Tbilisi State University

Tbilisi State University

WEEK 10

This week is not as busy as the previous weeks of the course and to me this seems logical. The moderators have given us the chance to look back and contemplate on the learnt, aleady achieved and look forward to our future plans.

This course has been an enjoyable experience indeed! It has given me a unique opportunity to be a part of a wonderful community of highly educated and experienced professionals who were always eager and able to give valuable advice and constructive feedback. In addition to this, the programme of the course was planned in the way which made it possible to encourage our, as learners, autonomy and seek and rely on the advice of our moderators and colleagues.

Because of the effective and sophisticated programme, effective management and friendly atmosphere I have 'emerged' as a more knowledgeable, confident teacher with plans and definite know-how for future personal and 'departamental' growth.

Relying on your efficient posts and analyses, I am sure I am not the only one.

Congratulations and good luck to all of you!!!

Manana

Week 9

This week has been so full of useful and very involving activities that I almost forgot to post on the blog! Many thanks to Dilip who reminded me about the deadline.

I have learnt a lot this week. My team and I plan to modernise the curriculum of our programme and for this, along with up-to-date literature and interactive approach to teaching, I find it extremely important to include internet, webites and other on-line tools in F2F teaching. This will by all means enhance the quality of teaching as well as our students' (learners) autonomy.

Students at our department do theoretical courses in Linguistics and English Literature as well as practical courses of English such as Grammar,Phonetics, Speaking, Writing, etc.

In order to adapt the tools to our needs, I decided to use the Nicenet and blogger. I chose these tools because the former suits the theoretical aspects of the our programme. The students will gladly contribute to the forum. However, nothing is perfect in this world and despite my enthusiastic approaoh, I still anticipate some problems, namely, shy and lazy students' unwillingness to participate. This can be successfully tackled by encouragement, fair assessment system and more elements of interaction in the theoretical sessions.

I have chosen blogger for our practical courses as this system provides an excellent opportunity for the students to share their views on the on-line material provided by the teachers on the blog.

While making an attempt to implement changes I have to deal with resistant teachers as well. Unfortunately, it is not easy for some teachers to say good bye to their 'peaceful' and well-trodden routines, which do not contain 'lurking' unpleasant surprises and more work. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that they have to change, and the sooner the better as the future is ON-LINE TEACHING.

Manana

Before the project I thought that PowerPoint was just to make the process of the presentation more efficient . Now I have learnt that it can be used to make this process involving and engaging, even enjoyable. This week has made it absolutely clear.

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YouTube - The Queen's Speech 2009

YouTube - The Queen's Speech 2009

WEEK 8

Today I have used a PowerPoint presentation interactively at a lecture of Stylistics with our 8 term students of English. Th students were very much involved and the lecture went smoothly. I will design an interacive quizz for next Thursday and I am sure the students will be as interested as today.

Another good news is that our group of MA in British studies opened a blog for classroom use. Let us see what they will post on it- I can not wait myself.

I did use PowerPoint presentations in my class but, to be honest, thet contained just dry facts and the interactive elements included only several questions at the end of the session. This week has given me the opportunity to look at my previous presentations from a different angle. I have created my first interactive presentation- it is obvious that it has not been created by a computer nerd, but anyway, I am sure it will suffice for a first attempt.

My students presented their presentations this week. We agreed that they will create a class-blog next week and post brief descriptions of the presenations. Fingers crossed!

WEEK 7

How to use technology in the classroom?

I am very much interested in applying technology to (large) ELT classes. Having said this, it is also obvious that this should be done very carefully because it is not easy to hold the students' attention for a long time and even technology, if not used cleverly will bore them. I have watched boring powerpoint presentations.To be frank, I have made several myself:) That's why I fully agree with the words cited 'In teaching with technology:'Learning is seen as essentially a social process, requiring communication among learner, teacher and others. This social process cannot effectively be replaced by technology, although technology may facilitate it. (p. 35)
Bates, A.W., & Poole, G (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

It is amazing how passages like this make us realise (or, perhaps, activate, wake up some ideas sleeping quietly in our minds) that we have been feeling about some issue in the same way but did not have time to act; or , perhaps, needed some stimulus which, for me, happened this week.

My project this week

Term 2 at our University starts in March. Naturally, I could not wait till then. I called my MA group and asked them to come to the University. (I could have used corporate e-mails but it did not seem to be a good idea as during the vacations nobody is particularly interested in checking them).

When they came, we made up three groups of 'treasure hunters', distributed the topics and assigned the task -to find interesting, relevant information not included in the textbook.

They are to come next Friday to discuss the findings and make (oral-first) presentations. By the way, Deborah's rubric for assessing oral presenataions is excellent. I intend to use it for assessing these presentations). Next stage will include creating the blog or WebQuest ( they will need clear instructions for this) and posting the group assignment on it. This will be assessed by the rubric which I have been trying to upload on the website but in vain!

WEEK 6 -Another eye opener

What is the teacher's mission

'The aim of teaching is not only to transmit information but also to transform
students from passive recipients of other people’s knowledge into active constructors of their own and other’s knowledge'(Quoted in 'Teaching Large Classes II – Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students By Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw.).

These words do reveal the genuine mission of a teacher- to encourage students to become active, autonomous learners. This is so different from the approach to teaching encouraged whan I was astudent . At that time we were expected to cram as much information as possibile in our heads. This was not followed by any encouragement to practically apply the knwoeldge obatined in the classroom.

One more maxim which impressed me is “A mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled.” Indeed.

The teacher's self-assessment

I am impressed with the teacher's self-assessment grid.

As always in such cases, it is difficult to tell definitely what type people belong to... What kind of a teacher am I after all? I believe, I incorporate all of these four attitudes: I am efficiency expert as I do agree that time should be valued and all the activities of a lesson should be viewed as parts of a system ( the course) with their definite objectives and outcomes.

On the other hand, I am definitely an altiudinist: 'The only justification for bringing technology into schools is if it opens up the possibility that students will have to analyze information, synthesize multiple perspectives, and take a stance on the merits of something'- this could have been written by me!

Let's look at the definition of the affiliator. Definitely!It is about me- 'To you, the best learning activities are those in which students learn to work together. WebQuests that force collaboration and create a need for discussion and consensus are the best in your view'.

As for the technophile- I do like 'attractive colors, animated gifs, and lots of links to interesting sites'.

After all, this must be like learning styles- people tend to be 'mixed' learners. So, I must be a 'mixed' teacher ...I hope I am not alone here...

P.S Now it's so cold and snowy in Georgia. The photos contributed by Sophie show how cold it is today..

WEEK 5

PBL and the role (position) of the teacher in the classroom

Is the teacher left without a leading role in PBL classroom?

I have been thinking about this for sometime already.This is because some of my colleagues at the University are worried that the student-centred approach diminishes the role of the teacher. Is this right? While encouraging the student-centred approach are we changing the role of the teacher? What is the function of the teacher in PBL? Does this mean that an autonomous learner will not need a teacher at all?

I am sure this is not the case. Having read the material about WebQuests and PBL this week, it has become absolutely clear that the teacher will still be crucial in the classroom. However, the quality of teaching acquires a new dimension: from being a director of the class the teacher will be transformed into the moderator. This means opening new prospects of creativity in front of the teacher.

Resistance revisited

Sheryl Beller-Kremer achoed my thoughts when she talked about the factors causing resistance. Actually,computers can go wrong. I do agree with Hassina 'Our absolute weapons are our indefectible self-motivation and the conviction that we are right at least to make a try'. I would add that only if we are persistent we will be successful.

Why should we tell our students about the outcomes of the lesson

I think that discussing the lesson's outcomes with the students is a very good idea. I am sorry I have not yet included it in my lesson plans. The fact is that I thought that learning outcomes and objectives were for the teacher to check the progress of their students and and better reflect on the lesson. Now I am sure that if we want to encourage the learner's autonomy, it is absolutely essential to show the students what they are expected to learn and after the lesson let them reflect on good and bad sides of the lesson. This will have methodological value as well as my students are future teachers of English. Moreover, I can even ask them to reflect on the progress they have made and make brief presentations at the next lesson. What do you think?

WEEK 4

Mary called her blog EYE OPENER which is clever as this course certainly acts as one. While reading the lesson plan of Tennessee university, I realised that it would be easier to implement technology in the process of learning/teaching if I included it in the lesson plan as one of the components of a lesson/lecture.
Nina mentioned resistance of the teachers to technology. I believe this is frustrating but natural. Actually, by suggesting or demanding something new and challenging makes a lot of (tired or bored) teachers angry as it means hard work and consequently is upsetting their routine. Interestingly enough, I did not feel hostility when I organised free IT lessons for the staff.

This week has shown me new ways of teaching listening and speaking activities.

I work with future teachers of English and this means that our students have to have good pronunciation skills and should know what intonation patterns mean. In many cases they will be models for their future students to imitate to. For this purpose, we usually use cassettes and CDs with recorded pronunciation drills and intonation patterns. In addition, when we work with FCE exam groups, we teach listening as part of the test format.

As for speaking, our students are given a lot of speaking activities and among them are follow-up activities which come after listening material.

My discoveries this week ( week 3)
This week has been fantastic! Despite starting badly ( because of my poor health) it unfolded,I would class it as an 'eye-opening' and 'loaded with new knowledge' week. Actually, as a newly-appointed Head of English at Tbilisi State University, which is, by the way, among very popular and trusted universities of Georgia, I have been thinking a lot how to make the learning/teaching process more involving and thus, increase my students' motivation. Luckily, I applied to this course and got the scholarship and now I can say that this course is a godsend! It seems to respond to all of my needs. (Thanks to the organisers again!!!!)

The sites I particularly liked among the best was a) BBC podcasts which offers brilliant opportunities for active listening ( for main ideas- answer to Sueanne's question)and b) English for Academic purposes which is what my students are after!

WEEK 3

January 28

New challenges and impressions

I have created delicious. Like Mahamud I thought it was something quisine-related. I can infer the meaning of the metaphor now. My delicious pages have yet to be bookmarked. Vow! what vocabulary!

I am reading the article by Lindsay Miller. I have made up my mind to concentrate on listening skills as our students rightly point out that they need to work more on that. I sympathise with them because they do not have many opportunities to interact with native speakers. However, my generation did not even have those scanty resources which are available now. So, they are luckier than we were.

I try not to let them be sorry for themselves and encourage to be more creative. Each group is expected to come up with some new web-page or video-audio material from the web. Besides, this helps to enrich our bank of resources....

P.S I have selected today's photo as, as I see it, there is a metaphor hidden behind it. Can you guess it???

Nora's comment about my learning objectives has brought me back to the problem of exact wording which is, no doubt, of significant importance. While writing my objectives I did wander whether I could join the verbs of two cognitive levels into one objective-it seems to me that identifying relevant structures precedes their analysis. Bloom' taxonymy does mention that 'identify' and 'analyse' belong to different levels but on the other hand, cognitive process is a continuum. From this point of view, 'identify' precedes 'analysis' or rather, one can not analyse what has not first been identified.. Am I right?

lessons of web searching

While browsing various engines I learnt an important lesson: not only should I use different engines myself but, also, I should advise my students to do so as well. Usually, it is me who provides all the available material on the web. Why not ask them to serch the web for something new on their own?

I usually use Google for my scholarly purposes. Now I have discovered that other engines can also offer interesting information .. I wonder why I have not thought about this before?

Like my group-mates who were lost in the Internet I felt very confused and overwhelmed at the same time. On the other hand, the motto of my life-it's never late to learn seemed to be in full blow! Everey day brings new 'electronic' challenges as well as sense of achievement.

Like Hassina, I used SMART method while writing learning objectives in my sillabi as it offers what I believe learning objectives/ outcomes should have: they should be easily measurable,realistic and timebound. Frankly speaking, I had not heard of ABCD method before. Now I can happily wed these two methods which will help me to write even more specific and easily measurable objectives.

Now, it's time to think about the project......

Web searching and learning objectives

Week 2

My first reaction to the Week 2 assignments was UPS! We are going to be busy this week!

I have started searching websites for reading skills material. A lot of good things available out there... I wonder why I did not think about using Internet more frequently in the classroom before...Anyway, better late than never! Thanks to the course designers.. I believe that one of the most significant traits of this course is that it makes you think more about teaching...

By the way, another contribution from Sophie above

Week I



I believe a teacher's blog should include something personal to share with their students:))my daughter Sophie and her best friend :)

I have been reading my groupmates' inspiring ideas about the possible ways blogs can be used in the classroom. How thoughtful of Nina to sum up all the important ideas re-the issue. I do think that blogs have a lot of potential for teaching linguistics as well as ELT (I am involved in both of these)

However, I firmly believe that blogging can be successfully used only if it is based on some problem-solving task. This will encourage my students obtain some data, conduct some research, synthesise and come up with the critical analysis of the data.

In ELT blogging can be used even more often. Our discussion on the Nicenet is a good example of this.

My experience of a 'blogbuilder' fully agrees with the well-known opinion according to which people learn better by doing than by reading only. Practice means a lot indeed.

this photo was taken by my daughter, Sophie :)

Week 1 , January 14 getting started with blogging

The first week started with a nice surprise, by creating a blog of my own.

The process was really something to try, especially for a person like me, who is always willing to experiment with new ideas.

I did have some experience of contributing to other people's blogs by adding comments on them but this time it was different.

To be honest, it did not come easy. I even had to seek for advice from my children. My son, as always, was not availbale. My daughter, like gold she is, helped me with my first steps in the world of blogs!!!

Now I am writing my first comment on my own blog! VOW! So exciting! I feel like a student again!

These two weeks have given me a lot to think about.First of all, I have started to think about posibilities of using technologies (including blogs) in the classroom more.

I also found the discussions extremely useful. Once again, they convinced me in usefulness of shariing ideas-'two heads are better than one'. Like Andreja, I also like step-to-step approach to blogs (as well as to anything in this world).

Finally, I have found myself in the position of a learner which is important: teachers often forget how it felt to be a learner.

I am sure we have several weeks of new challenges and new experience ahead.

Let's help each other to become better teachers.

Best wishes to all of you,
Manana