week 15: assessing language and technology

After reading this article, I concluded that I really do not like to use technology, and more specifically computers to take quizzes and evaluations. As students I have had the chance to take several quizzes online, and I still prefer the old methods because of many reasons. 

First, I do not like to trust my grade to a computer, I am aware that there are software’s that had been specially designed for those tasks, but still I believe they are not 100% reliable. Second, when students take online quizzes from their home, teachers cannot be sure that they are not cheating; students might feel tempted to open a new tab and look for the answer to a question they do not know. Finally, there are many things that could go wrong while taking an exam; the internet connection might fail, for example. Because of all this reasons I will always prefer paper and pencil when it comes to take quizzes.

I know that as teacher, I will have to accept that in a future all quizzes could be taken in computer. But, we have to remember that, like me, not all students could feel comfortable taking evaluations in computers, and is our responsibility look for solutions that can befits everybody.

week 14: participation with technology

The article was very helpful because as the name of it says, the author exposes the benefits of making students participate in classroom discussions. Something that I learned from this article is how participation can provide feedback to teachers. While listening to the way his or her students express their ideas, teacher can identify what areas of the language they need to emphasize. Furthermore, when students give us a wrong answer it is an indicator that students did not understand the topic of the class. In the same way, the second article provides two activities that promote participation, which are “Think Pair-Shares” and “Circle Chats”. What I like the most from this article is the facts that author explain in clear way the steps of these activities, something that results very helpful at the time to do these activities with students.

Moreover, in our weekly task this week we had the chance to experience participation through technology by providing our own ideas about the previously mentioned articles in a website called Nice net. It was very easy to share my thoughts here. Thanks to this task I learned that taking an online course does not mean that you will not have the chance to participate actively.

 

week 12: learning languages project

 RATED 3


After reading this week's articles "Benefits of  Project Work in Foreign Language Classrooms" by Bülent Alan and Fredricka L. Stoller and "Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning " by John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller, I learned how we can motivate our students to learn a second language through projects.

Both articles are very similar, they describe the steps that students must follow to create a project, and they provide examples of how project based learning has helped students to get very good results while learning a language.

 

As a future teacher, definitely I will use projects to promote the work as a team, in that way, students would feel comfortable to face their challenges by helping their classmates and themselves to understand their target language.

 

week 11: Mobile phones

 rated: 5

The article required for this week: Twenty Ideas for Using Mobile Phones in the Language Classroom by Hayo Reinders, give us some advices to use mobile phones in a second language classroom. There are different ways to use our mobile phone as a useful tool to made activities with our students. Cellphones today are indispensable and very popular of course, therefore, is a good idea to use them not only to communicate, have fun through social networks, but they have become a took for the development of our studies because the offer options, for example, exchange ideas and work together using the chat, record audios,videos, download and store information, among other. As we know, these days mobile phones are used everywhere by everyone, and students are not the exception. They ae constantly sending text messages outside the classroom, taking pictures, etc. as teachers; we have to take advantages of these activities.

 In conclusion, mobile phones give us a lot of tools to use with our students in classes and is our responsability as teachers be actualized with the future applications .

week 10: Collaborates Skills

I really enjoyed this article and I had learnt a lot. The article for this week was “Online Collaborative Writing Using Wikis” by Paul Sze. What is a wiki?  A wiki is an online platform in which anyone can add information and edit information that has been previously added by others. The author provides a good description of the task that he assigned to the class, the manner that they worked in it and finally, of the results obtained. The author also provides some other examples in which collaborative writing can be applied using wikis. Something that really like from the article was that the teachers provides a clearly description of the task, the steps of the creative process, the prompts and the responses of the students to a challenging task, also I learned that students can feel satisfied with a result as a wiki, in which not only their classmates and teachers, but also their friends, relatives, and literally anybody can appreciate their final work.

As a conclusion, I really love this reading because it shows new techniques to write and collaborates skills the articles were interesting and that the habit of writing a blog has helped you improve this skill.

week 8:technology to enhance Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary

The articles required for this week, gave us an important point of view about vocabulary and the use online dictionaries in a foreign language, also Call and technological resources can help learners to improve their vocabulary.

The first article, “Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension (TESL-TEFL)” Gave possibilities with help of technology to enhance vocabulary. The author states some examples of studies that have been part of the process of stimulate vocabulary and reading, and its results, also learning vocabulary is an important aspect of acquisition and academic achievement and it is vital to reading comprehension. The learning process helps students to improve their goals as learners.

The second article “Online English-English Learner Dictionaries Boost Word Learning”.  Talked about the use of online dictionaries, also we as teachers should teach about the several online dictionaries especially designed for learners. I did not know about the many options that learners have to clarify doubts or know about different words, also the author provides examples of type of dictionaries, and everyone can access to them.

In conclusion, there are technological tools that  help learners to improve their knowledge of the language, and as teachers is our responsibility involve and help students with technology.