Week 5!

Week 5 can really be rated with 5 stars! I liked the week tasks. As Donna promised I got magic tool this week, and more than one!

I have read articles on Alternative Assessment, types of rubrics. I liked the definition that alternative assessment focuses on students' strengths not weaknesses. I liked this way of looking at it. However I have never thought that rubrics are form of alternative assessment. They are for me quite traditional ones. Maybe the idea of self-assessment and peer-assessment can be called Alternative assessment, but if the rubrics are used by a teacher, this is quite traditional one for me.

Rubistar is an excellent tool! The teachers' life can be so much easier with this tool! Creating rubrics takes minutes.

I have also found out that Webquests can be a project! I have always thought of the webquests as the webseacrh to find answers to questions. But have never stretched it further, as asking students to summarise the info and create a booklet, or a poster etc. Unfortunately I didn't have time to create my own Webquest, but I have enjoyed looking at various ready-made ones on the Internet and the ones made by my colleagues on the course.

The last task was the project task, we are pushed forward and forward in planning our project. I hope I will manage with this, so far I have lots of questions in mind.

Nodira

Week 4 Lesson plan with technology

Uh, I hope I have survived this week as well.  It is getting harder and harder to catch up with the tasks. As I was struggling with my internet, which was just cut off for 4 days, I had to write up everything offline and then post it when I will be online. 

Ok, but I love the course and the tasks. I really liked the articles and the websites on integrating vocabulary, reading and writing. I have saved several links in my Delicious page. 

Inspired by an idea from the article I have designed a lesson plan. I don’t have a chance to teach it now, but I will forward this to my colleague and I hope she will try it out. 

I liked that this week we were asked to formulate the problem that we want to solve through the project task. I have gone back to what I have written and discovered I have already did it. But this time I think I felt more confident expressing this concern. 

Though I liked all the tasks of the week, I felt a bit disappointed not to have any technology task this week. I think I got used to that Donna is showing us some magic tools every week, so I was expecting a new one! I hope she will continue surprising me in the coming weeks! 

Nodira 

Week 3 Delicious!

Well, this week was a bit challenging as I think there were more readings, and to make my life even more difficult my internet was and still is slow.

This week I started feeling Oh my God I was so web illiterate, I thought I knew Internet possibilities and regretted that I haven't chosen 0 for all the answers in the survey which Donna gave us at the beginning of the course.

So this week I have learnt about Delicious! I have created my own, it is www.delicious.com/nodira How I have lived without it! It is great! I used to usehttp://www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/bitstream/10077/2850/1/bus%C3%A0.pdf  the Favorites tool in my Internet Explorer, but when I change the laptops I keep losing the links.

Then I have learnt about PRAAT from the article on Teaching pronunciation  It took a lot of time to figure out how it works, but I finally succeded in recording my voice, then viewing its spectogram. It is fun, it looks like the music editors I think they have.

Then I have read the project report by Aleyda Linares from Universidad Pedagogica Nacional Francisco Morazan of Tegucigalpa, Honduras 
Now I have an idea what should the project report be like, it is not that difficult as I have thought. It is well written and easy to follow. She has created a blog for her class on teaching grammar
https://alegrammarwork.wordpress.com/
I liked the idea of a class blog, I think first I learnt about a class blog from Stasya from our course. It contains lots of resources on teaching grammar.

Well, I have learnt a lot and am happy that I succeeding. We are using Jupiter for accessing our grades, it is a great tool! I have 100% for all the tasks. But last days I started thinking does Donna assess the quality of comments, posts or just gives percentage to the quantity?
At the beginning we were sent the rubrics for assessing the comments, the grades were excellent, good, poor as far as I remember. Is Donna using these rubrics to assess the comments?

That intrests me because I am thinking how I will assess my students, will I count as a completed task if someone just posts one or two sentences.

Nodira

Week 2 Search tools and ABCD objectives

This week was even more interesting than Week 1. I have learnt a lot.
Before starting the programme when I saw search tools and writing objectives in the course programme, I thought what I can learn, I know about these.
But all was totally new to me.

I have never thought that there are so many search tools.
I liked DOAJ tool and Google Scholar in particular. I am sure I will be using them a lot.

Then it was ABCD objective, it is the first time when I saw them. It took some time for me to understand how it works and having read other participants' posts, I felt relieved and came up with my own. The difference is that I am focusing on teacher training course, not an English language class. I hope it is still o.k. But I need to check with Donna to be on the safe side.

I found the model very useful as it disciplines the teacher. I will share the model with other teachers as well for sure in the teacher training courses.

There is still one question that is in my mind: it concerns the formulation of the mastery degree in the ABCD model in terms of percentages (e.g.80%, 95%). I thought how come one teacher can predict the degree in terms of percentages, we are teaching human beings, not machines. This is still a mystery for me. Can anyone explain this to me or give me link where I can read more.

Nodira