First thing I want to say about this week 3 learning is my gratitude to Mr. Sean McClelland. He has arranged everything for the class to learn. I learned that all has been well planned by my AEI instructors to enable the learning. Here I realize the point of independent learning for the CALL or TELL activities. This also confirms my worry to proceed this TELL policy into my own classes for the time being in THIS teaching context of mine.
My learning of the week is based on the reading from the previous final project report, the discussion on aural/oral skill building, and the creating Delicious account. I found this last assignment was the easiest one but handy for my information management system. It can help me to speed up my computer system, I guess, because by having all weblinks available on the Delicious can save the capacity of bookmark on the browsers I used to work on. Secondly, this discussion forum about the topic also help me to learn. As I have stated earlier that I am not a kind of passive learner who can learn everything by reading only but I need to communicate and listen to other's opinion. This discussion enrich my reading. Yet, I am interested to rise a question about why Mr. McClelland bring the issue of oral skill building only. Is it because this skill building is the one which is the more challenging skill to develop through CALL or this is the more possible one? Next, the assignment on Prior Project Review has contributed to not only understanding of what I should do for my final project report but also of how people apply this CALL into their teaching context.
I chose "Project Report for Lorin Salagean Technical High School." written by Nadina Nicolici from the Lorin Salagean Technical High School in Drobeta Turnu Severin, Romania. I expected to learn from her experience in the context of Technical Education which is almost similar to my teaching context in vocational higher education institution. It is interesting for me to know how she managed her classes and I wanted to learn from her success and failure.
I notice that her students were the ninth graders whose age was 15 – 16. They were 24 students of Lorin Salagean Technical College in Romania which were dominated by female students whom did not speak English in their daily communication. Nadina concerned about improving her students' reading and communication abilities. She assumed that both were important life-skill for the students' future. She implemented the reading, writing, listening and speaking into in-class activities, in their IT laboratories, and through blogs. She expected that her user-friendly blog would be helpful for her students to develop these 4 language skills. Besides, she also used blog, wiki, and interactive power-point presentation, based on grammar.
What I like from this project is that the shared context that we have. Nadina's class was an EFL class which students' English level varied. However, Nadina had mostly girls in her class meanwhile the dominant gender in my class was boys. Her class was a well cooperated one which was different from my class. Even though her students were teens but I did not see it as a great difference. My students were older but they were not that mature enough in learning style and digital technology. In addition, I like her optimism about her students' learning motivation.
However, I expected to read something related to technical material that she might cover in her blogging activities with students. I thought she would bring her topic into ESP related materials rather than the most common language teaching topics, such as free time, routines, British and American ways of life. I am looking forward to reading people challenging teaching experience and their failure in handling problem. I know this sounds so negative but I wish to learn from it and realize that not many people wanted to share about their failure.
Again, I want to thanks to Mr. McClelland for choosing Nadina 's report as one of our readings. It is a good reading and great sample for my project.Besides, I also thanks to other groupmates' assignment which enable me to understand other reports from different perspectives.
I am glad to be part of this group and thankful for the E-Teacher Scholarship program.
My learning of the week is based on the reading from the previous final project report, the discussion on aural/oral skill building, and the creating Delicious account. I found this last assignment was the easiest one but handy for my information management system. It can help me to speed up my computer system, I guess, because by having all weblinks available on the Delicious can save the capacity of bookmark on the browsers I used to work on. Secondly, this discussion forum about the topic also help me to learn. As I have stated earlier that I am not a kind of passive learner who can learn everything by reading only but I need to communicate and listen to other's opinion. This discussion enrich my reading. Yet, I am interested to rise a question about why Mr. McClelland bring the issue of oral skill building only. Is it because this skill building is the one which is the more challenging skill to develop through CALL or this is the more possible one? Next, the assignment on Prior Project Review has contributed to not only understanding of what I should do for my final project report but also of how people apply this CALL into their teaching context.
I chose "Project Report for Lorin Salagean Technical High School." written by Nadina Nicolici from the Lorin Salagean Technical High School in Drobeta Turnu Severin, Romania. I expected to learn from her experience in the context of Technical Education which is almost similar to my teaching context in vocational higher education institution. It is interesting for me to know how she managed her classes and I wanted to learn from her success and failure.
I notice that her students were the ninth graders whose age was 15 – 16. They were 24 students of Lorin Salagean Technical College in Romania which were dominated by female students whom did not speak English in their daily communication. Nadina concerned about improving her students' reading and communication abilities. She assumed that both were important life-skill for the students' future. She implemented the reading, writing, listening and speaking into in-class activities, in their IT laboratories, and through blogs. She expected that her user-friendly blog would be helpful for her students to develop these 4 language skills. Besides, she also used blog, wiki, and interactive power-point presentation, based on grammar.
What I like from this project is that the shared context that we have. Nadina's class was an EFL class which students' English level varied. However, Nadina had mostly girls in her class meanwhile the dominant gender in my class was boys. Her class was a well cooperated one which was different from my class. Even though her students were teens but I did not see it as a great difference. My students were older but they were not that mature enough in learning style and digital technology. In addition, I like her optimism about her students' learning motivation.
However, I expected to read something related to technical material that she might cover in her blogging activities with students. I thought she would bring her topic into ESP related materials rather than the most common language teaching topics, such as free time, routines, British and American ways of life. I am looking forward to reading people challenging teaching experience and their failure in handling problem. I know this sounds so negative but I wish to learn from it and realize that not many people wanted to share about their failure.
Again, I want to thanks to Mr. McClelland for choosing Nadina 's report as one of our readings. It is a good reading and great sample for my project.Besides, I also thanks to other groupmates' assignment which enable me to understand other reports from different perspectives.
I am glad to be part of this group and thankful for the E-Teacher Scholarship program.
My own posting for the assignment was made on 
