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
Hi Evelyn,
ReplyDeleteI noticed the extra effort you put into this week. However, I did not think you performed badly during the previous week. You managed to keep up with the pace despite the many other obligations you had.
This week's blog is very elaborate and very honest. I love it and I think your final project will turn out great. Your ideas about addressing plagiarism will yield success, I am quite positive about that. I am looking forward to the outcome.
Jasmina
Jasmina,
ReplyDeleteHello, and thanks for your vote of confidence. You are very encouraging. By the way, I just checked our your Zunal webquest and I love the case that you presented for your students. I love the technology and the collaborative exercises that you included. Plus, your rubrics were so detailed! I am sure more and more each day what a great teacher you are! Will you come and work with me???!!! We need more teachers like you!
If you have not viewed them yet, check out Ivana's lovely Animal lesson on Zunal. You will love the cute photos and guessing games that she has incorporated!
Also, check out Jayshree's interesting maps for the travel tips lesson. Very impressive indeed!
What a busy week we had, right!
Take care.
Evelyn
Hello Evelyn,
ReplyDeleteNice work that you have put on your blog this week. Compiling all the resources explored during the week and putting them at one place is a great challenge; but you have done it well.
Big job you have, the external review coming up. We also have it here in India once in five years. Wishing you all the best for it.
All the best,
Ashish Pande
Hi Evelyn,
ReplyDeleteYou look like you had a packed week from what your blog reflects; I felt I was quite involved,too. Your frustration about plagiarism is a concern in our department also; teachers always complain and try to find solutions and students think they can outsmart us. The university purchased Turnitin in an attempt to stop plagiarism. It is a beneficial software but nothing solves any problem a 100 percent! My office mate who teaches an introductory course to research writing that culminates in the writing of a term paper advised me to ask for submissions of the paper in steps to prevent students from cheating to the extent that they sometimes bring hard copies of sources to class to work on documentation.Each step of the writing carries a particular percentage from the final grade of the paper.
I hope I haven't discouraged you about PBL; I am sure you can solve the problem by choosing topics that require analysis or synthesis and focusing on their opinions in the end.
I still remember when I was a grad. student how the president of Boston University was asked to resign because he plagiarized in
his speech.I later saw this story in a video that accompanied a reading book and I used it with my students to sense the gravity of consequences of this kind of theft.
Good luck with the external reviewer; I haven't had the experience myself ,but it was for the department as a whole. I hope your reviewer will use alternative assessment!
Take Care,
Paula
Dear Paula,
DeleteThanks so much for your feedback. You were not discouraging at all; in fact, you reminded me that I still need to be careful about cunning students even during PBL. We use Turnitin here too, but that only catches the students after they have already plagiarized something and then it is too late. I am looking for preventive methods. I hope this course can help me to explore new methods for that!
Interesting about the BU president plagiarizing. Youw ould think he would have a speech writer who could do the work for him!
I will keep you informed about the external review. It is not until March, but the paper documents are all due in one month! Too much to do in a short period of time!
See you in week 6!
Evelyn
Dear Ashish,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your kind feedback. I am glad to see that your survived this week. I know that you were busy and having a hard time. We are over half-way over now, so the rest is all downhill from here! Hang in there!
So, you have done an External Review before? This will be my first time to be the supervisor overseeing a department during the external review. It will also be the first for this department since we are relatively new. There is so much work to do. I have avoided it until this point, but I really must get started. I have to present all the data on my department over the past 5 years. It is overwhelming! Thanks for your vote of confidence!
Take care.
Evelyn
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEvelyn,
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading over this detailed blog, highlighting all that you have going on right now, and bearing in mind that you are a mother as well, I was simply AMAZED! You certainly take multitasking to a whole new level! Additionally, you managed to comment on everyone's blog this week! Wow! I'm impressed!
It sounds like you gained a lot during week 5. In particular, you have a clear direction for where your final project is going, which is wonderful. I look forward to learning how it progresses and if your quest to defeat plagiarism is a successful one.
One point you made in your blog post that I took note of, was the idea of having students help create their rubrics. This would truly hold them accountable for the areas that they are being assessed in while engaging them in all aspects of the learning process, as assessing is a part of learning, whether we like it or not. I hope to use this idea in the future. The students I am working with right now are high beginners and we just completed a project, but I would have loved to get them involved in the rubric I created to assess their final projects. I think it would have made the outcome even better than it was.
Thank you for your continued enthusiasm for this course and the support you offer to your fellow classmates!
Dear Courtney,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind feedback. Yes, I am trying my hardest to live life to the fullest, giving my kids an international experience and fulfulling some of my huge ambitions as the same time. Sometimes, it is hard because I just want to do it all, which is impossible and something has to give as times.
The idea of having students share in the process of rubric creation is on the side of autonomy. I try to make my class (as well as my program) as democratic as ever. Well, I was not always like this, but after being a supervisor, I changed and let go of some of my dictatorship ways in favor of more decision-making for the teachers who report to me as well as the students in my class. I think autonomy is a key work in today's society, so this is just one way to include them in the process. I hope that you can give it a try. You might be pleasantly suprised. As for me, I need to try to do more of it, incorporating autonomy into every aspect of my leadership.
Thanks for an interesting week!
Evelyn