Week 5: Project-based learning, WebQuests, and rubrics

We are in hope of getting familiar to new sources of ideas and tools to use for helping us to teach more effectively because this week have learned 3 more things:

1. - Project-based learning (PBL), "students work in groups to solve challenging problems that are authentic, curriculum-based and often interdisciplinary" (Sheppard and Stoller, 1995). This lesson can make us know the ten steps of PBL by Sheppard and Stoller(1995). 

• Step 1: Students and instructor agree on the theme for the project.
• Step 2: Students and instructor determine the final outcome of the project.
• Step 3: Students and instructor structure the project.
• Step 4: Instructor prepares students for the demands of information gathering.
• Step 5: Students gather information.
• Step 6: Instructor prepares students to compile and analyze data.
• Step 7: Students compile and analyze information
• Step 8: Instructor prepares students for the language demands of the final activity.
• Step 9: Students present the final product.
• Step 10: Students evaluate the project.

      We could know the seven traits of every good project needs by  John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller ,2010,http://www.ascd.org/cache/publications/educational_leadership/sept10/vol68/num01/Seven_Essentials_for_Project-Based_Learning.aspx. We have  also learned Purposeful Language Assessment about types of assessments, testing formats, and testing procedures from John M.Norris, 2000,http://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/50_3_10_norris.pdf. Moreover, we have learnt about the Twenty Common Testing Mistakes for EFL Teachers to Avoid by Grant Henning, 1982, http://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/50_3_8_henning.pdf.

  2. WebQuests, we have learnt that making a WebQuet is really helpful for teacher and students to help their teaching and learning go smoothly. We can make a WebQuest by  Zunal.com or we can go to http://www.webquest.org/ to learn more about making it.
 
3. Rubrics, we have learnt how to design our own rubrics for our own class through website: http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php. Here we don't need to spend much time on it to design any kinds of rubrics we want.

Week 4: New things learned this week

This week I have learned many new things such as the reading and writing websites and technology enhanced lesson plan. 

I can know more resources to teach my students and my staffs. Those are http://www.rong-chang.com/tutor.htm which is helpful for students to learn and improve their writing by themselves, http://www.edutopia.org/ which is useful for teaching reading and writing from kindergarten up to K12, https://www.academia.edu/ is what we can register to learn from many researchers and we can upload ours to share,too,  https://www.edmodo.com/ is wher we can make as our own classroom template for teaching and learning. I like www.edmodo.com the most because it can help me to create my own classroom template for teaching my students. I will use it for my teaching.

Moreover, I can also learn a new idea related to writing lesson plan based on technology. It is great thing that we can do to make an ease for teaching career. We can even learn techniques and format of writing lesson plan using technology.

I found that this week lessons can make our teaching career go smoothly.

Week 3: Reflection for this week

This week is really nice to move to the next step of upgrading my career. I have learnt new things _ Skill-building Websites for Aural/oral Skill and Saving Bookmarks with Delicious.

Through the lesson of Skill-building Websites for Aural/oral Skill, I can know the importance of teaching pronunciation, word stress, sentence stress, intonation, and so on. The websites which interest me a lot are http://www.pronuncian.com/Podcast/Default.asp, http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/english.html, http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/31/the-best-websites-for-learning-english-pronunciation/, and http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/speaking/teaching-ideas. They are very helpful for teaching pronunciation.

Moreover, I can learn how to save bookmarks with Delicious which can help me to keep bookmarks for reading and searching references. By the way I can also learn some ideas shared by my course mates.

I hope I will use those websites and ideas shared by my course mates for my teaching and sharing to my staffs to upgrade their own knowledge and their students'learning.

Thank all friends and instructors for making it happen.

What I have learned from the course up to this week.

I have learned a lot from the course since I started since 6 October 2014. I could know how to create the blog for my learning course for the first week. Then this week I can know how to use ABCD method as ac indicator to set clear objectives; moreover, I can describe the three kinds of objectives ( cognitive, affective, and psycho-motor) and Bloom's Taxonomy. I expect that I can use this method to define objectives well enough to teach my students and to share to my staffs as well. I also learned about web engines and techniques of searching effectively. Before I knew that only Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and Investopedia are only the best engines to search, but now I can know more than these to help my teaching career move upwards. Partly, I have also learned how to use searching techniques so well. And I have learned some ideas from the course mates who are really kind in sharing their knowledge to make a better world.I really appreciate their kindness and instructor's ideas and help. I hope that the lessons for this week are very helpful for my improvement, my students, and my teaching staffs. It is really nice learning from you all.

Web Skills : First I would like to appreciate the US Embassy in...

Web Skills : First I would like to appreciate the US Embassy in...: First I would like to appreciate the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for offering me the E-teacher Scholarship to go through this course,...

First I would like to appreciate the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for offering me the E-teacher Scholarship to go through this course, then I would like to be grateful to Ms Courtney Cunningham, my instructor for the course for helping guide me to learn the course.

It is the first time for me to experience such a new course. Now I can say that I am in the middle of nowhere to start with and go to because everything is pretty new for me. I hope I will be able to go through the course until the end because I am not alone here. I hope all of my course mates and my instructor will guide me to learn more.

I have never learnt such a thing before, so it must be not easy for me to catch up the lesson. If you have any idea or advice to share, I warmly welcome for all the times.

I feel that this course is really great for my career and my students. I hope to get some comments from all course mates. I really like the course.