Technology updates

Hello, Everyone.

I was recently invited to deliver a plenary speech at the International Symposium on ESL Writing Research at Wuhan University of Technology, China.  Although I was excited to deliver a talk on effective technologies that I use in my writing classes, the speech was meaningless, as many of the sites that I described cannot be accessed in China!

This is one of the major problems about living in Macau, which is part of China but which is not really part of China!

Even though we have now moved to the new campus, which was officially built on Chinese soil but has now been handed over to Macau (it is separated by a wall from the rest of China), problems exist when communicating with China.

I have to learn about more technologies that are only accessed in China!  My new goal for 2014.....

Hope you are all doing fine!

I would also like to take this opportunity to share our call for proposals with everyone for our upcoming conference in 2015!

Best,
Evelyn

End of Course Reflections

Hi, Everyone.  Congratulations on a successful end of the E-teacher course. I have enjoyed working with and learning from you all!  Thank you for being such wonderful classmates!  Thank you, Courtney, for this interesting, productive and effective class. I learned more about integrating technology into the classroom during the past 10 weeks than I have in the past 10 years.  I am so thankful that I was given this opportunity!

As a teacher, I always hope that students will answer honestly when asked for feedback on a class, so I hope that my blog will be as honest and helpful for future development as possible.  So, here goes.

Most Useful Things I learned in this class:

1.        Blogger:  Setting up this blog for reflection was very helpful. I hope to continue the blog even after this course finishes.

2.       I loved accessing all types of platforms such as our class site, Wiki page, Nicenet and the blog rolls.

3.       RubiStar:  What a great tool for creating rubrics, and it can easily be made with students’ input this way!  I also loved reading about alternative assessment.

4.       A-B-C-D Outcomes and Bloom’s Taxonomy:  Writing outcomes are key to any course or program.  I learned how to better write outcomes not only for my class but for my entire Centre as well! I also attended some professional development workshops offered by CTLE at my university on this topic, and I was able to contribute a lot since I had learned about this with my fellow E-teachers first!

5.       Independent learning:  This topic holds true and dear to my heart, so I loved learning about what others do with IL and how they address autonomy in their classrooms.

6.       I loved all of Deborah Healey’s stuff!

7.       Final Project: I love the step-by-step approach we took and how we were forced to implement the project (action research) into our classes. It also tied in nicely with Project-based learning!  I also enjoyed reading the final projects of previous students of this course. I loved working with my partner too!

8.       Technology-enhanced lesson plan:  There were many good readings about integrating technology into specific classes for reading, speaking, grammar, etc. I learned a lot of new sites that I could use for this.  Then, I created my own lesson plan, which was very helpful.

9.       Interactive powerpoints: I loved creating powerpoints and learning about how to make them more engaging for students. I tried a couple either in class or during presentations I made, and they were big successes!  I also made a Jeopardy game and a Prezi, which were fun to make and fun for students!

10.   Wallwisher: I love all the applications you can make with this!

11.   Online exercise generators:  I like the Hotpots and other sites we explored.  I think Anvill might be really helpful for a speaking class (even though I did not try it yet).

12.   Learning styles: It is important to know students’ learning styles when creating lessons, so as to address the needs of all students.

Least Useful Things I learned in this class:

1.        LoTiConnection:  The Digital Age Survey was relevant for high school teachers but not for anyone else.  The questions were not applicable to university EFL settings.  I did like the “Best Of” series, though.

2.       Noodletools:  I liked the possibility of using different search engines, but I think I am just too lazy to do that. I still use only Google!

3.       Delicious:  I definitely think this site is probably useful, but it was hard for me to use and to get practical use of. I think with repeated exposure, it might grow on me.  However, for the past 10 week period, I did not really use it as much as my classmates did.

4.       Working with large classes was not a useful discussion for me because all of my classes are small.  I think that I already do the suggestions about making classes more interactive that were given here.

5.       Webquests: I liked the concept behind them, but they might not be so applicable to university settings.  I think they would work well with elementary and secondary school students better.

Things I would have liked to learn in this class:

1.        I want to learn how to use corpus analysis and concordances in the language classroom.  I spoke with Douglas Bieber about this but found no clear solutions even from those discussions.

2.       Video creation and editing

3.       Voice recognition programs

Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I would give it a 10 from a scale of 1-10.  Most of all, I enjoyed meeting my classmates. I feel like I made a connection with several people and learned so much from them!

Well, I am off to Shantou, China for 5 days and then New Zealand for 3 weeks for winter break. I hope you all have a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hope to see you again in 2013.

Evelyn

Week 9 Reflections

The best part of this week was submitting the final project. It was fun doing the project, but relieving to get it done as well!  I learned a lot about myself while making the project; it was a good project-based learning experience.  I think that my project will produce a fine longitudinal study that may turn into a research piece later when I have some data on the effectiveness of my preventative solutions.  My goal is to see if the teachers in my program can incorporate some of my strategies for preventing plagiarism into their classes and eventually change the mindset of our students towards citation and plagiarism.

In addition, we discussed learner strategies this week in our Nicenet postings. It was interesting to think of different activities to address the needs of different learning styles.  I also had fun learning about my own style of learning. I am an interpersonal learner, which is very true, and the career that I chose as a teacher suits my learning style well.

Next week is the last week of the lesson, so I feel sad to say goodbye to our E-teacher friends!  It has been such a pleasure working with you all, and I hope that we can stay in touch.  I will keep this blog going and hopefully use it to push myself to do new things in the classroom.  Good luck, Everyone, as we wind down our studies.

Week 8 Reflections

Hi, Everyone.

This was a busy week, with the first draft of our final projects and then partner feedback due at around the same time.  Let me start off by saying that I have been so happy with my partner, Paula.  I love the project that she is working on with blogs.  I have learned so much from her!

As for my own project, I feel happy that this E-teacher course has led me to create a new way of thinking about plagiarism, which is the topic I am exploring for the project.  I had only treated it as a “one-shot” teaching moment, but I realize now that I can shorter lessons about ways to cite and to protect academic integrity throughout the semester. I have created several new interactive Powerpoints, games and short “One-A-Day” five-minute lessons that I can use in any class at any time!  I am going to add these to our ELC Moodle site and share them with all my faculty too.

I would like to share one AMAZING site that my faculty has created this semester.  Check this out if you have time.  Didn’t they do an excellent job with this, and they incorporated so much technolog???!!!  It has videos, games and quizzes all created from scratch.  Click here to view:  http://www.umac.mo/elc/ad/index.html  The link does NOT work well with Internet Explorer yet, so please open with Chrome or with Firefox to see the complete picture.  We still have to make some adjustments to try to get it to work with Internet Explorer.  So, consider it a work in progress.

I love experimenting with new educational tools, so I played with many other tools this week to make other plagiarism activities for my students (and for the entire ELC community).

One site I tried for the first time was Crossword Puzzles.  I made a simple puzzle that I could use as part of my “One-A-Day” strategy to prevent plagiarism, which the topic of my final project. I loved that the site was easy to use, and I could create the puzzle in just five minutes or so.  Like Marina, I tried easytestmaker too, but I was so sad to see that this was a pay site! 

I also made a couple of new Hotpots.  I have made quite a few Hotpots in my life. I shared a few links to these in my final project. I made some new ones and posted them onto the class Wiki page.  They both will be used for part of my “One-A-Day” strategy described in my final project. 

Next, I tried a word find at Toolsforeducators.  This program allows you to create your own word find by putting in one word at a time on each line. It generates the puzzle in a second and even provides an answer key at the bottom of the page. You can print it off, but you can NOT save the file, which is disappointing.

I looked briefly at the flash cards at http://bogglesworldesl.com/ which is a good site for children, and I recommend teachers like Ivana to try this site!

I also created a simple worksheet (poster) for my class on the Web Poster site, again on plagiarism.  The site automatically saves it into my class. This was my favorite “toy” this week!

There are several other tools that I will try this weekend if I have time.  Of course, I want to start saving them all into my Delicious site too!

Finally, it was interesting to check out what our classmates have posted on the Wiki page for week 8 resources.  I loved the Christmas game that Ina made!  It has multiple choice, true/false, matching and fill in the gap exercises.  I love Christmas, so looking at this made me happy!  This is the season when I miss my country the most!!!!!  Christmas is so beautiful in America, and I miss the trees, lights and magic that is everywhere in the States at Christmas.  Thank you, Ina, for filling my heart with spirit today!

I also loved the John Milton crossword that Vinita made and the modals worksheets and crossword that Jasmina made. It is nice that we can share our creations through a class like this! I am so sad that the course is almost over!

Let’s see, some other things happened this week as well.

One of my papers was published, and I got the hard copies this week.  I think you can see the abstract at this link:  http://www.davidpublishing.com/journals_info.asp?jId=1070

Mine is on page 813 if you scroll down the September, 2012 issue.

I also presented at a conference on Intercultural Communication in Wuhan, China.  Although my presentation went well and I met some classmates and teachers from Macquarie University in Sydney where I did my doctoral studies, it was a horrible venue.  The main water pipe on campus burst, so there was no water on the campus of the university that hosted the conference on Saturday and Sunday!  I won’t go into detail, but use your imagination to think about the toilet situation!!!!!!

Uggh, this was a hard week, and I am glad that there is only one more week of classes left at my university! 

Here is a photo of me at the Intercultural Communication conference venue, Zhonang University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, China (it's already cold there)! 

Here is a pictue of some DONKEY meat that I tried after the conference.  It tastes like horse (which I tried in Japan) and it served the same way, cold and somewhat raw. It was not good, but I was glad to get the experience.  I can say that I will gladly try anything at least once! 

Have you guys eaten some exotic foods? 

Hope everyone is doing well and surviving under pressure! Good luck!

Evelyn

Week 7 Reflections

Hi, Everyone.

This was my favorite week so far in this class.  We discussed one of my favorite buzzwords in teaching these days – learner autonomy.  After spending the entire fall semester of Professional Development workshops on learner autonomy and independent learning, I was glad to hear from my classmates in this course about how they try to incorporate autonomy into their classrooms.  It was also interesting to think of the connections between autonomy and a one-computer classroom.

We read the article by Thanasoulas which talked about the “radical change in the age-old distribution of power and authority that used to plague the traditional classroom”- mainly what learner autonomy is and how to foster autonomy in our students. What I liked most about this article was the concise list on page 2 about the main characteristics of autonomous learners (and how I see myself as an autonomous life-life learner):

1.        Those who know their learning style (for me, I am a strong kinesthetic type)

2.       Those who take an active approach to learner (I am active enough to see out classes like this)

3.       Those who are willing to take risks (like with language learning, trying to use the new language in different situations)

4.       Those who are good guessers (language teachers have to be good guessers in order to understand their teachers)

5.       Those who focus on content (as long as I accomplish my goal, I don’t focus on how I get there)

6.       Those who don’t use a lot of transfer in learning a new language (L1 transfer does not work well for me)

7.       Those who are tolerant to the new language (I at least try to be)

Thanasaoulas spoke of the role of motivation, which is the most important element of learner autonomy.  I recently did a paper on the main effects on intercultural communication, and I found that motivation, anxiety, self-esteem, culture and gender affect intercultural communication (ICC) the most.  However, among the five themes, motivation seems to have the strongest hold, not only with ICC but also with independent learning (IL).

I also like the think-aloud self reports which he wrote about.  This introspection gets to the heart of how learners feel while they are learning. I used this type of self-report in the form of Language Learning Histories in the ICC research I discussed above. 

I also liked the article we read by Richard Smith on Learner Autonomy Teacher Autonomy.  Smith stressed that teachers must be made autonomous in order for them to promote learner autonomy. I spoke about this trickle-down effect in my Nicenet post about how I encourage teacher autonomy for my faculty.  I also like how Smith questioned whether autonomy is applicable to all cultures – for example, Asian cultures, like where he worked in Japan. This is a key discussing in autonomy these days. Sheu talked about his experiences in Taiwan in relation to this cultural application of autonomy.  While I believe it is true that Asians may not have much autonomy in K-12, I think by university many teachers are making a movement to increase the awareness of the importance of learner autonomy.

I also enjoyed reading about 7 Categories of Classroom Computer Use, Strategies and Applications for the One Computer Classroom, and How to Thrive – not just survive – in a One-Computer Classroom. However, I found most of those articles to be outdated and not really applicable to young adults at the university level, where students are more familiar with technology than the teachers are!  These would offer more help to small children, in my opinion.  On the contrary, Deborah Healey’s Technology Tip was very helpful. I will post that on my class Moodle site for students to reference.  I also have bookmarked 25 Ways to Integrate the Internet.

As I mentioned on Nicenet, I am currently in the process of developing an Independent Learning Centre (ILC) at my college.  Because of the struggles of motivation for students to attend the ILC in their spare time, I wonder how to make a good ILC and to make it popular – a fun place where students can enjoy learning. I got some good tips from the readings this week, such as Creating a Computer Lab for English Language Teaching and Self Access.  I also picked up a good technology – a wallwisher.  

Here are some photos from the Macau Grand Prix which started today - one of the highlights of Macau. I skipped out on a half day at work to enjoy the qualifying races with my son! 

Hope that everyone is having a great week!

Evelyn

Week 6 - Reflections

Hi, everyone. Congratulations on a successful finish to week 6.  Only 4 more to go!

I found this week to be extremely helpful. I use a lot of PPTs in my work and in class.  I am always looking for new ways to make my powerpoints innovative and fun.  The readings and feedback from this week's discussions helped with that.

First, I made a Jeopardy game from scratch for the first time. It was fun to make and interesting to see the powerpoint hyperlink to other sections.  This means the routine slide by slide method.  I also incorporated lots of hyperlinks into an interactive PPT on Action Research which I delivered yesterday in a graduate English Education class.  They loved the short quiz which I incorporated at the end of the lecture. It was simple, but they liked the addition.  I also experimented with using the blank slide - which did exactly what it was supposed to do - to draw the attention to me and not the PPT.  Donna, our guest this week, spoke out using blank slides often and about loving the effects of them.  I totally agree. I had never thought about that before.

For our final project, I have started to develop some technologies which might be helpful in preventing plagiarism in my program.  I am working on one online storyboard and am developing new handouts and lessons that I can use.  I have also found some good games on the Internet which might help with this.  I am creating handouts on APA and MLA citation which students can keep in their notebooks for whenever they are in doubt about how to cite something.  My school has created a handbook which it hopes to distribute to all students regarding the issue of academic integrity. I am going to make an interactive PPT with that, so that students won't be bored just reading from the manuel.  Hey, who knows, maybe I can make a Jeopardy game out of that too!

This week, I had several committee meetings at my job. I sit on a CTLE committee task force which is in charge of developing online courses for my university, which currently has NO online courses.  Thanks to Courtney and all the ideas I have gotten from this course, I have a clear idea about how to incorporate tons of technology into an online course. I have never taught a completely online course, and I hesitate to teach one for EFL students (I think language learning needs a human touch).  I also incorporate hybrid modes for doing forums, blogs and projects at home, along with an independent learning component as well, but even with that, the courses I have taught have never had more than 20% outside of classtime work online.  How does one make a language class completely online?  What resources do you need?  What support to you need?  These are all questions which the committee and I have to work through before we begin to formulate any online courses at my university.  This is the beginning of what will be a very long project for me. 

Well, I look forward to seeing more of our classmates great PPTs this week.

Here is a picture of the kids and I in Zhuhai, China this week.  We often do border runs to get certain things cheaper than they are in Macau.  It is still quite hot here. I wish cooler weather would finally roll in!

Week 5 - Reflections

Evelyn’s week 5 blog

This week, I must say, I did the most work and put the most effort into this class.  As I had been away at conferences for the past two weeks, I felt that I had missed a lot of good feedback from my classmates.  To make up for that, I went the extra mile in reading everyone’s post and trying to consider their findings regarding my teaching situation as well.

First, I read a lot.  I read about rubrics, project-based learning, and alternative assessment.  Although I have long been a fan of rubrics, I learned an easier way to create them on RubiStar at http://rubistar.4teachers.org/.  The rubric that I made on RubiStar was so much easier than the ones that I have made before on Blackboard, Moodle and Desire2learn.  What normally took hours just took about 10 minutes on RubiStar!  I love the pre-determined categories that RubiStar has. It makes it a lot easier on students.  Also, if you want to get students involved with rubric creation, this site is so easy.  Just select and click!  I also thought about using students to help create the categories in the rubrics as well.  These articles and websites were helpful.

• Alternative learning; alternative assessment: http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/assessing/alternative.htm

• Focus on Basics: Less Teaching and More Learning" by Susan Gaer http://www.ncsall.net/?id=385
• The "Student Projects Sampler," also by Susan Gaer at http://susangaer.com/studentprojects/
• The following helped me to learn about using rubrics for PBL projects.http://www.globalschoolnet.org/Web/pbl/plan/assres.htm
  
•  This website gives good information on alternative assessment. It has some good examples too.  http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/tannen01.html
• The following website is good for new teachers to PBL. It has a step-by-step approach which will help new teachers to try a project for a change.http://www.sun-associates.com/lynn/pbl/pbl.html
• Video- Introduction to PBL:http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning
• This article talks about a research project done with teachers in China, where change to traditional teacher is not accepted easily.  This was a great article for me to read since I am working in China now.   http://www.atesl.ca/cmsms/home/newsletters/december-2007/project-based-esl-education/
  
  
• The following site was a little too easy for me, but it might be helpful for beginning teachers.http://health.usf.edu/publichealth/eta/Rubric_Tutorial/default.htm

Regarding some of the information from these readings, I had a great discussion this week with Jasmina, Ashish, Paula and Courtney regarding the use of PBLs as a way to prevent (somewhat) plagiarism and as a way of helping to motivate students.  Paula referred to PBL as a “double-edged sword” in our discussion thread in which she thought that as much as PBL might prevent plagiarism, it might encourage it as well. I totally agree with Paula, and I need to keep that in mind as I incorporate PBL into my lessons (particularly for my final project for this class).

I also learned a lot about webquests this week.  Webquests are great places for PBL activities to be stored and easily made available for others to use.

• Zunal was my favorite. http://www.zunal.com/
• I learned more about webquests at (http://www.webquest.org/index-resources.php) and saw examples at http://www.webquest.org/search/index.php
• I loved the videos using webquests and demo lessons on this site.http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index_sub3.html
  
  

Next, I thought about a possible technology tool that might help me in my class situation (project for end of class).  The assignment for this week was as follows:

“Describe a technology-related change that you will implement to help with one or more of the issues you mentioned before. This should be something that you are not doing now. Respond to at least one other person's ideas with helpful suggestions.” (from our class google site, by Courtney)

I got a great idea from Ashish who said that PBL is a great way of preventing plagiarism.  What a good point!  I wrote in detail on the discussion thread regarding step four of our final project how I thought that PBL might be a good answer for me in helping my students to not be tempted to plagiarize. I need to think it out more fully, but I am glad that Ashish made this good point.

Overall, this was a very productive week.  I am glad that I got caught up this week.  Another main task that I have for myself at work this week, as well as for the whole month of November,  is to prepare the documents for my center’s External Review.  Our External Review will be held in March, when some scholars from outside my university will come and review and grade my program.  However, in preparation for their visit, I have a massive amount of documentation that I have to provide for them to read and review before they come. The documents are due the first week of December. Of course, I have both my teaching staff and administrative staff helping me work on certain sections of the review documents, but this is still a HUGE job, and I feel uncertain sometimes about the types of preparation I am doing for this.  This will be my first time as the “boss” to have an External Review of my program so I am very nervous. If anyone has any experience with this, please do let me know!

Enjoy your weekends!  Today is a holiday in Macau. It is called “All Soul’s Day.”  Not really sure what that means since I am not local, but I am glad to have Friday off. I have to administer the SAT on Saturday, so today is a nice holiday substitute!

Evelyn