WEEK 5.0: More Teacher 2.0 Add-ons ...

Dear blog anh fellow bloggers,

The up-grade into teacher 2.0 is still going on. This week There were two main add-ons. The first one was creating a rubric on www.rubistar.4teachers.org .In fact, as I’ve already mentioned in my post on Nicenet, I’ve never ever created a rubric before. Honestly, I found the task very difficult in the beginning. So, I had to read many examples to get the inspiration before I wrote mine. All the rubrics seemed to be written with an unbelievable attention to details. I said to myself ‘how come these teachers write their rubrics with such precision and prediction to possible learning outcomes and how to be assessed ?!!’ I thought ‘ those teachers can’t be normal ! They must be super teachers endowed with extra adrenalin and unrivalled stamina !!’ Being of a stubborn character and refusing defeat, I started ‘wordprocessing’ my rubric and trying to condense as much as possible the texts to fit in the different boxes of the rubric. That was really exhausting and made me doubt the utility of this tool. That would be complete insanity to write a detailed rubric for each teaching / learning action happening in the classroom ! It’s just time consuming and and at the end the teacher would perhaps be left no energy to teach ! I was mistaken and the reason was I hadn’t paid attention to the pull-down menu on the left and its capability to generate pre-written texts that fit different levels of learners’ performances. My discovery of that option came very late. I spent a whole afternoon writing my rubric the ‘old-fashioned’ way, that is using Word. But, I’m very happy I made it at last with rubistar and produced my ruby rubric which you can have a look at by clicking on the following link : http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=1927074&

The second add-on wasn’t as painful as the ‘ruderic’ ! We were assigned the task of creating a webquest. But, before embarking on creating our webquest, we had some articles to read, videos to watch and sites to visit to help us be ready for the task. In fact, all our ‘Delicious’ course facilitator Dr Deborah’s recommended readings proved very helpful and made our task much easier. Personally, the word ‘webquest’ was not new to me. But its significance, yes. This week I learnt how to create a webquest on www.zunal.com. It was an easy thing to do. My webquest was made to help my students review and further practise their English tenses outside the classroom and in their own pace. I think one of the great advantages of this tool is that it is likely to enhance learners’ autonomy. The sites I recommended for my students to visit offer interactive exercises and immediate feedback . They don’t need to be assessed by their teacher. After they submit their answers they can see their score and know where they stand. I also had some fun experimenting with Zunal. I managed to insert photos of mine and cliparts I downloaded from the Web. The following is the link to my baby wequest :

http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=66373

Nevertheless, I think webquests would work much better with content disciplines like social studies, sciences or arts. The range of projects that could be done using webquests with EFL students is very limited , because they most of the time don’t have a good command of the language. This would be much felt with beginning students. Anyway, the virtues of PBL and Webquests are self-evident and should be adopted since primary schools so that students would consider them as a natural way to learn.

We were also asked to describe a technology-related change that will help us with the issues we discussed the previous week. Below is what I wrote .

‘I already noted in a previous post that technology is not a magic wand. But I'm quite sure it does have many benefits on both the quality of learning and teaching. As has already been mentioned, my school is not technologically blessed yet and both my students' computeracy and access to the Net are very limited. The technology-related change that I intend to implement this year is an ambitious dream, but within the possible. My plan is to introduce digital interactivity into the classroom. How ? With my personal laptop, a Wii remote and a data show, I intend to buy very soon, I will turn the whitewashed wall opposite students into an interactive 'smarter' board. Sounds incredible, but TRUE. I won't go into details, but, I invite you, instead, to visit the following youtube link to discover more by yourselves.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ

I know these are extra expenses and I won't be reimbursed ;-), but, deep inside, I believe the effort put in the tech change is worthwhile and will be much appreciated by my students. To make the classroom more interactive at a low cost, I'm also thinking of using mouse mischief instead of costly clickers. The following youtube link will show more how this is possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrsCatpI62A

As concerns the unwiredness of my school, I don't think it's a big issue. All I can do is get myself a 3G Wireless modem and the class will be connected to the net. Then, I could introduce my students to sites where they could practise their English more interactively while at home or in a cybercafe. I will also try to introduce them to some Web 2.0 tools that would help them interact with each other and their peers worldwide while improving their English.’

Regards,

Arbi