, or gym class students need to feel that what they are learning will benefit them in some way. They need to understand that what they are learning will help them become successful in their lives and careers. As the video A Vision of K-12 Students Today showed, some students are feeling they are continuing to learn in an old fashion, unbeneficial way; they have a very good reason to feel this way. By not using technologies in the classroom teachers are not preparing their students for the world they will be facing. Knowing where your students come from and the world they are going to face will help in creating meaningful lessons.
As I am studying to become an teacher to English language learners (ELLs) I like to finish my posts by examining how ELLs are affected by the presented topics. It may be possible that the English language learners in your classroom may not have internet access at home, own a cell phone, ever have touched a computer, or dealt with technology in the English language. This makes it that much more important to use technology in the classroom. Since we are preparing all students for a technological world it is important that all students interact with and use a variety of technology in order to get the same exposure as others.
Imagine: What will happen after they graduate to the student who never owned a computer?
As teachers it is important to make learning meaningful to the students. Whether it is math, science, health, or gym class students need to feel that what they are learning will benefit them in some way. They need to understand that what they are learning will help them become successful in their lives and careers. As the video A Vision of K-12 Students Today showed, some students are feeling they are continuing to learn in an old fashion, unbeneficial way; they have a very good reason to feel this way. By not using technologies in the classroom teachers are not preparing their students for the world they will be facing. Knowing where your students come from and the world they are going to face will help in creating meaningful lessons.
As I am studying to become an teacher to English language learners (ELLs) I like to finish my posts by examining how ELLs are affected by the presented topics. It may be possible that the English language learners in your classroom may not have internet access at home, own a cell phone, ever have touched a computer, or dealt with technology in the English language. This makes it that much more important to use technology in the classroom. Since we are preparing all students for a technological world it is important that all students interact with and use a variety of technology in order to get the same exposure as others.
Imagine: What will happen after they graduate to the student who never owned a computer?
Friday, September 23, 2011
Week 1, Post 1: KWL
Technology is everywhere in my daily life. If you could only see me now, I am writing this on my laptop which is connected to the free wi-fi in my hotel room, the television is on in the background (which my roommate is watching while I am fully engaged in my homework), my cell phone is announcing when I receive a text message, letting me know when someone messages me on Facebook and flashing when I receive emails. Technology is something that is easily forgotten or easily gotten used to. Even with all of this technology around me simultaneously I still had to concentrate in order to identify it. Remember when we thought it was crazy that our cell phones could take pictures and blink different colors, now look at them. When it comes to technology we have the attention span of a nat. It is exponentially changing around us and in order to keep up with our digitally native students we have to keep an open mind, submit to the changes, and move with the times.
Looking in to most of the public school's classrooms it looks like you are peering through a time portal to the 1980s. Out on the street you see hybrid cars parallel parking without the help of their drivers, people listening to their iPods while their Rascal carries them along, someone puffing on a smokeless, tobacco free cigarette while the GPS on their touchscreen, 3D cell phone tells them where to go. Now walk into a modern day classroom and you will be lucky to see a couple desktop computers. As heard in the video Did You Know 3.0, we are preparing students for jobs that don't even exist and that use technology that hasn't even been invented yet.
Going to this class I thought I was pretty up-to-date with technological knowledge. I use all forms of it daily and have a side job working online but I knew I needed ideas on how to incorporate this into classroom lessons. At the NNETESOL conference last year I went to a presentation on digital story telling. She provided us with different websites to check out but I left still feeling I needed more examples and practice. The text book, Leading 21st Century Schools, mentioned that 87% of students have internet access at home but since the English language learning community tends to be more impoverished that percentage seems quite high. I am hoping that this class not only prepares me to use more technology in the classroom but touches on how to use more with students and a classroom with limited resources.
Looking in to most of the public school's classrooms it looks like you are peering through a time portal to the 1980s. Out on the street you see hybrid cars parallel parking without the help of their drivers, people listening to their iPods while their Rascal carries them along, someone puffing on a smokeless, tobacco free cigarette while the GPS on their touchscreen, 3D cell phone tells them where to go. Now walk into a modern day classroom and you will be lucky to see a couple desktop computers. As heard in the video Did You Know 3.0, we are preparing students for jobs that don't even exist and that use technology that hasn't even been invented yet.
Going to this class I thought I was pretty up-to-date with technological knowledge. I use all forms of it daily and have a side job working online but I knew I needed ideas on how to incorporate this into classroom lessons. At the NNETESOL conference last year I went to a presentation on digital story telling. She provided us with different websites to check out but I left still feeling I needed more examples and practice. The text book, Leading 21st Century Schools, mentioned that 87% of students have internet access at home but since the English language learning community tends to be more impoverished that percentage seems quite high. I am hoping that this class not only prepares me to use more technology in the classroom but touches on how to use more with students and a classroom with limited resources.
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