I felt that every moments that we had in the short course will gradually disappearing as it gets to the end. I could not phrase anything to illustrate how I will miss the great discussions that we had for the last 10 weeks in nicenet. I have undoubtedly master a great number of new knowledge from the interactions in the thread and the excellent lessons that Robert organized. This is my most valuable experience in learning integrating web-technology in language learning.
The week's discussion is very much discussing about the class participants reflection on their most relevant discussion in the course that they will use in their real language class and how they grade the level of technology utilization in their class based on the LoTi taxonomy of teaching innovation. However, in my opinion, the LoTi levels of innovative teaching is somehow does not clearly distinguishable. One might found that the criteria are described in more than one levels. Nevertheless, having the tiers could help a teacher of knowing what is the expansion of certain technology utilization in their class.
Finally, this will be my last reflection for the course, and I hope I can keep posting to this blog for many other reflection of similar topic.
Thank you Robert and all of the class participants,
I wish great success for everybody. May God bless you all.
Sincerely,
Rahmat
Integrating Technologies into Language Learning Curriculum
Friday, December 10, 2010
Week 9 - Reflection
I am facing students having similar sytle of learning. My students are mostly having side jobs and having very limited time to study apart from classroom activities. Access to the library is also very limited. The only way to make students to find resources and learn is by directing or assigning them to do internet research. Therefore, project based learning is one of the potential approach to engage my student to devote to learn after the class. In addition to that, project based learning could enable the students to explore more about the discussed topics.
The discussion that we had for week 9 give a very good portrayal of the various learning style that each of us see from our students. Teacher should master the idea of describing the learning style of their students before they perform their role in designing lessons for their students. Many of my classmates give very detail descriptions of their students' learning style and how they conduct their teaching based on them that I can later use in the future.
Rahmat
The discussion that we had for week 9 give a very good portrayal of the various learning style that each of us see from our students. Teacher should master the idea of describing the learning style of their students before they perform their role in designing lessons for their students. Many of my classmates give very detail descriptions of their students' learning style and how they conduct their teaching based on them that I can later use in the future.
Rahmat
Monday, November 29, 2010
Week 8 - Reflection
Hi all,
This is my another late reflection post. I'm struggling to get things done in time, but I unfortunately can't. My apartment Internet connection has been very sluggishly slow and eventually off for repair during the weekend and has just got fixed this morning.
This week's discussion was very interesting as Jeff Magoto introduces us ANVILL, the advance Course Management system that incorporate audio-video features that can be accessed freely. I can say that the website is very sophisticated as I managed to wander around the site and see the potential of how this can be effectively used for my context of language class. The idea of providing my students with materials and forums that could enable them to self-learn is among my primary aims. I would like to have a portal site that could give various links and service such as forums that enable students to have a synchronous conference with the teacher.
My only difficulty of getting this to work is the internet connection that are relatively slow in terms of very low bandwidth allocated for transferring data could be the greatest constraints to work with audio video. Teacher must understand the context of technology condition and availability to serve the class with this idea.
Comments are very welcome
Rahmat
This is my another late reflection post. I'm struggling to get things done in time, but I unfortunately can't. My apartment Internet connection has been very sluggishly slow and eventually off for repair during the weekend and has just got fixed this morning.
This week's discussion was very interesting as Jeff Magoto introduces us ANVILL, the advance Course Management system that incorporate audio-video features that can be accessed freely. I can say that the website is very sophisticated as I managed to wander around the site and see the potential of how this can be effectively used for my context of language class. The idea of providing my students with materials and forums that could enable them to self-learn is among my primary aims. I would like to have a portal site that could give various links and service such as forums that enable students to have a synchronous conference with the teacher.
My only difficulty of getting this to work is the internet connection that are relatively slow in terms of very low bandwidth allocated for transferring data could be the greatest constraints to work with audio video. Teacher must understand the context of technology condition and availability to serve the class with this idea.
Comments are very welcome
Rahmat
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Week 7 - Reflection
Hi readers,
I am terribly sorry for not posting this reflection on time. I was very much occupied by many other academic urgent matters that I need to deal in the previous week. I managed to have a good look out for things that grab my attention from the previous week discussion. The most interesting point discussed in the class last week was regarding to make the best out of having minimum facility for classroom lesson. I picked out that many of my classmates do not have sufficient facility as to start a comprehensive technology integrated lesson. Nevertheless, that would not really be and end of trying to make the best aout of it. Perhaps, having as minimum as having ONLY one single laptop to create a lesson would really be a great issue if one is having more than average small-class number of students.
What to do with one laptop?
Here I would like to share some options for solution that you would need to try to understand as the basis of having only one laptop for a class. Having a single laptop for a number of students, you would likely have a very limited way to share the screen of your laptop if you don't have a big screen as of having a digital projector to project the display on the wall. Perhaps, if this is the situation you might need to choose to have as big laptop screen for you to get it best for the show. Considering laptop price that doubles if it gets bigger thatn 15.4', it seems that that size is the most affordable price for the biggest screen you could get. The idea is that you might have more students to have visible view angle at a close range. Remember that screen of that size will be hard to view in certain close distance.
The next thing you would need to have is to get a wireless mouse/trackballs that would make the teacher to control the input from a possible distance without blocking the sight of your students. A wireless keyboard would also great to use, which by most brands, it comes in a package of wireless mouse and keyboard. To have interactive class, where you need to have your students to work on certain inputs to the computer you are having, you will ease the students just by sitting at their position and move the input device around, without bothering them to rearrange the position.
Next will be about the sound. Indeed, sound coming out from the laptop speakers are relatively small. In addition to that, it would also be heard a bit treble-ish. It is not very good for listening comprehension lesson that you are presenting. Perhaps, as little as a few funds out from your pocket you can purchase a passive speaker with a small amplifier that would really boost the volume for the students to hear it clearly. Besides, it would also tweak the treble to a warmer sound that would help students to distinguish different voices, tone, pitch and various background sounds, in case you are going to deliver a audio clip of a average quality audio recording.
As for the materials, I would recommend to find lots of video and audio streamings on the net that can be downloaded freely, which of course with a little trick that I will write on another post. Some interactive education flash games are also available on the internet be downloaded and played offline. I can say that there are lots of free good stuff that you can use for your lesson with that specification of facility that you have. Also, I can say that to find these materials is relatively easy as we are mostly already familiar with web searching and finding great sites that offers free downloadable items. The hard part will be combining these materials and construct them into a lesson package. Creativity, patience and willingness are the most important quality for the teacher to be able to run the lesson successfully and interestingly. Often teachers with abundant of fancy facilities could not develop any, thus I think no matter of how low is the specification, the super teacher knows how to make it great--of course, with the lessons and all the great experiences that we all have been learning together in here, it will be a great challenge full of excitement.
Have a good day readers,
Best regards,
Rahmat
I am terribly sorry for not posting this reflection on time. I was very much occupied by many other academic urgent matters that I need to deal in the previous week. I managed to have a good look out for things that grab my attention from the previous week discussion. The most interesting point discussed in the class last week was regarding to make the best out of having minimum facility for classroom lesson. I picked out that many of my classmates do not have sufficient facility as to start a comprehensive technology integrated lesson. Nevertheless, that would not really be and end of trying to make the best aout of it. Perhaps, having as minimum as having ONLY one single laptop to create a lesson would really be a great issue if one is having more than average small-class number of students.
What to do with one laptop?
Here I would like to share some options for solution that you would need to try to understand as the basis of having only one laptop for a class. Having a single laptop for a number of students, you would likely have a very limited way to share the screen of your laptop if you don't have a big screen as of having a digital projector to project the display on the wall. Perhaps, if this is the situation you might need to choose to have as big laptop screen for you to get it best for the show. Considering laptop price that doubles if it gets bigger thatn 15.4', it seems that that size is the most affordable price for the biggest screen you could get. The idea is that you might have more students to have visible view angle at a close range. Remember that screen of that size will be hard to view in certain close distance.
The next thing you would need to have is to get a wireless mouse/trackballs that would make the teacher to control the input from a possible distance without blocking the sight of your students. A wireless keyboard would also great to use, which by most brands, it comes in a package of wireless mouse and keyboard. To have interactive class, where you need to have your students to work on certain inputs to the computer you are having, you will ease the students just by sitting at their position and move the input device around, without bothering them to rearrange the position.
Next will be about the sound. Indeed, sound coming out from the laptop speakers are relatively small. In addition to that, it would also be heard a bit treble-ish. It is not very good for listening comprehension lesson that you are presenting. Perhaps, as little as a few funds out from your pocket you can purchase a passive speaker with a small amplifier that would really boost the volume for the students to hear it clearly. Besides, it would also tweak the treble to a warmer sound that would help students to distinguish different voices, tone, pitch and various background sounds, in case you are going to deliver a audio clip of a average quality audio recording.
As for the materials, I would recommend to find lots of video and audio streamings on the net that can be downloaded freely, which of course with a little trick that I will write on another post. Some interactive education flash games are also available on the internet be downloaded and played offline. I can say that there are lots of free good stuff that you can use for your lesson with that specification of facility that you have. Also, I can say that to find these materials is relatively easy as we are mostly already familiar with web searching and finding great sites that offers free downloadable items. The hard part will be combining these materials and construct them into a lesson package. Creativity, patience and willingness are the most important quality for the teacher to be able to run the lesson successfully and interestingly. Often teachers with abundant of fancy facilities could not develop any, thus I think no matter of how low is the specification, the super teacher knows how to make it great--of course, with the lessons and all the great experiences that we all have been learning together in here, it will be a great challenge full of excitement.
Have a good day readers,
Best regards,
Rahmat
Monday, November 15, 2010
Week 6 - Reflection
Hi,
I'm struggling to get as much time to follow the discussion for week 6. Unfortunately I'm pretty much left behind. I was having great difficulties of getting connected to the internet because I am super occupied of the tasks and orientation for my initial week of my study.
As always, the week 6 discussions are extremely great. I've read many inspiring comments posted by my classmates regarding engaging students to focus more on the lesson that my they teach. Teaching large number classes is never easy. Teachers will find that there will be a number of students that will feel ignored due to the teacher unable to engage them all. Teacher at this point should be able to grab their interest of learning while in the classroom and should be able to open the opportunity for the students to have additional discussion outside of the class. Materials presented by the teacher should also design carefully and should have the 'hook' to make all students interested to find out more. That is why creating and presenting a really engaging materials will boost the students motivation to find out more about the lesson.
Creating interactive presentation was also very challenging and would give great impact on students' attention to the lesson. Most of younger aged students will love to play with interactive presentation that presented in a form of game. Younger students love this kind of challenge for their lesson. However, I found that older students as in university students will have less excitement of this type of game if it doesn't provide the styles and contents of their interest. Nevertheless, creating a great and exciting slideshow games is a great skill that need to be learned for teachers who want to engage their students with classroom interactive technology.
In addition to interactive slide show presentation, there is a new style of presentation tool that provides a non-linear transitions of its objects and presenting them in sequence of zooming in and out. The presentation is focusing on certain object assigned in the sequence. It is indeed very interesting and can be used alternately with slide show for the class presentation. The name of this tool is prezi. The best way of using prezi is to limit the text and liberate the teachers to explain and interact with the students while having a short phrase or keyword or even an image showed on the screen. This will ease the students to understand without being distracted with various other object on the screen. However, for offline presentation, for example, to post a prezi file online, can have lots of fancy additional objects integrated to enrich the display. One may also integrate a flash game or even flash video from youtube. It is extremely easy and fun, and also it can bring the wow effect on your students that make them excited to follow throughout your presentation.
Rahmat
I'm struggling to get as much time to follow the discussion for week 6. Unfortunately I'm pretty much left behind. I was having great difficulties of getting connected to the internet because I am super occupied of the tasks and orientation for my initial week of my study.
As always, the week 6 discussions are extremely great. I've read many inspiring comments posted by my classmates regarding engaging students to focus more on the lesson that my they teach. Teaching large number classes is never easy. Teachers will find that there will be a number of students that will feel ignored due to the teacher unable to engage them all. Teacher at this point should be able to grab their interest of learning while in the classroom and should be able to open the opportunity for the students to have additional discussion outside of the class. Materials presented by the teacher should also design carefully and should have the 'hook' to make all students interested to find out more. That is why creating and presenting a really engaging materials will boost the students motivation to find out more about the lesson.
Creating interactive presentation was also very challenging and would give great impact on students' attention to the lesson. Most of younger aged students will love to play with interactive presentation that presented in a form of game. Younger students love this kind of challenge for their lesson. However, I found that older students as in university students will have less excitement of this type of game if it doesn't provide the styles and contents of their interest. Nevertheless, creating a great and exciting slideshow games is a great skill that need to be learned for teachers who want to engage their students with classroom interactive technology.
In addition to interactive slide show presentation, there is a new style of presentation tool that provides a non-linear transitions of its objects and presenting them in sequence of zooming in and out. The presentation is focusing on certain object assigned in the sequence. It is indeed very interesting and can be used alternately with slide show for the class presentation. The name of this tool is prezi. The best way of using prezi is to limit the text and liberate the teachers to explain and interact with the students while having a short phrase or keyword or even an image showed on the screen. This will ease the students to understand without being distracted with various other object on the screen. However, for offline presentation, for example, to post a prezi file online, can have lots of fancy additional objects integrated to enrich the display. One may also integrate a flash game or even flash video from youtube. It is extremely easy and fun, and also it can bring the wow effect on your students that make them excited to follow throughout your presentation.
Rahmat
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Week 5 - Reflection
Hi,
There are numerous ways to create a motivating learning environment for your language classes. One of them is by assigning project for the student to discover and learn new lesson autonomously. This week we have an opportunity to learn about how this approach, the Project-Based Learning (PjBL, to avoid confusion to the other approach, PBL (Problem-Based Learning).
Project Based Learning gives a huge opportunity for the students to develop their sense of learning autonomy. The teachers only perform roles as director or moderator that give full access to the students learn by themselves in completing the project. Gaer has given a list of essential elements that the project needs to be geared to the population, students must comprehensively understood of the value of the project they are doing, and flexibility of time is a must.
There has been quite a discussion about these elements and how they can be integrated into classroom. For teachers who are given full access to modify lesson plan of their classes, creating PjBL can be of a great teaching-learning experience. However, for teachers teaching at school that provide pre-set lesson plan can improvise with PjBL with assignment-like project that requires less time consumption.
Adding to the discussion and reading assignment on PjBL, we are also introduced to creating rubric with rubistar. However, I managed to make customized rubric for the lesson plan for Cross Cultural Understanding lesson plan that I presented in the previous week, not with rubistar. I would love to use the rubric feature of zunal webquest. Perhaps, later, I would like to import to my webquest page.
Regards,
Rahmat
There are numerous ways to create a motivating learning environment for your language classes. One of them is by assigning project for the student to discover and learn new lesson autonomously. This week we have an opportunity to learn about how this approach, the Project-Based Learning (PjBL, to avoid confusion to the other approach, PBL (Problem-Based Learning).
Project Based Learning gives a huge opportunity for the students to develop their sense of learning autonomy. The teachers only perform roles as director or moderator that give full access to the students learn by themselves in completing the project. Gaer has given a list of essential elements that the project needs to be geared to the population, students must comprehensively understood of the value of the project they are doing, and flexibility of time is a must.
There has been quite a discussion about these elements and how they can be integrated into classroom. For teachers who are given full access to modify lesson plan of their classes, creating PjBL can be of a great teaching-learning experience. However, for teachers teaching at school that provide pre-set lesson plan can improvise with PjBL with assignment-like project that requires less time consumption.
Adding to the discussion and reading assignment on PjBL, we are also introduced to creating rubric with rubistar. However, I managed to make customized rubric for the lesson plan for Cross Cultural Understanding lesson plan that I presented in the previous week, not with rubistar. I would love to use the rubric feature of zunal webquest. Perhaps, later, I would like to import to my webquest page.
Regards,
Rahmat
Monday, November 1, 2010
Stumbleupon & Delicious are Really “Delicious”
“Have you ever searched for certain information on the internet but instead of getting things that you actually need, you are arrested by time checking one-by-one irrelevant search results with annoying webpage full of irritating ads that loads sluggishly slow and consuming your precious bandwidth?”
Websites, webpages, webtools, webservices are among my able-to-mention features of the internet. Internet feature developers or more popular being called web developers are those who are utilizing internet networking service to publish their creative ideas or services. Not to forget to mention that tons of small and corporate businesses have also jumped online to seek potential consumers by disseminating their virtual advertisement in every space they could possibly afford to stick their logos and attract the internet users to pay a visit to their homepage. Today, this internet has been a comfortable nest for online ads raising revenue that actually outnumbered the ads of other media. Revenue wise this is very potential, but for content-wise, this is annoying.
Search Engines has a mechanism to find keywords of related queries from certain available tags or scripts hosted by a web page. SEO or Search Engine Optimization, the term used in web developing realm to increase chance of webpages' keywords picked by a search engine to be lined-up in search results are actually a trick to fool search engine users to get what they don't want. This is dark side of Internet.
Now, getting back to my headline, Stumbleupon and delicious, as these tools have been discussed intensively in the class disscussion before, are among the solutions to get rational search results of a query. These two tools are not as smart as the giant search crawlers that we have been using for some years. However, they tend to give solution to the needs of relevant search results and the avoid-me-from-junks searching experiences. Stumbleupon is a discovery engine that works quite similar to search engine, but instead of crawling to zillion tons of websites pages, it crawls within its own database. Is it the same with web directory service? Yes, but No. The good part of this website is the original intention of sharing the webpage link within its own members similar to community link sharing. Each user who has joined the Stumbleupon community has options whether to recommend a website/webpage or not. Later, the website recommended by a user will be rated by visiting hit of the community users happened to visit the page and also by the so called machine learning. Stumbleupon machine learning engine has an ability to learn users personal preference of type of specific information. Later, by having lots of stumble! you will likely get the most relevant information that suits your need.
Firefox users can install this addon from this link https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/138
Delicious is a social bookmarking service. The idea was very creative, which enables internet user to share their favorite webpage/links to other internet users out there. Besides of sharing bookmarks of a web page, the tool also provide hit counter of how many delicious members saved the same web links. This feature is very informative as it gives you the detail of who are the members who saved the link, thus later to search similar type of information, a user can visit the member's delicious page and have a peek of thing that become his/her interest. As in the class task, we are encouraged to visit other classmates Delicious page to see what they have bookmarked so far, have a reflection of how excited you become finding websites that you have never thought that they exist before you browsed your classmates' page.
A hint to make these two services to work at best is to combine them. I would recommend my classmates to signup for an account on both aforementioned websites. Once you have the account, you can install the addons that will really save your time in accessing them. I mostly use stumbleupon to discover the websites, and once I found them good enough, I save them to my delicious page. Remember, that using stumble upon is very effective to find a website, but rarely you will stumble upon the same website twice. So, always bookmark the favorite discoveries before you lost their trace.
I hope this post will give you better experience in browsing the internet.
Best regards,
Rahmat
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