As Albert Kohl says: "Personne ne commence par bien enseigner. Ensigner a l'university ça s'apprend "
Which means no one started as a good teacher, but good teaching must be learned.
This week I was happy and disappointed same time, the first because it was full of activity and posts carrying rich reservoir of knowledge and on the other hand, because I was little sick and busy with exams, lectures and some other works at same time. I felt bad that I could not participate in everything and that I did not have time.
The first task of the week was reading three academic articles on using internet in language learning.
The first paper by Mei-Ya Liang, entitled three extensive reading activities for ESL/EFL students using E-books. http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Liang-ExtensiveReading.html
In this article, the author introduced three activities with goals, procedures and study guide. The activities are: Choosing books, reading and sharing books then evaluating books. Further, in the study guide the author give samples of web pages that can be used such as http://www.education-world.com/a_tsl/TM/WS_storymapws.shtml.
The second article by Krajka Jarek: using the internet in ESL writing instruction. http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krajka-WritingUsingNet.html
In this paper, the author explored many issues related to internet, writing and finally overlapping the two issues together. This article can be served as an overview of literature done on the topic because of many reasons. The author discussed :
- summary of previous research
- some general issues about online lessons in the curriculum (the benefits of online instruction, how this online component could be integrated into the curriculum, the role of the teacher in a wired classroom, the resources needed for conducting online lessons and finally the syllabus including the online elements)
- some ideas for teaching writing genres with the help of the internet components. In this section, the author introduced man,y writing genres and how to integrate technology for achieving purposes in each one. The eleven genres he tackled are:a letter to a friend, a formal letter,a biography, a description of a person, an argumentative essay, notices and advertisements, a description or review of a book, film or play, a newspaper report, a personal opinion essay and a description of a place.
Then the author concludes by saying:
"A final point about the on-line writing instruction is that the Web should not be used all the time, or the Web materials only, but rather a teacher should enrich lessons with the Net component when it is really profitable for students and could help them in their learning. "(Krajka 2000).
The third is Using Internet-Based Children's Literature to Teach EFL (2007), by Larry J. Mikulecky.
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Mikulecky-OnlineChildrensLit.html
Here, the authors provides us with four interesting sites to use literature.
-Magic Keys
(http://www.magickeys.com/books)
- ByGosh: Classic illustrated short stories, poems and short novels can be found at the Bygosh web-site (http://www.bygosh.com/index.html).
- Children’s Digital Library: For the widest selection of materials in English, a useful site is the Children's Digital Library (http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SearchWorld). This site has illustrated children’s books in many languages and more than 1000 illustrated children’s books in English
-Tumblebooks: The most technologically sophisticated site described in this article is Tumblebooks (http://www.tumblebooks.com/ )
Now I move to the second attractive task which was selecting web pages that may work for us and share them with classmates on the Sean's Wiki. So besides getting benefits of delicious.com, we can rely as well on the wiki to see feedback from colleagues (sites with descriptions and appropriate students' level)
After having dealt with materials, theory and knowledge, we came to the heart of the learning cycle which practice. the practice has been through using some of the resources to design a technology enhanced lesson plan guided by the course team tips represented in some articles and a template.
- Tips and Advice from your Webskills Team: How to Write a Technology Enhanced Lesson Planhttps://sites.google.com/site/webskillsuo/lesson-plan
- How to write a technology enhanced lesson plan, from e-how.http://www.ehow.com/how_2324320_write-integrated-lesson-plan.html
To summarize the tips in one statement, I find that it is better to express it in this quote mentioned by the team: "The trick is to chose and use our tools wisely. If used wisely, technology can make our teaching objectives more easily attainable."
Moreover the team mention six tips to write a good lesson plan with integrating technology.
https://sites.google.com/site/webskillsuo/lesson-plan
As far as mine is concerned, it still needs revision and work because I'm still stuck. I'm still thinking about the different problems that I will face with large classes and students' different level of ability as well as lack of materials in our university and the time I will waste if I plan everything alone for 10 groups of students (600) as I am supposed to conduct same activities and use same materials otherwise I will feel unjust.
Finally the last task was to describe a problem in your class that can be solved by using technology. I thought of many suggestion but still waiting to decide one : reducing students anxiety through using technology, raising students' awareness of reading strategies and improving their reading practice or finally using google docs to enhance students writing ( paragraphs or essays) and encouraging peer assessment.
My final reflection is that we are absolutely lucky to have this chance and to be teachers and researchers because it says:
" a true leader never stops being a student
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