Week 9 Discussion: Learning styles

http://www.open2.net/survey/learningstyles/

Technology can be used to enhance different learning styles in a classroom. There are different technology tools, gadgets and online learning materials. Teachers need to be active, creative, and innovative and determined to look for the most appropriate materials and tools and dedicated to use them in the class. The following list includes some o the technology tools I believe would work for me for different learning styles.

For verbal linguistic
Voice thread for Story-sharing creation, poems, essays, letters and for discussion and commenting. I have created some voicethreads for my final project and I liked it very much. I realized the potential of that for language learning and I believe it can be used to discuss, stories poems and essay. I will use this tool for discussion.

Story sharing sites- http://www.storywrite.co.uk/storyassessment.htm
Students can get instructions, share their stories and get others opinions. This would create interest and enthusiasm and would improve students writing skills.

Nicenet is also such an excellent tool for discussion. I have already been using the discussion forum and chat functions in Moodle. However, I found that when using chats in Moodle every response is on a separate thread. That means if you say yes to somebody, there is no way others would identify to whome you are saying 'yes'. You cannot response to that persons thread. But in the nice net it is like that. So, Nicenet has this function well built.

Bodily/Kinesthetic
Video production - skits, dances, sports, role playing, demonstrations
Animation - Macromedia Flash

I believe these two are interesting; however, I do not have much information on them.

Logical/Mathematical
Spreadsheets- is a software I have been using for a long time and gives a lot of ease to lots of small calculations when doing marks sheets and lists etc.

Power point presentation- this is the most important and most used software for me. it is immensely useful for our block tutorials when we need to present so much information within a short period of time and to keep students attention and interest on the topic.

Online data collection. I have known Survey monkey for some time and from this course I have learned and used Google forms to crate survey to collect data. these online forms are make your work so much easy and it can automatically illustrate the data and information on graphs and charts which saves lot of time.

Webquests. I got the opportunity to use Webquests in this course and I found it also an interesting strategy to use in my lessons.

Interpersonal
Blogs- I have created my very first blog during this course and I like it very much. I found blogs a very appropriate tool which will enhance and improve students writing and researching skills. I will be using it in my teaching in the future.

Comments are welcome!
Regards,

Week 8 Summary

This is the busiest week for me this year. I have been doing exam paper marking and marks finalization day and night. So, I am not able to give my best effort to the tasks assigned for this week.

After I have chosen my partner Deep to work on the peer-reading task, I have handed in my draft and am going to comment on his draft. Sharing and commenting on the partners project drafts can be a very enriching and a good learning experience which we could practice in our teaching as well.
Then I have shared the online tasks I have created on Voicethread for my final project. However, it seems that it is private and cannot be viewed. But I am trying to make it public. Here is the link:

http://voicethread.com/#u2113378

Pls. let me know if it works.

I have also created a survey form which I will use with some editing at the end of my project.

Here is the link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/gform?key=0AlIDTa5Eb4T4dExROHl3VlFZNlkzNENILThHTmFzTEE&hl=en

I have also learned about ANVILL this week and I have created an account in this site but not able to explore much as I am really busy this week. This is a wonderful tool that would fit my students’ needs and I will also try to create some task on it as well. I am also happy that I was able to join the webinar we has with Jeff. It was also a good experience which gave us the chance to speak to our course mates and instructors. It seems that time flies when you are busy with something and with all these interesting activities this course is coming to an the end.

Voicethread for online teaching and learning

Here is a very interesting Voicethread about using Voicethread for online teaching and learning

http://voicethread.com/#q.b908650.i4963751

Week 8 Task: Create an online course site or an exercise

I have created these online tasks for my final project.

a) What tool you used (please list the website) and what you created?

I have used Voicethread and created five threads for the students to comment using voice and writing. The address for my Voicethread is: https://voicethread.com/?#u2113378

c) The type of students who would use it?

These threads are created for my Study Skills students who are advanced level and need to improve their communication skills.

b) How you will use it in your teaching - please be specific?

These threads are used to improve my students communication skills. These also can be used for improving writing skills as students can communicate by writing and I have used the topics from the unit outline of study skills which are; note taking, referencing, essay writing, giving an introduction and exam preparation. So, they can be used to teach these skills as well. Some of these can be used in other grades/levels as well.

As my students are studying online and block mode they will do the work by themselves. They will listen to or read the instructions, go to the given websites, get information about the topic and tell the answer to the given questions using voice or if they are not able to do voice comments they can write the comments and other students and I can continue it as a discussion.
For those who have normal face-to-face class, these threads can be used as class activities or extension activities and also as homework.

d) How you will encourage learner autonomy with this tool?

As students will be doing this in their own time and by their own it encourages learner autonomy.

Websites used as resources.
Essay Writing: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/685/03/
Note taking Skills: http://www.esl-lab.com/tips/rent-apartment.htm
Referencing : http://gem.mche.edu.mv


Please try this link if you cannot sees the Voicethread.
http://voicethread.com/share/2311297/

Week 8 Discussion: Teaching with Online Tools- Moodle

At Centre for Open Learning, Maldives National University, we are using Moodle for our courses which are conducted in blended mode. These courses include two face-to-face tutorials sessions for each subject and all other works are online. All the learning resources are made available online through this system and students do most of their studies online. We also have synchronous and asynchronous discussions and assignment submission and giving feedback through the system. I love the LMS as it has got a user-friendly interface and there are varieties of feature you can use. Also you can embed other tools if you want.

What is Moodle? Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS) / Learning Management System (LMS). It has become very popular among educators around the world as a tool for creating online dynamic web sites for their students to manage and promote learning. Many institutions use Moodle as their platform to conduct fully online courses, while some use it simply to augment face-to-face courses (known as blended learning). it It can be used to make activity modules (such as forums, databases and wikis) to build richly collaborative communities of learning around a subject matter (in the social constructionist tradition). It can also be used to deliver content to students (such as standard SCORM packages) and assess learning using assignments or quizzes.

The above mentioned activities can promote learner autonomy and to use Moodle you need to install it on a web server somewhere, either on one of your own computers or one at a web hosting company. If there is any problem, Moodle Docs is a great place to start, especially the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages.

The Moodle demonstration site is a full Moodle site with some sample courses that you can try as a teacher, student or even an administrator.

Demonstration site: http://demo.moodle.net/

Week 8 Discussion

This week’s discussion is on ‘Teaching with Online Tools’. We were asked to explore different tools and exercises and share our ideas on how the use of these tools might change the way we teach and/or the way that our students learn.
We have Jeff Magoto, the director of the language center at the University of Oregon, (and a very experienced EFL/ESL language teacher) with us this week. With Jeff we are going to have a synchronous chat session On ANVILL. Here are some information related to ANVILL taken from the discussion.

ANVILL was initially developed for K-12 foreign language teachers in the U.S. But now it's used by teachers all over the world, and EFL/ESL teachers are the second largest group of users (after Spanish teachers).
ANVILL tries to provide language teachers with a speech-based toolbox. The kind of toolbox where teachers and learners feel as comfortable working with speech (and other media) as they do when they word process, blog, or use a wiki or a ning. While our tools lack the pizzazz of commercial offerings, they have two advantages: 1) they're designed for language teachers/learners (in an Internet age, and 2) they're free.

ANVILL tries to have something for every language teacher, but it's probably of most use to teachers who want (and are able to) extend or enhance opportunities for spoken language practice.

For some teachers that means they use it as a space for student audio and video recordings, much like Voicethread or Wetoku. Others use ANVILL as a course website, that is, primarily as a container for other web-based resources (like those at CLEAR) or elsewhere. And, finally, other teachers (such as the two teachers mentioned in today's video below) use it a use it as a space for audio-video cultural exchanges or collaborations.

Wow! I need to try this!

Week 7 Summary of Discussion on Learner Autonomy

This discussion on learner autonomy has immensely benefited all of us. We have been motivated through the collaboration, reading and discussion and due to that our students have been motivated as well.

The following is a list of activities gathered from the readings and discussion by Courtney.

Activities that enhance learner Autonomy
* implementing daily/weekly diaries, journal entries, and/or blogs
* in class pair and group work where students interact doing jigsaws, teaching each other, making decisions, solving problems, interviewing, and having discussions
* class debates on different topics
* students creating and presenting power points
* students searching for information analyzing it, and presenting it to the class
* providing students with authentic English listening resources such as T.V. programs, movies, and news broadcast among many others
* incorporating music
*having students make their own vocabulary flash cards

I enjoyed the discussion and lets always be be autonomous teachers!