Hello everybody out there,

Week 9 is over for most of us, almost over for me (45 minutes for Monday to begin) and with still 5+ hours to go for our official UO time. Thanks God we have this difference in time zones, because it is sometimes difficult for me to sit in front of a computer and complete the tasks.

This week has been dominated by the concept of Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles. Our Nicenet discussion have been filled with splendid samples of reasoning and technicalities and I really congratulate myself on being in the same course as such wonderful thinkers, from whom we are learning as much as we learn from out tutors. Nevertheless, out of all the considerations expressed by my colleagues, I just want to point out at two facts that seem to have been forgotten by the majority: 1) no teacher can cater for all the learning styles that may be encountered in a typical class of 15 or 20 students; 2) there is no need to do so either, because no person has one and only one learning style; most of us are sensitive to 3 or even more ways of learning and what is more, our preferred learning style, like anything else, may vary from day to day, depending on our emotional state. I'm a declared fan of The Beatles and of English oldies in general, but there are days that I don't want to listen to any of that stuff and I take the option of Latin music, or Argentinean rock, or classical music, just to cite a few. It's in human nature and English has a superb verb in its repertoire to represent this: fancy. I just love this word for what it represents as much as for the way it sounds.

Another hard issue was giving a final shape to our project or plan. Mine is just a plan and I'm not sure wheter I am happy with it, although Iryna's report has been quite benevolent (I hope Donna's marks will be, too). The problem might be that it is rather unique in nature, as it tries to cater for language learners who are at the same time professional diplomats. It occurs to me that it is like trying to cook a Mexican dish with an Italian flavor; you might as well end up by having neither the dish, nor the flavor.

Finally, we had to complete a feedback questionaire about our course, and I think that was just not hard task at all if you were to disclose exactly how you feel. And what I feel is that everything is perfectible and in that sense, this course has been  no exception to the rule, but the percentage of satisfaction was so many times greater than the disatisfaction, that we might as well forget about it. 
 

Well, now that week 8 is almost gone, we can turn around and see the path that has taken us to where we are now. It wasn't really a long and winding road as I expected at the very beginning, and we may deem responsible of such light burden to Donna's clever and super well-structured tutoring. It all happened almost automatically, I would dare to say.

This week's heaviest load was having to draft our final project or plan, but again, the template given to us almost did it all by itself, and I feel extremely grateful for that, as I wouldn't even have known where to start if I had been left to myself. Donna also took care of the question of partnerships and provided two splendid partners for me, Yrina and Rita. The comments made by Yrina on my plan have been very useful and will allow me to improve it for the final report.

With regard to tools, I have been experimenting with a crossword wizard that resulted quite satisfactory (why do I say "quite" and not "completely"? Because it fitted only 19 of the 20 clues in the crossword square). The puzzle I created has to do with countries and capital cities, the latter being the clues to the former. Of course, I have a target class for such an unusual puzzle and that is my young students of diplomacy. If someone had to know all the countries in the world and their capitals, I am pretty sure they should be a professional diplomat.

Last but not least, of all the comments I read in our Nicenet discussion, Amira's was outstanding because of its clarity and the careful consideration of pros and cons of technology tools. Thanks Amira.

Hi everyone out there!  

It's hard to believe that week 7 has gone, isn't it?  I think my work this week has been a bit out of focus, perhaps because it was my starting week at the Academy and my head was revolting with so many ideas to apply in class, some of them from this course, that I just couldn't concentrate enough on our tasks. 

My personal opinion about independent learners is that self-instruction is a matter of learning styles; some people like it and follow that path (that was my case, for example) and some others prefer to remain attached to a teacher or a textbook. I admit, though, that there might be a percentage of learners who can be influenced positively towards self-instruction by the teachers, and this is a splendid time to do so, with so many websites, videos, downloadable materials and blogs readily available to anyone with a simple internet connection. On this point, I added a very nice article written by a Lithuanian teacher to Donna's Padlet Wall. 

Talking about Padlet, I have created one of my own and started sharing it with my Academic students, first as a matter of pure willingness from the students, then perhaps as a graded activity. I'd like to say thank you to Alex for introducing us to the wonderful world of David Crystal. I've already downloaded several of his videos and expect to use them in some of my classes. Thanks Alex!

Well, I hope everybody has a nice week 8. We're starting partnerships this week and I'm really looking forward to it.

Cheers!

This week was hard because it included a technological tool that we have to create on our own. Why do I always feel that the help and the explanations provided by the creators of an application are never enough?

When I was a teenager, I had an excellent jazz guitarist as a teacher. He taught me many valuable things, but when I reached an advanced level, he started to repeat himself on what we had already done, keeping the chords he taught me to a minimum. After several weeks like this, I decided to give up my guitar lessons, full of frustration and disappointment . I mention that experience from many years ago because today I felt the same when trying to tackle the interactive powerpoint task. In the end, I did it, but I was left with the bittersweet feeling that my work is of inferior quality, or at least, not what I really wanted to do.

On the other hand, I could see that some of my colleagues have prepared wonderful interactive presentations and I wish to congratulate them on doing so. If we only had the time to learn all the things they have already mastered...

In relation to our project, and further developing the ideas I presented in week 4, I decided to give it a try to some of Randall's (http://www.esl-lab.com/) easier tasks, which I listed as follows:

Easy
Calendars and Dates
Conversation Starters
Directions Around Town (1)
Introductions
Names: Meeting People
Shopping and Prices
Telling Time
Clothing and Fashion
Directions Around Town (2)
Family Relationships
Hobbies
Restaurants
Shopping Center
Telephone

As our multimedia lab is not ready yet, I will carry on with the exercises using the class In-Focus projector. I'll project each lesson a couple of times and students will complete the gaps in the dialogs and choose the correct answer. After feedback has been given, the students can practice the short dialogs in pairs. The example I am showing here is from the Conversation Startes activity.
Listen by pressing the "Play Audio" button. Then, select the correct answer for each sentence or question, which may be missing one or more words. Press the "Final Score" button to check your quiz.

What are these different audio choices?

[ Other Audio Options: Play RealMedia | Play Window Media ]  
1. Hi. Haven't we _______ before?
A. Yes. I believe we have.
B. Nice to meet you too.
C. Nothing special. 2. Long time, ________________. A. I see you too. B. It has been a long time. C. How about you?
3. Hi, how's _________________________? A. Five people. B. Oh really? C. They're fine.
4. So, _________________________? A. Pretty good. B. That's too bad. C. Nothing much.
5. Did you hear __________________________? A. Oh, what a shame. B. Hey, that's fantastic.
C. I like my job too.

There 5 more, but these are enough as an example. 

Well, this week's been heavy in terms of hard work, but I suppose this is the way things should go about, as we are  approaching the final week of our course. Hope everybody has a nice week and finds the time to do all the assignments without stressing themselves too much.

Hi everyone!

This week's been a bit tough in terms of tasks. Let's make a little comment on each one of them.

The readings about alternative assessment and project-based learning were really interesting, though I think that applying those techniques would demand a big deal of time from our students, something not easy to find with adult learners that work and study at the same time.

I found the rubric generating tool fantastic! I've shared it with some of my colleagues at university and they think the same, so much that we are going to experiment introducing some of these rubrics in our admission exams taking place in March, particularly for the writing and oral tests.

The task concerning a problem that currently affects one of our classes and a solution to it using a new tool was relatively easy, as all my classes share the same difficulty when we test their listening skills. The tool I chose is lyricstraining.com and I am planning to introduce it to my class as soon as our brand new multimedia lab is ready.

Last but not least, I took the option of creating a webquest to earn an extra credit, and that was hard because of the time it demanded. My quest involves research on the cities with the most diplomatic missions and the reasons they are so. It has been thought for my students at the Diplomatic Academy, so the learning scope for a traditional EFL class is rather limited, but I hope it works well with the target learners when it is actually undertaken. In case you are curious to know what it looks like, it was created using Quest Garden and you can find it on the following URL:  http://questgarden.com/167/38/2/140209052510/ 

Well, this is all for now. I'm going to read somebody else's blog and make a comment or two. Thanks for reading this.

This week has been really productive in terms of the tasks that we undertook and the websites that we explored. Among these, I especially liked  http://www.lessonsonmovies.com/   and http://legacy.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html . The former is a website that holds links to lots of tasks based on posters and trailers of well-known films, including vocabulary matching, gap filling and spelling practice. The latter provides many interesting and varied tasks for students at different levels of proficiency to practice listening, speaking, writing and other activities.

With respect to our final project, we have been prompted to identify a problem in our target class that we can address by means of web resources, which is of course at the very core of our project. I like the way Donna is guiding us to build it up step by step, lesson by lesson, allowing us sufficient time to think about the materials and the activities that will eventually be part of it.

Last but not least, the reviews of our posts and tasks made by our colleagues have been as encouraging and rewarding as usual, making the "lonely student syndrome" I mentioned to Donna at the beginning of the course pass by completely unnoticed.

Now, time to read my colleagues' blogs and find out about their experiences. 

As week 3 is coming to an end, I sit in front of my computer and start thinking of what we've done and what we've learnt so far.

There's no doubt that we have been provided with plenty of material and activities to keep us busy without suffocating us. Thanks Donna! I particularly enjoyed labeling Donna's map (week 1), starting a blog (week 1), discovering new search engines (week 2), using Delicious (week 3), researching aural/oral sites (week 3) and reading past projects (week 3).

As for the readings, I found the articles Assessment Guides and Rubrics for Language Classes (week 1) and How to Write Clear Objectives (week 2) very innovative and useful for my own teaching environment. On the other hand, I found The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreing Language Skills (week 3) by Julia Gong a bit too technical and perhaps somehow outdated, as most references are from the past century. Though the general guidelines are nonetheless useful,  my perception is that a great deal of user-friendly resources we have at hand nowadays must have been introduced in this century and could not possibly have been accounted for by Ms Gong. 

Well, this is a brief appreciation of our course so far. Needless to say, I'm really satisfied with it and look forward to learning more and more.