WEEK 4.0: UNDELICIOUS...

Dear fellow bloggers,

Week 4.0 was much tougher than the previous ones. Writing a tec-enhanced plan was particularly the toughest and most challenging of them all. Apart from our admirably diligent colleague Camelia, most coursemates submitted their assignments a bit late than usual. Personally, I found creating a technology-enhanced lesson plan to be the hardest part of this week assignments. It wasn't delicious at all! We were supposed to read about lesson planning and the different components that should be considered when devising our own. Dr Deborah, also, provided us with a template to facilitate this task. But even with that template, the gestation of the tech-enhanced lesson plan was very painful for, I dare say, most of us. In fact, my friends' lesson plans were very inspiring and helpful. I learnt a lot from them. And this is what I like most about this online course; LEARNING FOM EACH OTHER. However, I have certain reservations concerning the detailed fashion with which this type of lesson plans is written. As I said in an earlier post on our Nicenet discussions, a lesson plan like this one would be very exhausting and time consuming for teachers who teach different levels and syllabi. Perhaps, after they finish devising the lesson plan, teachers will have no more energy to teach ;-) Nevrtheless, I think textbook writers and designers should adopt this detailed method of writing lesson plans so as to make it easy for teachers to deliver their lessons.

This week major discussion centered around the impact of technology on improving reading and writing skills. We were assigned some obligatory and additional articles to read. One of them wasUsing the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction (2000) written by Jarek Krajka. Although the article was written before the advent of Web.2.0, the quality of its tips and the ways internet should be used for teaching purposes are far from being obsolete. The writer started with a summary of previous research conducted in the area. He then moved to list the merits of online instruction. Quite paradoxically, recency, a major characteristic of online lessons was missing in his article! Other positive points of online instructions are the fact that students get more engaged and motivated while using recent and authentic material which is not the case in the traditional mode of lesson delivery. Besides other advantages, students' cultural awreness is also enhanced through possible international collaborative projects. Yet, a minimum of Internet computeracy, Jarek pointed out, is required from both teachers and students. Otherwise, going online would be absurd and doomed to failure. I also read

Chao-chih Liao's interesting article "E-mailing to Improve EFL Learners' Reading and Writing Abilities: Taiwan Experience'. Needless to tell you about the content of article. Its title is self-explanatory.

The next task was to find two or more webpages that would work for us and write an ABCD objective that might go with it. Below is my Nicenet post in its entirety.

'I have been browsing through the treasure trove of sites since Monday and I’m really amazed at the overwhelming bounty of ELT sites the internet hosts. I was particularly hooked by the following URL http://legacy.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html. It is a sort of crossroads where more than 200 sites meet to offer their services to both EFL/ESL students and teachers. Choosing a web page was not an easy task at all ! Below are the links to two the web pages I was attracted to and I’d like to share with you.

I. http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/0903/090323-students.html

What I liked about this web page activity is that it smoothly integrates the four

skills in a well-thought out lesson plan . My students ( teenagers whose ages are between 15 and 20 ) will absolutey find the reading topic appealing. School fights and violence are two issues that stimulate students to read and provoke them to express their opinions both in spoken and written forms. However, considering my particular teaching context and the type of learners I have, adapting and modifying the lesson plan would be a wise decision to make on my part. 5O minutes won’t be enough to cover all the detailed stages of the lesson. So, I would, for instance, content myself with just two warm-up activities and move straight to the listening and reading tasks. I also think the TRUE/FALSE statements are misplaced in the Before Reading/Listening stage. Since they test students’ reading/listening comprehension, they should be given during the While Reading /Listening stage. Reducing the number of tasks is, again, an inevitability to deliver the lesson in the actual teaching time. I would rather devote the post reading stage to inviting the students to discuss the issue of violence at schools and then ask them to write a paragrah about the reasons why students fight.

My ABCD objectives fo this this web page go like this :

- Students ( A ) will listen and read a passage on school fights ( condition) and answer the questions related to vocabularylistening as well as reading tasks (B) with reasonable accuracy (80%) ( D ).

- After orally discussing the theme school violence ( C ) Students (A) will write a paragragh about reasons behind school fights ( B ) with reasonable coherence and cohesion (70% ) (D).

II. http://www.dfilm.com/live/moviemaker.html

The above website is absolutely fun and offers a great opportunity to test your movie-making skills. It’s user-friendly and after just a few clicks one can write a dialogue for a short animated movie that could later be emailed to friends, classmates, teachers and probably seen by netizens wordwide. This is a chance to make it in the Hollywood movie industry ! So, don’t miss it !;-) The steps are easy to follow : you choose 1) background 2) sky 3) plot (action) 4) characters 5) type dialogue and 6) music. You can also add another scene if you want to. All you need is repeat steps 1-6.When done, just click "Finish Movie." Finally, put in a title, director's name (that's you!) , title design and watch your movie. However, there’s one little weakness about the site. Ther’s music bacground, but the characters can’t speak. The movie is mute !!

I fancy myself teaching writing through this site. First, I will introduce my students to the site and show them the different steps they should follow to create a short movie. I believe students will like to practise writing this way because it’s full of fun, interactive and brings the visual element to the act of writing. At the end each pair of students will act out their dialogs.

A possible ABCD ojectives lesson plan would be something like this :

Students ( A)will be shown how to to use the site features(C) to write a short dialogue where two people greet and introduce each other( B ) with reasonable accuracy using the common greeting and introductions expressions (80%) ( D ).'

And before you leave I invite you to play this video clip to have some well deserved fun after this exhausting but enjoyable learning week.

Yours

Arbi