Week 3: Skill-building Websites for Oral/Aural Skills and Saving Bookmarks with Delicious

Writing these lines I am hoping to be just in time with this week's asignments. I have been extremely busy all the time at work and I was afraid I was going to be late with all the tasks. Luckily, there was more reading than technology this time, which allowed me to fulfil the tasks not only working on the computer but also on my way to and from the university. Now, I will put briefly down what I have done so far.

1. As I have proudly announced in Nicenet classroom space, I have read all three articles about CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) in terms of speaking/ listening skills development. All of them are worth reading and I am sure I will need to refer to them in the future, since they discuss different aspects of using computer for foreign language education. "The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills" by Juila Gong clearly explains how computer sofware can help to learn a foreign language, discussing both advantages and disadvantages of CALL. In "Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials" Lindsey Miller touches upon practical application of authentic materials available online for improving listening skills. "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation", written by Maria Busa, is about researches in the field of teaching pronunciation through special software packages. I feel I need to go back to this paper some day and try all the links provided in order to learn more about newly developed tools for teaching pronunciation.

As for the web resources designed for improving listening and speaking skills I enjoyed finding Lindsay Clandfield's ready-to-use lesson about "Using OK" on the OneStopEnglish web-site, "Job hunting" activity at Randall's Cyber Listening Lab and and a BBC Learning English course about Pronunciation.

I know that resources for listening activities can also be found at http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com, http://www.ted.com, and http://www.manythings.org/pp/, or in educational platforms like EnglishCentral, English,Baby, Busuu.com and LiveMocha.com but I guess I still need to explore what Larry Ferlazzo's blog offeres to try and the NPR podcast collection holds.

2. It is a shame I have never heard of social bookmarking before, but now I have a Delicious page https://delicious.com/tess_moli and can keep records of web-pages I would like to refer to in the future.
I wish I had more time to look through this week's additional resources, suggesting further readings about alternatives to Delicious and even more.

3. Finally, I have read a project report, which is the one written by Nadina Nicolici Carmen from Lorin Salagean Technical High School (Rumania). The main idea of the project was to enhance students' reading skills by creating a blog where they could share their thoughts and feelings, and do some vocabulary exersices. In addition, the teacher created a wiki space to upload the materials the students might need for studies, for example links to grammar games, on-line dictionaries, etc. In the end, the teacher created a class web-site so that to give the students extra materials to what they learn from the course book in class. I may well choose to do something similar in my final project, unless other technology tool turns my attention away from blogging. I am excited to learn more and more in the next weeks, the only thing that upsets me is that project reports are so long that they are really boring to read and, in all probability, to write!

Week 2: The ABCD Learning Objectives Framework and Effective Web Searches

This week there have been a number of assignments to complete, which means that I have learnt a lot of new things about technology. Trying to follow the instructions so that not to get lost, I first explored the variety of search engines and portals to look for materials I could use in my classes. Actually, the idea of using some other search engine than Google was stunning. After several hours of doing this research I came up with a shortlist of web-sites which I most probably will make use of for some teaching practice purposes:
http://www.cluuz.com - a visual search engine
http://www.definitions.net/ -a great tool for finding definitions along with translation of the word (the citation is produced automatically and can be easily added to the lesson plan's bibliography)
http://www.merriam-webster.com - as multiple-purpose dictionary (definitions, synonyms, rhymes, and examples of usage).
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/ - a search engine for breaking global news headlines (all the links of the search list are indicated as of British or American origin)
I should also thank the other course participants for sharing their findings, from which I have borrowed:
http://www.infotopia.info - search engine
http://education.iseek.com/iseek/home.page - search engine
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/187549/engineering - encyclopedia
http://www.doaj.org/ - directory of open access journals
http://ed.ted.com/ - design of video lesson plans
http://www.englishcentral.com/courses#!/index/3-business-english/all/easiest - English langauge courses
The next step was to describe the class I teach and create a learning objective, done in the ABCD style (Audience-Behavior-Condition-Degree), for that class. For now I can see it like that: "Given clear instuctions and examples to follow, the engineering students will be able to ask questions and give responses on the subject of short reports, when participating in a follow-up presentation discussion at B2 level (of Common European Framework Reference)". I am planning to arrange a blog so that the students could have a space outside the classroom for communication and would be able to present their scientific project's ideas and discuss them by leaving comments. Easier said than done, as the saying goes...

Week 1: Creating an Academic Blog

This is the first post on my own blog and it is very exciting. I used to think that running a blog is the matter of extremely diffucult technical aspects and never had an idea of learning how to create one. However, I liked reading posts on the English Language Teaching Global Blog of Oxford University Press and wondered how teachers can take advantage of blogging technology in addition to just being tuned to the latest news shared by other educators on the official websites devoted to EFL teaching issues.
Now that I started the University of Oregon’s Winter 2014 Webskills online course I discovered that it takes only a few simple steps to build a blog of the very design and content that I want. At the same time I clearly see that much effort and time is required to maintain the quality and relevance of the blog's content in the long term. But as always, any efforts will pay back. For example, when trying to add a photo to my profile I came across a Keep Calm poster generator, which can be introduced to students to have a little fun with writing their own motivational slogans in English.
I am looking forward to using my blog for reflecting on my ideas and sharing the knowledge of useful EFL teaching resources in my posts for the next weeks. As for the reasons to use blogs in my classes, I find the idea of doing project-based activities most attractive. I do realize that it involves much preparation work but thanks to the acticle "Blogging for EFL" I know what it is all about.