Last week

I don't like saying goodbye and I'm quite emotional now that our online course is over. 
It feels so strange that although we are people from different countries, languages, religions and beliefs, we have so much in common and share the same worries and interest for our job, teaching EFL. We've all learned from each other, at least I have and I'd like to believe that sb has learned sth from me as well.
It's been geat working with you and Robert. I will really miss you guys.
Love,
Angela

One week before the end of our course

My team has found the treasure at the treasure hunt game which is organized in my town. We've celebrated enough, and in the mean time, I've sent my final project plan to Robert. I hope he'll find it satisfactory as the time was limited this week!!!

We’ve explored Multiple intelligencies, activist  learners, reflector learners, theorists, pragmatists etc. Several learning styles, several paces, several teaching methods. It is true that each teacher should keep his/her eyes open in order to find out the students' needs. Then, he/she can modify his/her teaching in order to appeal to the students' needs and the goal of the course.

The best way to make the most of each learning group is to use Educational Technology . By having the students work on webquests, chat rooms, class websites, blogs etc, they are asked  to use several skills and abilities they have, thus acquiring as much as possible from each course.

P.S. I’ve  just tried the multiple intelligences quiz to my son and I found out that he is a Mathematic, logical type of student. I wish he liked learning foreign languages as well!!! 

That's all for now.
Angela :-), :-)

Week 8 What a week!!!

Hello everybody                                          
In Greece we're celebrating the beginning of Lent. It's forty days before Easter and it's like Halloween to us. Being a mother of two sons I have to go to fancy dress parties, treasure hunt games, parades etc. When I come back from all these activities I have to post my assignments, comment on others', write on my blog etc and still go to work the following morning.

In the meantime, I managed to create my own website and I'm planning to use it next semester with a teacher's training course. I'm sure I'll impress them. I'm so proud of it.       

 I've also spent a lot of hours exploring ANVILL but I think I still need more practice, sth that I can't do this week. I'm sure I will later on.

As our course is about to finish, I think we'll all miss it a lot. I'll miss always having sth to do, reading your comments, receiving comments and grades from Robert. I hope we'll keep contact afterwards.

That's all for now folks!!
See you all on line

Angela

New partner, 1 computer classroom, autonomous learners

I have to admit that I can't wait to work with my partners Mbarek and Palwasha. Though I haven't quite understood how exactly this will be done. I always like Mbarek's and Palwasha's posts and we share more or less similar teaching contexts. I also like the fact that we'll work on PPP.
Concerning one computer classroom, it is OK if you also have a projector where you can project things for everyone to see. In my teaching context I can only bring my own laptop to the classroom and have the students watch on the screen sth I've downloaded as there is no internet connection.
I can't say it's ideal but at least it is sth different, sth innovative and students like it a lot. Gradually, students will start working on their PCs to carry out their own research and make their own PPP.
All the above can help make our students autonomous, independent learners who will continue life long learning after the end of the particular course. After all the aim of every teacher is (or should be) to make him/her self reduntant. To provide the students with skills that can help them improve themselves.

Using Interactive Power Point Presentations

And I thought that using applause and sound effects in my slides was sth unique and interactive!!! I thought that I will impress my students by changing each slide with the sound of a camera!!!
I now realize that I was far behind from being interactive. Reading the articles of this week including the supplementary ones has helped me a lot. I hope I will manage to apply what I have learned in the PPPresentation we're asked to to for the second half of the week.

PBL & Webquests

Another week is about to finish and how much we've gained!
 I'm planning to put PBL and Webquests into action in my Technical Vocational Senior High School. The problem is that although there are two computer labs in my school I can't take turn to use them. Both labs are occupated by the teachers of informatics. What I'll do is to assign web search as homework as most of the teachers have internet acess at home. Then the students can print out what they have found and use it in the classroom. Of course this is not actually a computer enhanced lesson but it's the best I can do so far. Another thing I can do is to carry out crosscurricular tasks with the teacher of informatics. Maybe I can arrange with him to let the students carry out the research during his lesson.
I hope all this will work out  

Reading/Writing skills

I would like to thank you all for the useful sites you have helped me add to my delicious list. Thanks for sharing.

I have to admit that teaching writing through the web is cerainly funnier and esier than teaching through a course book. Through the web we can teach our Ss how to write good essays, letters, e-mails, descriptions etc. Similarly, reading could also become funnier and more interesting using the web.
On the other hand I insist on teaching literature for reading/writing purposes through literature books with the help of CDs DVDs.
Ss must touch, smell and feel the books they are reading rather than scrolling down the text to read. In many occassions I've found sand inside the books I read during my summer holidays in the Greek islands and the memories I recall are so powerful that no PC can offer.
Any other romantic teachers out there?
Angela

listening speaking skills

In Greece most courses are certificate oriented and listening and speaking skills have been neglected.

I happen to know teachers who asked their students to memorize whole paragraphs (about themselves, about the area they live in, sports, smoking, environment, etc) in order to help them pass the speaking test for FCE or CPE. In some occasions I asked my students during a speaking test: “Hello, what’s your name?” and they started telling me a whole paragraph they had memorized: “Hello, my name is Mary. I come from Sitia, Crete. Sitia is a seaside town on the east coast of Crete with kind and generous people…” Then the next student came in : “My name is Helen I am from Sitia….” When I asked them, they said that their teacher had written some paragraphs, one for every occasion so that they would manage to pass their speaking test. I told them that I could not give the pass grade since they couldn’t actually communicate. Instead of devoting time and effort trying to learn by heart whole paragraphs, they could have practised the language.    

Things are now improving and I hope we'll manage to change the teachers'  the students' and their parents attitude towards English  languafe lwarning.

teaching situation and CALL

The second week is already behind us. It's easier than I thought, due to Robert's accurate remarks and immediate help.
It is really interesting how techers from all parts of the world face the same more or less problems. I've noticed that we've all been trying to use CALL in our teaching situation, despite the constraints we've been facing. For this reason, as I've just suggested to Abed, we always have to have a back up plan when dealing with Educational technology. In this way we can be flexible in our teaching if anything such as (power cuts, problems with the internet connection or the software we are using) occur.
We can always overcome problems with patience, persistence and knowledge of course . After all, that's why we've all taken this course.

And of course remember: Computers can never resplace/displace teachers. Teaching is not just about providing knowledge but also caring and fostering each student's  personal needs, character and feelings. 

That's all folks

See you on line

Angela

the ABCD model

It was quite interesting reading about the ABCD model and learning objectives. I believe that learning objectives (linguistic, pragmatic etc) exist at the back of the mind of every teacher whether he/she realizes it or not. It reminded me of a quotation by Rogers (1986: 41) who defines education as “a planned learning activity which one party provides for another in relation to an agreed objective. There are four elements involved: the teacher agent, the student participant, the intended goals and objectives and the methods and content that enable the student participant to learn”. And it’s   obvious that it is our job to combine all the above for the benefit of our students.

Moreover, Johns (1991: 67) maintains that “All language teaching must be designed for the specific learning and language use purposes of identified groups of students.”

What I believe that is of primary importance before setting out the objectives is to carry out a Needs Analysis of the class we’re going to teach. We can use Kipling’s “honest serving men” as quoted in (Hutchinson and Waters 1987: 22) to outline the basic questions:

                                           I keep six honest men.

                                          (They taught me all I knew.)

             Their names are What and Why and When

                                        And How and Where and Who.

Consequently, an effective researcher should ask “who” is going to be involved in the process, “where” and “when” the learning is to take place, “what” the student needs to learn and “how” learning will be achieved, before starting to design a syllabus. As Hutchinson and Waters (ibid: 22) point out, the questions above are interdependent in course design and can be listed under three main headings: language descriptors (what?), theories of learning (how?) and NA (who? why? where? when?).

 About Needs Analysis, in order to be effective it should incorporate a PP (Personal Profile), a PSA (Present Situation Analysis) and a TSA (Target Situation Analysis).

Similarly the ABCD model can help teachers determine the Audience (who?), Behaviour (what? how?), Condition (why?) and Degree of Mastery (when? where? how fast?) of our objectives.

Practical application of the ABCD model in my teaching situation

I’m teaching at the department of Accountants of  a Technical Vocational School. The particular students have been taught how to write application letters and I’ll use the ABCD model to get a feedback whether my objectives have been fulfilled:

Audience: 12 Students in the field of Accountancy. Level of English language: lower intermediate to intermediate. All of them are computer literate.

Behaviour: The Ss are expected to read and understand an ad (Secretary Wanted)

WANTED URGENTLY

A secretary for a travel agency.

 Must speak English fluently

and either French or German,

 be prepared to work long hours

 with extra money for overtime

work. Single, young persons preferred.

Apply to  Mr Patric Jones

39 Venizelou st

Athens

Condition: Ss have to write an application letter using all the info included in the ad and making up the appropriate qualifications to get the job. Previous knowledge (content and formal schemata) has to be activated.

Degree of Mastery: Writing in a formal way addressing a manager. No grammar/spelling mistakes include all the info provided.

Through this task, which can also be used as a test I can find out whether the particular Ss have understood how a formal, application letter should be written, applying the ABCD model.

Google what?

Dear all,

I was very happy to find out that teachers all over the world have been trying the same things and sharing the same agonies as me.

I am (or used to be) a Google fan as most of you. During the past few days since I received the e-mail from Robert about the other search engines that exist, I have been really busy searching (like a female Sherlock Holmes) about everything. I even started to wonder how come I hadn't thought that there should be other search engines (apart from Google) earlier.

I am a teacher trainer for the Greek Ministry of Education and Lifelong learning. After the reading and searching that I did this past week I realised that I can share the knowledge and info acquired with the English teachers of primary education and talk to them about Noodletools.com and ask them to search at kidsclick.org (for facts, arts, mythology, Extra Sensory Perception) or Ask kids  and Yahoo kids (for  films, cartoons, creating DVDs). In this way I'll save them time and help them make their lesson motivating and funny. I have started preparing a new seminar and it will take place in the computer lab!!!

I've also found the part of Country Studies in the Noodletools.com very useful for my students at the Technical Vocational School. Earlier this year we had some problems with racism as some students are immigrants from other countries (Albania, Bulgaria and Russia). Some of them have not been incorporated in the school community smoothly. I thought that if I took the whole class to the computer lab and help them find info about each of the above country and make projects about its history, culture, geography etc it would give the Greek students another perspective, eliminating the fear of the unknown. I’ll let you know!!!

Angela

week 1

hello everybody,
My name is Angela  Christaki. I'm from Greece. I live and work in Sitia which is a small seaside town on the east part of Crete (the famous island where the Minoan palace of Knossos is).
I have been an English teacher in Primary, Secondary and Tertiary education  for the past 13 years  and I'm currently appointed in the Technical Vocational School of Sitia. I've studied English literature and I've got a masters degree in  "Methodology of Teaching English" . I am married and I have two sons Johny 10 and Mario 7.
I've just managed to create my own blogspot and I feel excited. I think that we will manage to exchange ideas and experience and it will be fun!!!

Please write to me about yourselves, after all we're going to be chatting for the next 10 weeks!!!

Best Regards
Angela Christaki