Technology to provide feedback - Week 14

RATE: 5

Feedback in the teaching area, is a helpful information or criticism that gives to someone what can be done to improve an activity, task or skill. This is an important thing in the process of learning, due to, it could be a guide for the learner to follow the correct way, but how technology could help us to do this? Well, the article for this week show us what useful could be technology to give feedback to our students.

 The article presented different ways to give feedback for example:  screen capture, students can sent to the teacher a paragraph and teacher can open it and record himself to providing feedback. That could help to do this work with less time, especially with those cases in which teacher doesn’t has enough time. Something that I guess it’s important is the fact of help students with lower levels given the feedback in their native language to improve their process. Also, this could be useful to give feedback to all the group of class, sometimes there are common mistakes in an activity, teacher could make a video to give feedback of that, and send it to the all class.

 In my opinion I really like that kind of feedback, because as teacher  seems to be an easy way to check improvement, but I think that it’s could be difficult for students, I mean students just will play the video of his teacher give him feedback, but he couldn’t be able to ask questions to the teacher if he have them, I think that the interaction between Teachers- Students is important and maybe is something that we could lose.

project work - week 13

RATE: 4

Project work is defined as a planned piece of work that has a spaecific purpose, usually that take a long time, sometimes is a big challenge for students. Projects is a word that excites some, but scares others, due to most of the time those activities become in something to heavy for students, however, those kind of activities could be useful for our learners.

The article for this week described that those projects are structured to maximize language, content and real life kills. Something that I really like are the effects of the use of those project in students like, increase of critical thinking, motivation and engagement, improved social skills, etc. the article gives us good examples of activities that can be used to work with our students, also, something that calls my attention was that projects have to be design to engage students to do it and also, those project need to have real purpose, that means, that they have to be connected to the learning needs of our students. many of those project make students to be aware of their knowledge and pushes them to look for their own techniques to development.

Getting students to participate in classroom - week 12

RATE: 4

Student’s participation is a way to have interaction between teacher-student. The article for this week discuss about a variety of benefits that come from student participation. These were the best for me:  Participation adds interest. Students can give their opinion about a topic, due to hear another point of view help to a better understanding and engages students. Participation can be use to develop important speaking skills because this gives the opportunity to the students to practice using different vocabulary.

The second article explained 2 ways to increase student interaction the first one is called think-pair-share which is a technique that gives to the students, time to process their thoughts and this a benefit for them, because they learn to reflect in their answers, also this is a benefit for teacher, because this gives the chance to discover if his students understand the topic. The second one is called circle chat this is an activity in which students share their opinions about a question or topic, students are changing pair and talking with different classmates. This activity changes the traditional dialogue. Teachers have the learning process in their hands, therefore they need to design activities that really help students to improve their skills

Online collaborative writing using wikis- week 8

Wikis as knows as an online resource of information, those are websites in which anyone can write about something specific and share publicly, one of the best know is “Wikipedia”.

The article for this week, describe a little project in which a teacher organize his student to collaborate and contribute with writing ideas to create groups in which the objective was create their own “wiki site”. The teacher divided the class in six groups; each group had a topic that they had to write one page of the document.  Teacher Took a week to checked what his students had written, also students had the chance to checked their own work and their classmate’s work with the objective of improve grammar and lexicon, and finally, the work was posted.

On my own point of view, I think that this was a good idea to promote collaboration and team work; also it was very useful to improve writing. I really like the fact in which students checked their work and the work of their classmate, because that helps to improve their spelling and logic in a document. I really like the fact in which students learned how to create a appealing and professional writing task , I think that this could be a good experience to improve writing skills.  

Internet for reading and writing classes- week 7

As we had already discussed, internet is an extensive tool in which teacher can chose and acquired their own materials to perform an English class.

 One of the articles for this week was focus on literature which is something that helps to the development or improvement of vocabulary, grammar, reading comprehension and writing.  I think that The main point and the most useful advantage of using internet to literature is the practice outside the class time, as we know, the time for an English class is around 1-2 hours, and most of the time, it’s difficult for a teacher present everything that was planned, however, teacher can provide to the students the downloaded resources, and students can have their own reading at home. 

Something that I really like from this article is that it give us a list of different ways to performing a reading, with the objective of become more attractive and successful, between these activities are: have students create their own story in English and write summaries of the chapters that they read, as a student, I have seen many of these activities in the coursed that I took and that really help.

On the other hand, the second article describe the use of internet to writing classes, which said that involve web are a good way of motivating students to use English outside the classroom and to make English the part of their daily life. What I really like form this articles is that it explained different types of writing document like, essays, biography and others, this article presented many websites that could help to integrate different materials that help the development of the students and also, I like the way in which it suggest that the web should not be used all the time, internet have to just a way to enrich the learning of our students.

CALL for speaking class- week 6

Computers, as we have concluded are tools that prepare users for real-world. The articles for this week describes the use of computers as a tool for motivate and improve the speaking skill. Those articles explains that CALL help to improve pronunciation, due to, they have multimedia products which incorporate relatively natural speech, that help students to know native accents and recognize sounds. Others include an electronic dictionary.

Something that I really like from this article was that it promote the advantages of CALL, among which are a motivating and interactive environment for learners, it’s offers a private workspace in which students can experiment physiologically threatening in a classroom  or real communication situation, which is interesting. In addition, they contain a lot information to support contextualize interaction. Also, many CALL materials can offer spontaneous feedback.  And the best for me, computers enhance the interaction between the user and the target language content by putting learners in touch with native speakers  of the language, also with many resource free from restriction time and distance.

However, everything have two point of view, CALL can’t give real and verbal interaction with the target langue, they can just, create a model or prototype, we can see that, in some of the software in which the voice of the speaker it’s with a mechanically quality which is difficult to understand. Also something that I don’t like is that many of the resource are not completely reliable. Once again, I concluded that teachers need to be careful with the tools that they use to teach, I think that we can use computers, but also, we have teach as the old technique, Teacher-student as it was in the past. we can use all the resources as we can, but we don't have to forget that our prority is the learning of our students.

Critical thinking and technology- week 5

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing and evaluating information acquired by observation. The article for this week talks about how technology can help to the development of critical thinking and how we (as teachers) can help students to be active intellectually.

 The process of learning is describing as a something nature, humans beings learn through the capacity that God give them to think and reason, to take advantage from this ability, we need to teach them the logics of our disciplines and not just dictate information to them.

Something that calls me attention was that the article mentioned is that “we should do less telling and more acting” for that technology provides many different ways to engage our students through learning, due to, the different personalities, we have to consider the kind of learner that we have, some students like visual information, to them we can use pictures, diagrams, charts and films. Others prefer auditory for them we can use podcasts, videos and others things and like those, there are others more, we have different ways to perceive knowledge.

Something that I really like is that the article presented proposal to use of computer in the classroom as a way of rich the acquisition of knowledge, Due to, it gives us more materials to improve the environment of our students.also it help us to give them the chance of take control of their own process of learning by looking for they own materials and resources. we can decide between, the way in which we want to teach, we can decide what kind of resources we want to use, but we need to look for the best way to  help our students.  

The use of Internet in English Language Teaching- week 4

Internet is defined as a global computer network providing a variety of information and communications facilities. Internet had becomes in one of the more useful technological advances, nowadays, it takes an important place in the learning process.

Internet had replaced books in almost a complete way, due to many of the information that can be finding there. The article discuss about the internet integration in English language teaching (ELT) giving many ideas of the use of internet as a good resource of learning, between those, are web-based projects , chat to develop oral communication skills, blogs in the process of writing, etc.

In addition, it mentioned the internet as a tutor, due to, that there are numerous sites offer lessons on English language usage such as grammar and vocabulary, teachers might assign your students to present on a column of their choice to the class. Also, internet is mentioned as a tool which could be used for engagement and interactive students by stimulate creativity and foster communication and collaboration.  

On the other hand, something that calls me attention was, that the article mention about a research that concluded the technology beneficial impact on linguistics outcomes is slight and inconclusive, and through the time the web sites could be obsolete. That’s meaning that they might not be reliable. In my point of view, as an student of teaching English, you can find a lot of resources of information that could help you, but you can’t be completely sure about them. Teachers need to look for the better help for their work, but also the better help for the process of learning of their students. 

The impact of technology in the classroom-week 3

As we already know the process of education had been changing. At the very beginning, students were sitting in a classroom in front of a board, and a teacher was stand up, writing on the board or reading a lesson, but since the science had been advancing, it had been taking place in the classrooms. The articles presented the influence that technology has to teach and learn a foreign language.

The article explained a little research project of a course of 5 weeks in which teachers implemented technological resources. Something that calls me attention was the objective of use strategies to help understanding, and also to exposure students to the cultures, where the target language is spoken. I think that it really help to develop the ear.

  

In addition, Some of the materials were: online submissions and consultations on line, instead of paper based submission, seminars-participatory (student focused) instead of lectures-teacher focused, materials in digital format, instead of materials in a large booklet, also implemented podcast  like ESL pod and songs (stories or dialogs of native speakers and American songs),  and others things. That had good results, for teachers an easy way to teach and get materials and for students, a more communicative learning.

However, it mentioned that the use of computers may negatively affect the teaching of other academic skills such as witting and argumentation. That is something that I want to remember from this article because I think that it give us two different points of view of the use of technology. I think that technology is a great resource that had change the way in we teach and learn, due to that, we had to be careful with this, because, as it’s true technology help to develop some skills but also could affect in a wrong way others skills.     

CALL as a resource for learners.- week 2

All human are constantly in learner, since we born until dead; that is something nature. However, everybody have a different process of learner, and different abilities and weakness. As learners we had to known ourselves. The article explained metacognition as flexible self-control of the knowledge. That’s mean engaging students in self-monitoring and helping them increase their knowledge; this process takes place along with thinking process, that’s means that the mind becomes aware of itself. In others words, the learner evaluates himself and recognizes where he has problems.

In addition, the article defines learner autonomy as the capacity that students have critical reflection to take an independent action of his learning process. That’s mean that the learner analyzes their own progress, to takes actions that could reach his knowledge, that’s why he becomes autonomous. At this point, the learner looks for ways to improve his learning by creating his own methods or techniques of learning. Computers-assisted language learning (CALL) takes place in that, due to, allows students to explore the plethora of resources available on the internet, and that give to them web tools with which they could improve their skills.

Something that I like from this article is that invite teacher to use technology in the classroom, not for the benefit of the teacher, but to contribute to the growth in learners, motivation, autonomy and thinking skills. In my opinion, I could evaluete the article with 4 because I feel identified. As a language student I look for resources that could help me and in many times I used websites and online programs to improve my foreign language, even thought,  I’m not so good with computers, I could said that they are a great help for me!                    

Computers, the best teacher support.- Week 1

Through the years, technology has been changing; and increasingly, it’s much easier to have access to a computer. This because of the fact that computers had changed our life in a extraordinary way; like the way in which we get information, the way in which we communicate or we have contact with others. Long time ago, computers had a limited used, but now are a big source of help.

Something that I liked from this article was, the little history of how computers changes the process of language learning since 1960, giving to teachers tools to change the traditional way in which, students were sitting in a classroom copy from the board what teacher was writing. The article describes three stages of Computers and Language Learning (CALL). The first one, describe the start in which computers were seen as tutor, with which students could learn at their own pace, using translations test and grammatical explanations.

 The second one, describe a way in which students had interaction with others, to arrange words and texts to extend their knowledge. In the last one, was a process which integrate a group of full skills (listening, speaking, writing and reading) with the use of technology that was born from the thought of looking for a way in which students could learn at an authentic environment, using task-based and project-based.

On the other hand, something that calls me attention was the changes in the role of teachers due to the fact, that teachers aren’t the only help o service to acquire a language anymore, because of the influence that computers have been taking every day; a question that I still have is if it is possible that this profession disappear in the future? Because technology had given us many grammar and vocabulary drill programs available also, given to students, additional time to performer their language learning outside the classroom, those advantages could change the system of learning that we know. However, we cannot deny that technology has facilitated the language learning process, therefore, computers are the best teacher support today.