Week 8: Peer review

It is a good idea to make a draft of the final project first. As it takes enough time but all our previous tasks are destined to help us. I mean that preparing the draft I used assignments accomplished for the previous weeks. They have been done and some time with some other assignments have passed. So we've got new knowledge and new experience and it didn't take long to add some changes. 

It' s a good idea but I think it can be used for all courses. For example, our students starting the 3d foreign language have 360 class hours a year. And at they end of this first year they are to show their pronunciation skills, listening and comprehension skills, grammar and reading skill, and, of course, speaking skills. What could it be a final project here? I suppose something can be found but here I'd prefer traditional teaching although I admit that some aspects can result in a final project.

And the idea of peer review always works well. You have a chance to look at your peer's draft critically and while doing that you become more critical to your own draft. While reading peer's draft you think: Aha, in my draft I could do so or so to make it more efficient or clear! And when you get checklist prepared by your peer you continue his/her ideas and aspire to improve and make your project perfect. Although it's not possible we always should aspire for it.

I would offer my students before presenting their PowerPoint presentation or reports to give them to their peers to be reviewed. Sure rubric for such review should be created together with students. I think doing so students become more conscious, more critical and more efficient.

Learner autonomy

One more week has passed and brought food for thought.

There were two subjects for discussion this week.

One of them - mobile devices and one-computer class. A lot of new information and it's not surprising as technology develops rapidly and new Apps and devices and ideas how to use these devices appear.

The most capturing question for me was the question concerning learner autonomy. After reading some articles, searching different sites the question is still open for me - how to enhance learner autonomy? I'm sure it's not the question of technology because we can create an avalanche of tasks when students are to work independently, online, using mobile devices, etc. but I think it will be just formal, I would say, technical or spacial autonomy. And how to help them or in many cases make them responsible and conscious about their learning process ts the question. Sure it need time and effort and wish and some personal qualities. It's not a very rare case when a student for whom English is not a  "must have" can complete all the assignments but he will do it superficially just to get his grade and forget about English for ages. Is it possible to enhance his responsibility for learning?

I haven't found the answer ti this question this week but I discovered one more new and very useful thing Padlet (http://padlet.com/wall/WebskillsF2013 the Padlet of this course can be found here).

And here I have the question again - if I were a really autonomous learner I would learn new methods of foreign language teaching every day or week to improve myself. But due to some reasons I don't do it and does it mean that I haven't attained the necessary level of learner autonomy?

Week 6: Interactive PowerPoint

Well, this week was challenging...

Firstly, I'll describe the situation. As I wrote in Introduction discussion I teach English and French and I'm Russian. For three years I've been participating in the project of our university and Universite de Haute Alsace (France) - Russian teachers teach students of the French university Russian Language and Culture. 

That's why for this period of time I teach Russian in French. And one of our classes is dedicated to Russian literature.  As I have problems with Internet connection at the residence I combined some French texts with English ones in the PowerPoint presentation to let me colleagues see the idea of the presentation and try different options. I won't use this variant during me class -I'll use French one.

What I discovered?

Quite many things. Although some of them were known for me and I use some of them but in a little bit different way. For example, at the beginning of the lecture it's always good to brainstorm a little bit and find out what students already know and so introduce them in the subject. The idea of Think-Pair-Share is a way to make this introduction and engage students in more conscious learning.

The next thing is the fact that PowerPoint presentation is not just a number of slides which follow one another. It's possible to add hyperlinks to other slides or to exterior resources (texts, video, audio). I even didn't think about it before! What a great possibility for distant courses.

I liked the idea of Interpreted lecture - it keeps students in suspense in a way.

ConcepTest and Quick Write are equivalent to the summary of the class when students are to reproduce the main aspects of the material explained.

But I guess the main idea is not to do what I mentioned above but to know that we shouldn't limit ourselves when we reach something, I mean myself when I used PowerPoint presentation just as a visual support consisting of some texts and pictures. 

Go ahead! That what I told myself this week.

  

Week 5. PBL, alternative assessment, etc.

This week's assignments made me think about different things.

First of all I made sure again that PBL can be used in all spheres, all topics and all levels. Even if you teach phonology, grammar or semiotics you can do it. It needs more time, more efforts, more ideas, abandoning your usual and habitual way of teaching but it's worth doing. In some aspects we can teach passing on from one project to another, in others - once a course. But it will make teaching and learning more practical, it'll develop students skills which will be helpful for them in their future (teamwork, brainstorming, information search, critical thinking, preparing the speech, etc.) and it'll develop their individuality.

The second thing is alternative assessment or rubrics. It's a good idea as it gives students more understanding of what they are to do and how the results ll be evaluated, it teaches them to keep ethic norms while evaluating their peers, it shows them what aspects or traits they should pay attention to, it teaches them to be more objective and many other things. But here it should be mentioned that not all the tasks can be evaluated, for some tasks in the course of intercultural communication (sure we can assess here some formal things but the course itself is not destined for it).

I'm waiting for the next week and new discoveries!

Week 4: lesson plan and a question

This week we've had several tasks. Firstly we got some information about reading/writing skills. I discovered some sites which can be interesting and useful - all of us read  texts with students and now we have an idea about resources available and tasks offered in the sites or created on our own.

The second task was to create a technology-enhanced lesson plan. As in group which I describe there are only two students it's not a ptoblem to find computers for everyone. But some of my colleagues teach classes of 50 and more students (just imagine a class with 50 computers, it's unreal because it woud be so huge). Moreover there is only one computer for a department, not even a class... And even if there were computers or students would do their tasks at home how much time it would take the teacher just to glance at all the assignments.

Then I liked the third task when we were to think about our own students first and one or two their problems. And then the idea couldn't stop and we tried to predict, to find a tool how to cope with this issue. I guess we'll do it next week.

And one more thing. I like the ABCD model but I have a question. Why should we define the D (degree)? It's impossible to attain 100% accuracy for all students but they are supposed to attain at least 60 or, in some cases, 70% accuracy to learn new material, to cope with it. In this case - what for is it necessary to state this percentage it it's more than 60 and less than 100?