How Much We Have Built Our Skills on Interactive Web

Week 10 (Final)

I am not that ready to end this journey. I always feel that I could not cover all subjects in just 10 weeks. But I know that every beginning will have an ending and this class is not an exception. In this short  period of time I should convince many people including myself that I can accomplish this in my own way.

In a learning process, it is very normal to have stages to prove that we have mastered the skills that we learned successfully and the most common one is by demonstrating what we have understood in such a form that other people can obviously see. In this interactive class we learned many technological tools that can be used in teaching English effectively and efficiently. We always started the week with some reading materials, websites and learned the theory on how to cooperate them for our class. The justification of the skills' mastery would very much rely on our products that we can produce based on the theory. As everyone did, I started it from my products in week 1 and so on.

After logging into the Nicenet we began to make a learning community and then followed by another task for week 1: create a blog
             http://Imas-interactive.blogspot.com
week 2: registering in course wiki , creating an ABCD objective and choosing search engines
week 3: Using Delicious.com and choosing an oral/aural activities
             http://www.delicious.com/gek_3mas
             http://www.esl-lab.com
week 4: choosing Reading and writing task
             http://www.educationalworld.com/a lesson/archives/writing bugs.html
week 5: making a rubric and webquest
             http://rubistar.4teacher.org/index.php?screen=Showrubric&rubric_id=2152912
             http://www.zunal.com/task.php?w=134521
week 6: making a power point presentation
             My Tropical Fruit ppt.
week 7: making one computer lesson
             Prefix ppt.
week8: create a class site, template for a handout or exercise and a course management system as ANVILL
week 9: Learning style quiz, Multiple intelligence and Final report
week10: Taking LoTi Digital Age Survey resulting a proffesional Development Priority.

There are 20 friends in this winter class: Natasa, Luisa, Richard, The, Ky, Nizara, Shaila, Marina, Orquidia, Yohimar, Yuliya, Vita, Sinikka, Helen, Sagun, Roxana, Ariel, Nabila, and Vijay have also done and proved their capabilities in this class. They are great! I believe they have worked very hard to reach this stage. Who behind our success? Therefore, it is not too much if I would show you the video of our kind and creative tutor Robert in my blog. I am sorry to everyone If I made mistakes and also for including this video without Robert's permission.

Thank you so much Robert and all of my lovely friends.
Last but not least, I would like to pass my gratitude to US Embassy in Jakarta Indonesia, AEI Oregon University, my Language Center here at ITS in Surabaya, my colleagues at the office and  my family.

I hate saying Good Bye and I would prefer to say See You  Again Soon!

Imas

Technology for Multiple Intelligences

Week 9

I think it is a smart idea to have this subject discussed in this web class. From the first task to many tasks week after week, we never considered about multiple intelligences and learning styles. We learned a lot of technological applications that can be used in the class to enhance students' English competence and while we created lesson plans, power point slides, webquests and so on our concern was normally managed based on the age, level of competence, gender and their field studies. But after reading this week materials, I felt like I was woken up by the need to know the students' intelligence so we can choose more appropriate technology to be used to a particular student in order to maximize the learning output.

I took a step to test myself first with the learning styles survey that was introduced by the class and I didn't stop there. I also asked my students to test themselves using the same survey and I asked them to discuss it in the nicenet threads. I hope the information from student will help me to measure the need of my students which was always added by our class resources where we could select some activities that are suitable for a certain types in 'Teacher tap'. In there we can easily find a list of suitable activities for a certain type. I start to realized how important for us to treat our students fairly because they are not the same. They have their own preference and tendency in learning style because of different intelligences.

When we had the above lesson we had to revise our draft based on our peer evaluators too, so my best gratitude for my peer Helen and Sagun for their beneficial suggestions so that my final report can corrected and submitted. Now I am so curious to wait for the result from our tutor.

The last task that we have to do is the survey about the course. I didn't wait till 16 March to complete it so I sent it yesterday. It didn't take too long to answer (not 20 minutes as stated on the instruction), as I am satisfied with everything that I have been learning and doing in the pass 9 week with this class. What we learned here is not merely a blind technology but a very sensible teaching using technology as the aids.

I feel so lucky,
Imas

Integrating Traditional Class with Technology

Week 8

We were exposed to several teacher resources on the course websites which can help the educators to prepare their class in a more efficient and effective ways.Imagine when we have to prepare a certain test for our class or even in a larger scope we were asked to design the the test for the entire students, we must have thought that there will be a big burden coming to our life, because we have to set different format for the diverse students. But now, with a single click to a website like www.easytestmaker.com the teacher will be assisted to create an English test in a shorter time. I have tried making an achievement test for my elementary class cause this can be used as a pilot study for my Language Center. It was so simple, as I just need to be the member of the site and then follow the instruction. There are still many other resources that can be used by teachers so go and explore more and more.

The problem does not appear merely on the lack provision of the teachers' resources but also on how to operate the technology which is more into the willingness of the whole system in that education institution to support this new approach of teaching.The best way to integrate  the traditional class into a technological class is by motivating the students gradually until they are ready for it. And luckily, some of my students are willing to involve in my gradual plan which was begun simultaneously with my research project. This week I can convinced five of them for me to set a discussion class in nicenet. I have informed them what I usually do in this thread and as a teacher I started to enjoy my role in this activities. I am sure that my students can utilize the facilities even though they were not in the class.

Another fresh and new technology was introduced by Oregon University -Yamada Language Center which is call ANVILL. I need several days to understand all the new term because it  is I reckon to be an advanced method to interact with your students. I am not that clear here which can be proved by my failure to join the webnar offered by Mr Jeff Magoto, who is the expert of it and becoming a guest tutor in this week threads. I still hope that next time I will have the opportunity and can join the Webnar as I am now the member of ANVILL.

Well learning how to integrate the traditional class with the sound of technology requires a strong intention by any ones in the teaching and learning process but of course sufficient knowledge from the teacher resource websites will enhance us too. Time constraint is always appointed as the culprit but you manage our duty based on priority scale we can overcome the obstacles, like when we can accomplished the draft project to be submitted last Wednesday with the other tasks on week 8.

Remember our final report to be submitted on 9th March 2012 so GOOD LUCK!

Imas

A Path to Maturity

WEEK 7

Learner autonomy, one-computer classroom and creating a computer lab/learning center are the main subject discussed in the week 7. Based on Samuel P-H Sheu article we learned that in learning autonomy of learner or teacher, they depends more on teaching system as a whole rather than on individual teaching situation in terms of readiness and practicability. As a teacher I fully agree that teaching practices should be flexible as it has been said, therefore learning autonomy is practicable and achievable. That is why in my project I try to give more freedom to the students to explore the provided module to be more acceptable and thinkable by the students so they know what to be learned and what is the target of their learning process. Policy can always be there in every institution but it is the responsibility of the teacher to find loopholes where there is a possibility for students to participate in the learning process.

One of the ways that teacher chooses a learner autonomy teaching would be based on the consideration of different aspects. It is not merely based on the curriculum or syllabus of the school but it can be decided by looking at the facilities of the institution. As we deal with web interactive teaching, teacher will probably teach the class using one-computer in the classroom if there is no class providing one computer for every student. However, the policy from the school which has no facility to provide one computer for every students will be in line with its facility. The policy maker even forces the teacher to follow the traditional module strictly. As an English teacher in an almost similar condition like above, I sometimes take this new approach to the classroom, I found that the students enjoy the class more but for me as a teacher, I need to spare my own time to prepare the tools such as hardware, software, classroom management, and perhaps internet connection by myself. This condition will demotivate the teacher.

In order to support the insufficient computer classroom, some institutions provide a computer lab or a learning center. Certain factors that affect its design based on Glori Chika article are: the type of users, the goals of the users, the space available, internet accessibility, money available, training and technical supports. In our Center we have a what so-called 'Self Access Room' which has a function as a multimedia learning center where there are also two language facilitators who will guide individual students development. Some students who have different learning style will feel more comfortable to come to this room as they like to be taught individually compared to thrive in a language classroom with more than 10 students. So, the facilitators or the teachers in this room should be able to provide a 'learn to learn independently' method which need to be monitored and managed accordingly.

All of the points above require high responsibility from both teacher and students. Teachers need to be mature enough to let their students to involve in the arrangement of the class because what is important in the learning process is the achievement of the class goal. While the students will gradually learn from the maturity of their teachers on how to reach their goals together. So, be mature scholars!

Remember your Final Project draft on Wednesday!

Imas

Learning from all

Week 6

It is a crucial week really when we have to deal with two different tasks simultaneously. Firstly we must focus on the weekly tasks and assignments such as: nicenet thread, making an interactive power point, reading related articles and posting as usual on this blog. The second area to deal with is our action research project, which generally speaking hasn't been turning out as we expected and not to mention our routines.

However we could accomplish the second area successfully if we focus from the first one, because there are so much background knowledge that we can learn from it which then ease our phases toward the project. All the reading materials have opened our eyes of how important enhancing the students in the learning process which means teachers should make engagement with he students so that the learning objective can be achieved. This can be done by making an interactive Power Point presentation for the class. From the informed websites also we can learn how to create this media of teaching. One new presentation tool that I learned from this class and really make "a wow factor" is Prezi. Some of us have managed to create Prezi for their teaching and I will do that soon.

Besides learning from provided modules and websites I think the thread is the place where all of the participants of this class have got justification over their understanding while they read the articles and websites alone. I sometimes find myself unsure about my understanding of the materials but when we discuss it together on the threads with colleagues and  tutors we can be more confident to counter the uncertainty. This week we don't only have Robert as a tutor but we also have Nicole who always give us clear and deep explanations.  I especially remember when she responded my post on team learning which reminds me of the unthinkable aspects on managing  groups in team learning for large or small classes. Nizara came at the end over this subject too.

Nizara is not the only participant this week that I justified myself from but also from the others, which might not be mentioned one by one. I learned from them on how to enhance my students by Virtual class, Inverted classroom, the useful task such as, think pair and share;one minute write; question of the day and I even know how to differentiate between activities that best applied for basic, intermediate and advanced classes. Actually enhancing the students can not be assumed that the smaller the class the easier will be, because it depends on how you create a dynamic class by involving your students more. Teacher could avoid their students from faded out by getting technological tools in their teaching activities.

Talking about technology, we had a task this week to create an interactive power point which I did. My tropical fruit power point was made under a supervision of many materials given in this class, suggested websites and of course from the self created Power Points by all participants of this class that has been attached on the wiki page. My slides has a very simple approach compared to the others as it is designed for beginners. I would be nice that we can adopt all those creations for my teaching.

By the way,  I would say that I learned from all of you my friends, all the materials and definitely from both of the tutors.

Good night
Imas

My Classroom Project

 

This is the situation of my classroom project. There are many students there but not all of them are willing to do the task. They were happy to be in the class, but some of them don't want to write the writing assignment.

I will write the full report in my final report.

Thanks for visiting!

Imas

PBL can motivate the students and teacher

WEEK 5

We are at the end of week 5. On this summary of my learning process, I feel that I'm still like a baby who needs to learn a lot on many new things, easily gets curious and moves very slow. But thanks God, for sending this class a very patient tutor like Robert and this week we also have Courtney who has been joining our discussion at nicenet thread  as she an expert on Project Based Learning (PBL) topics.

Discussing PBL has risen extended understanding as we answered questions that I considered fundamental for this teaching and learning method. The one that I chose was the first question: How can PBL be used to help motivate students more? I answered this question based on the provided articles the journal of by Susan Gaer  "Turning from traditional methods to project based instruction" . She  found a different types of learning where the new method can help student to develop the language skills while conducting a project. This new method was read from Elsa Auerbach's book which is called Project-based curriculum or learning (PBL). I also learned the idea of PBL from had been outlined by McGrath, 2003 that the method will allow the students to solve challenging problems that are authentic, curriculum-based and interdisciplinary. Therefore, the students with different learning style will get the opportunity to display their acquired knowledge. As I stated on my thread that it is like flying a kite when the player sometimes needs to loose the thread to let the kite goes higher, but then the player will pull it down when there some dangerous conditions occurred. So it is very much like teacher and their students. Freedom can also be a kind of motivation.

Even though we give more freedom to the learners but the teacher still need to assess their students, so I learned about checklist or rubric required to assess my student achievement. The good thing about technology, we can easily create a rubric for our project by just registering to Rubric creators websites which I have chosen www.rubistar.org. It was not that hard to create one when you follow the instruction correctly.  We can involve the students to decide the dimension and the quality measured hence they can understand the learning target. when they are motivated they will learn even more serious.

Beside creating my own rubric this week, we also learn how to create a webquest. I reckon, the task as a time consuming one. If we want to make a creative webquest draft I think we have to find the attached pictures to support our steps. It is really interesting though. I made one for kids who wants to learn English through a birthday song. I hope you have time to visit it. The URL can be seen on Robert,s wiki page.



What I really like is Dr. James E. Alatis' quotation: "Good teaching happens when competent teachers with non-discouraging personalities use non-defensive approaches to language teaching and learning and cherish their students." In this situation like in PBL method, both teacher and student are motivated.


See you in week 6
Imas

This is what I am doing now!

Teaching Reading and Writing with Internet

WEEK 4

For one week we have channelled  our energy for studying adequate materials, journals, websites about teaching reading and writing using Internet as the tools. The participants of this class also presented the summary of research on the area including some  different genre of writing resources. This reminded me not only on the extended function of technology but also the essence of basic and traditional  writing knowledge.

Reading is not less important than writing, as we know that all of the menus, dialog boxes, symbols and instructions on most of computer system are written or expressed  in English. How we can deny the importance of this skill in taking a big step toward the IT teaching domain. Unconsciously reading technique  is always used in order to pursue this task. The additional lesson that we have is from the two journals that we read, those are the use of e-book  on three extensive Reading activities  for ESL/EFL by Mei-Ya  Liang which gave me a clear idea of how to utilize an e-book site for this task. It is even clearer with the supply of the evaluation rubric for students’ final report. I will apply this to my class where there is a chance.  Another reading journal describes  the correlation between the role  of vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension that can be enhanced by the help of technology.

So far we have done everything almost successfully. I underlined  the word ‘almost’ as I feel that I need to up grade myself. At anytime Robert sends  new materials  for us to study or task to do, there are a lot of things that I don’t know, I thought of myself as a disable teacher. But, I also use the word successful, because of the tutor everlasting  support and surely because of all lovely and kind participants of this class who are always ready to show me the right  track. By all the motivation I feel close to success.

Good and Bad

What Should I Do?

This is the fifth day of week 4, Friday 3 February 2012
I am lost.
I usually work, teach and do on-line tasks simultaneously here at the office.
Since two days ago everything has seemed to be difficult. Electricity black out and Internet system was shut down frequently in this Institution. Sometimes is ON and and then suddenly OFF.
I typed and saved the assignment and keep on sending it. Yes one was sent then the internet service gone again.

This morning, everything seems OK, but now only this 'blog page' can be operated. How can I live with it? I would say that maybe this is the bad side of technology besides its many good sides.

Lift up your spirit
Imas

Week 3

BOOKMARK YOUR FAVOURITE MATERIALS

On Monday I started to check the work assignment on building Teacher's Skill through the interactive web page. We were asked to study and practice four big sections along this week.

I begin to work at discussion board in our Nicenet running through del.ic.ious concept which I finally sign in into the web and making my own book marking page. It is useful in helping me to collect some websites that I frequently need for preparing resources before teaching. Even though I am now familiar with this kind of service, I am still eager to learn many aspects from the system gradually. Reading materials on how to use social book marking gave us clear idea about using del.ic.ious as one of the five top social book marking besides Furl, Notvous, Ma.gnolia, and Bluedot based on http://www.pandia.com/sew/327-social-bookmarking.html.

On the next topic on Aural / oral skill building I read all of the materials, but I focus on Lindsay Miller article on Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials. It is interesting as I face similar problems to what being explained such as listening has been less regulated to secondary position in the English Language Teaching classroom even though it is the language skill most often used in every day life, as said by Burely-Allen (1995).

Because of the class objective, since week 2 we have been discussing the final report project that should be accomplished by the end of this course. In this week we look closely to eight samples of final report from previous term students in how to write our final report. As for this discussion I chose to concentrate on Aleyda Linares (National Pedagogical University - Honduras) final project report. Compared to seven other authors this report is shorter than the others but still have chronological order in term of each content.

Generally speaking, this week is really full of learning process to build skillful and resourceful English Teacher in the web interactive learning era. I am curious to what happen next week?

Week 2

Week 2

The first week has ended on the 15 January 2012. It was great to know from Robert that we can use the so called Jupiter Grade to see our accomplishment of our very beginning stage of this online tasks. Once I made silly mistake on this Jupiter, so Robert should reset my account. But now, I can access this program again.

Motivated by the first result, I became more confident and ready to enter the second week tasks.On the nicenet we found that there were three  topics of discussion that we will have talked about.The topic on Search engine has opened my eyes to a massive range of search engines that we can operate beside google and yahoo. Robert serve us with www.noodletools.com where there are selection of comprehensive sites which practically different from google as it is classified into its own group of interest. I also learned from all the participants because they also introduce many other search engines, some that I browse are really good and recommended.I spread this information to all of my teachers mates or students at the Language Center, and I got extremely positive response from them.

Another topic for discussion this week is ABCD Objective which has given me a new experience in how we can create an effective classroom objective. A stands for Audience, B stands for behavior, C stands for Condition and D stands for Degree. It's not easy to create one as every component should complement each other. The best thing about making this objective is that the comments given by some member of the  class which can give us clue on how to find the weakness on that objective for possible revision. I assumed that the final test for an objective is with the students in the aimed class, if they understand and aware of the steps we ask them to do, means it quite reliable for our teaching and learning process.

As we  all know that the last topic of discussion for this week is our project plan. At our consent we know that starting from this week, we have to make a plan of our project, all the draft of the learners descriptions, the classroom setting, the course goal and students need should be considered. The idea here I believe that we prepare every single detail earlier so when we trap with  certain circumstances, we can get help from other member of this class to share or problem. I believe when we work seriously, there must be way out there waiting for us. The template of the project fortunately has been outline on page Building Teaching Skill Project Planning guide complete with project checklist and project plan rubric.

I know that I can not be perfect in presenting my opinions and honestly I perhaps don,t read all material completely as I might missed some of the pages from overlapped or piled material but I feel like learning thousands of new useful stuff here with all of you.

See you next time
Imas

The First Week Reflection

The letter regarding Class Opening information of the Interactive Web online course Winter 2012  was received on Sunday, January 8, 2012 at 4.30 in the morning, Indonesian time from the UO AEI (University of Oregon - Linguistic Department American English Institute).This online course has been rewarded by RELO (Regional English Language Office) under the American Embassy in the country. I am so grateful for this acceptance from this university so there will be wide opened opportunity for me and English teachers around the globe who have been previously registered  to build their skill through the Interactive Web. On top of that the improvement in English teaching approach is going to be relatively equal in almost all countries.
 
I considered that from Monday until the end of this week as a wake-up call, which gives some self evaluations and self-assessments to what have been done in my class. I also learned a lot from the tutor who has explained every problem that the students face in a supporting and respectful way so that participants are somehow motivated to study on their own phase. The reading resources provided by UO AEI during this orientation week ease the process in comprehending a lot of tasks which actually stated clearly in ample explanations. At the time, we did not understand even a basic term like Blog, the UO provided  us with Word document  (rules and rubrics), PDF files on know how and websites of practical examples to solve our curiosity.The communication between tutor to participants and participant to participant are accommodated by nicenet where the topic of discussions has been assigned prior to the conferencing session.


The awareness of using tools such as Nicenet, Wiki page and Blog like this one believed to be a good initial route toward a well developed online course. It is surprising that we could make comments to a real stranger a week ago as easy as giving comments to our classmate. That is unconsciously said on the second point of the ground rules for our discussion that  everyone should feel safe here because we respect each other.

The first week assignment has also made it possible for browsing and visiting some  inspiring sites to facilitate English teachers in delivering their material to student in a better interaction. Now, many ideas come around from the vast provision of the English resources easily accessed by English teachers including the one in the remote areas. Colorful pictures, videos, sounds have given Web novice teachers a space to imagine how a modern virtual classroom teaching in front of them.

 I have expectation that I will be able to achieve my objective which is relatively in line with the learning goal of this program. I rest my mind with my anonymous quote as "Hope make things work and Love make things beautiful".

I look forward to welcoming you and your comments soon.

Hello World!!!

I am here now.
If you want to visit my blog, I would be more than happy to welcome you!