Week 15: Providing Feedback with Technology

Cristian Alberto Menjívar Alemán

Week 15: How to Use Technology to Provide Feedback and Assessing Language using Computers.

The readings for this week present useful information to provide feedback using technology.  Something that made me want to read more about this article is that it mentions a very useful tool that is screen capture. This tool allows the teachers to check the student’s homework and record themselves at the same time to provide feedback and areas of improvement in the activity. It really caught my attention because it is as if you were next to the student providing personal feedback.

I remembered having this type of feedback in our technology class, and I considered that it was really good and personalized; I was able to see the teacher going through the parts of the activity and evaluating one and each of the criteria.

The second article presents information about assessing language using computers, and the development in the use of technology in the creation, delivery and scoring of language tests. 

It is also important to know some of the threats when providing feedback using technology because the students are in the other side of the screen and they will see every movement the teacher does when recording themselves and it always needs to be with educational purposes.

To sum up, it is great to know that there are some ways to provide feedback when having a virtual class and that the interaction is personalized as if it was a one on one feedback. 

Rate: 5

Week 14: Increasing Students' Interaction in the Classroom

Cristian Alberto Menjívar Alemán

Week 14: 10 Benefits of Getting Students to Participate in Classroom Discussions and Increase Student Interaction with "Think-Pair-Share" and "Circle Chats"

The articles for this week provide information about the benefits of getting students to participate in the class. In the first article what made me want to read more about it was the fact that provides 10 different benefits of having students participate in the class.

My favorite quote from the article was “If a student is dozing off, texting, quietly chatting or otherwise not attending to what’s happening that student can be called on or the student next to the offender can be asked to respond.” It is interesting to see that sometimes students are not paying attention in the class but then if you call their attention they may not want to do it again because they will feel ashamed to be called on in front of the whole class.

Something I learned from this article and that every teacher should know is that participation engages students, a good question can pique their interest, make them wonder why, get them to think and motivate them to make connections with the content.

The second article presents activities and other benefits to increase students’ interaction.  Ever since I discovered this great technique of Think-Pair-Share I said to myself that I would be applying it in my English classes. I consider that is important to give students the chance first to analyze on their own any question you may have asked, then compare with another person (peer-checking) so they can see if they are in a good path or have the same ideas, after that they will be able to express or share with the class what they have worked on.

To sum up, teachers should encourage their students to participate in the class and share their ideas to check understanding of what has been taught. 

Rate: 5

                          

Week 12: The Implementation of Project Work

Cristian Alberto Menjívar Alemán

Week 12: Maximizing the Benefits of Project Work in Foreign Language Classrooms and Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning

This week readings show important information about the benefits that project work provides to students. Project based learning is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and respond to an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem or challenge.

Something I want to remember from this article is that when having students work in groups and giving them the opportunity to develop this type of projects is that it helps them increase their critical thinking, collaborative work, communication, which is really important so they can get to an agreement and reach the goal they have set up for the project.

Also, teachers should be aware to provide students with a topic that is attractive and appealing so they can succeed on the project.

The second article provides information about what every project needs in order to be good. There are two important criteria that must be taken into account and the first one is that students perceive the work as personally meaningful; in other words something that fits their needs or that is important for them. The second aspect is that a project needs to comply with an educational purpose. 

Rate: 5

Week 11: Using Mobile Phones in the Classroom

Cristian Alberto Menjívar Alemán
Week 11: Twenty Ideas for Using Mobile Phones in the Language Classroom.

The reading for this week presents different ideas for using mobile phones in classroom. Something that made me want to read more about this article was that it describes 20 practical ways to use mobile phones to support second language learning. The author mentions that students nowadays have more access to a phone than a computer and that they prefer using their phones instead.

As teachers, it is important to have your goals set or what you are trying to achieve when you will use this tool with your students. You have to think if you want to teach any particular skill such as listening, reading or speaking so that the learning process really takes place.

Some of the activities the text mentions are quite impressive that will support and contribute in students’ learning process when using the phone for example: use the notes features to collect vocabulary, use the text messaging feature, use the mobile phone to keep a blog, use the mobile phone for microblogging on Twitter and some others.

On the other hand, there may be some barriers or problems when using mobile phones and some of them are that not all students may have a phone, the cost of mobiles phones and access to Internet, also increased teacher workload for example if the teacher has to reply to all student who may send messages.

All in all, the use of phones to support second language learning exceeds the cons of applying this method in the classroom.

Rate: 4

Week 10: Collaborative Writing Project

Cristian Alberto Menjivar Alemán

Week 10: Online Collaborative Writing Using Wikis.

My initial reaction to the article was quite impressive because it talks about an important tool that teachers can used in order to enhance students’ writing skills that is called wikis. Something that made me want to read more about it was the fact that it provides a real example of a teacher having applied this tool in his class. The teacher explained the process that took place in order to develop this writing activity. I consider really helpful these types of websites and online activities that will contribute in students’ writing skills.

It is also great to see that the teacher during the process provided the prompts so that student could continue on their own having a reference or assistance on what they should do. Students could also help each other, and this promotes collaborative work. For example they could check on their classmates writing, and they could add ideas or help them come up with new things to add.

Something that I consider really important is that teachers should provide students with an interesting topic, or things that are appealing to them that way they will feel motivated and enthusiastic to write more.  I would certainly apply these types of online activities in my class to improve students’ writing skills. 

Rate: 5

Week 8: Acquisiton of Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension Skill

Cristian Alberto Menjivar Alemán

Week 8: Online English-English Learner Dictionaries Boost Word Learning and Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension.

The articles assigned for this week provide relevant information about vocabulary, the use of CALL and technology. The first article provides a variety of different dictionaries that student can use to look up for new words or phrases they are not familiar with. Something that made me want to read more about this article was that it presents five important features that dictionaries should contain to enhance students’ vocabulary and learning.

The first feature mentioned is corpus-based dictionaries which mean content is based on real word. The second feature is word frequency meaning whether a word is used very often or not that often.  The third feature is collocations it refers to the word combination that usually go together. The fourth feature is authentic examples meaning that uses authentic examples to illustrate the use of words in context. The last feature mentioned is topical vocabulary which refers how the words relate semantically to different categories.

The second article talks about vocabulary acquisition to enhance reading comprehension. Something that surprised me in this article was that it mentions that an adequate understanding of academic texts requires a vocabulary of at least 7,000 words, also readers need to know the different meanings of words according to the context and words’ grammatical properties.

The article mentions the benefits of CALL for vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. It is interesting to see how technology keeps playing an important role for teaching. Multimedia is one of the tools used which has various types of content for example text, audio, video, graphics etc. 

To sum up, there is a close relationship between vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. Teachers and instructors should be aware of the important role that play multimedia and technology to apply it in their classes. 

Rate: 5

Week 7: Using the Internet to Enhance Reading and Writing Skills

Cristian Alberto Menjívar Alemán
Week 7: Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction and Using Internet-Based Children’s Literature to Teach EFL

This week we were assigned two different readings: Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction and Using Internet-Based Children’s Literature to Teach EFL, which provide very useful information to improve writing skills making use of the Internet.

The first text mentions how extensive readings help improve children’s vocabulary, grammar, reading, comprehension and writing skills. Students feel more comfortable looking for a text that appeals them the most rather than looking for new words or phrases on a dictionary. The internet plays a very important role because teachers can ask students to look for readings that also contain comprehension questions so that they can complete them outside the classroom.

The second article provides some suggestions on how to use the Internet in the classroom to enhance learning and how to write different writing genres. Something that made me want to read more about this article was the different genres and activities that can be made in order to improve student’s writing skills. Some of the ideas that the article mentions are writing an argumentative essay, notices and advertisements, a description of a book, film or play.

It is interesting to see how the Internet will enhance student’s writing skill since it will give them the chance to choose from among different activities, they can be authentic which will give them a real purpose of writing.

Rate: 5