Week Reflection

In first half of the week, I learnt how to keep students engaged in large lecture classes, especially with the help of technology and group dynamics. Here one can utilize Bloom’s Taxonomy and Classroom Assessment Techniques (CAT) which are very helpful and still contextual in the university level students since individual follow-up is not practicable there. 

Next I created an interactive powerpoint on teaching short entitled ‘The Fisherman and the Genie’ for fifth graders. Although I had been practicing in the university before, yet it is much more interactive by nature. To be specific we dealt with course content, rather than just interactive website, whereas, here I have to be truly interactive and make so for the Ss. Moreover, there came some clumsiness while handling the resource materials from slidershare, youtube, etc., yet finally there was product done.

In the end of week, I created a wallwisher/padlet page and thereby pasted a wiki page on ‘Learner Autonomy’. The address is http://padlet.com/wall/t3fq94r4bu. Eventually, I have been implementing the project task in black and white and thus, rigorously going through works, perhaps in rush.

 

That’s all.

 

Thanking you.

Young & Yummy

Yubaraj Neupane

Kathmandu,Nepal

The Seventh Week Project Progresses...

To talk about my project implementation progress, my webquest creation is almost in the final stage. Since I have raised the difficulty of my Ss in ‘Listening & Speaking’ skills as compared to ‘Reading & Writing’, my intervention is obviously onto the earlier lg skills. I have begun implementing the interactive mode of this project right from the class. To begin with, Ss were asked to listen to English news broadcast on international radios. Some of them replied that they hardly comprehended the content since it was very new, from adjustment POV, accent to them. Few told me it is the award conferring program of OSCAR. Some of their favorite films are in nomination, e.g. Skyfall. Since they hardly named other films, it proved that they are unable to show keen interest on their own hobby because of lacking foundational listening skills, though they can work up with speaking to some extent.

I have been reviewing two projects besides the earlier reviewed one by Runganayagie Nalini Reddy on ‘Final Project Report for the TEACH South Africa Programme’. They are Prem Bahadur Phyak’s ‘Plan and conduct action research, which involves a change related to technology use in your classroom’ carried out among Master degree students from different

linguistic, socio-cultural, educational and economic background and Camelia Pagila’s ‘Final Project Report for Teens’ which was carried out in a Romanian school of Seventh grade.

Moreover, I am using the websites http://www.elthillside.com/up/files/article4.doc and http://www. soundsofenglish.org/links.html enlisted on my own delicious page www.delicious.com/yubarajnp . I have to begin from the threshold of their listening skills. So I have been undergoing through these all.

Although the change is quite steady, yet I am hopeful that by next week my peer review, plans, rubrics, references in drafts version shall be posted with regular follow-up.

 

Thank you.

Young & Yummy 

Yubaraj Neupane

Kathmandu, Nepal

The Sixth Week is Truly Inspiring

The week went on, but with some promising ideas and workouts. First with discussion as follows.

1.Keeping students engaged in large lecture classes
2.Making technology work for you a.Using Technology In Teaching Large Classes
3.Getting groups to work well
4.Assessing What Your Students Are Learning Keep observing and assessing your Ss' learning by means of various observation and assessment tools.
5.Additional resources
  a.Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Anticipate level-wise learning outcomes as per the rubrics. 
  b.Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) From the very beginning, as most university courses do offer, begin the classes with five to six goals; ensure that the virtual response system, to both T and Ss, for feedback and good comprehension works well; use classroom rubrics for this purpose too and craft and circulate adequate MCQ for scanning misconceptions and confusions.

Second, I learned how to create an interactive powerpoint using the articles on course plan. As a result, I have created an interactive powerpoint on teaching short story entitled 'The Fisherman and the Genie' for fifth graders.
Now, I'm applying my learning to the classroom. Moreover, it's a project that I'm starting with. In the meantime, when I shared this all to my students of grade VIII, few refused citing low knowledge of internet. When I assured my help for, then they agreed. Perhaps, 20 of 30 will be participating right after the webquest formation and other preparation on my part.

That's all about this week.

See you.

Young & Yummy Yubaraj
Kathmandu,Nepal 

My Sixth Week Discussion Reflection

In this first week, I went through the webpages given in the bookmark 'Using Technology in Teaching Large Classes'of the course assignment chart. Such techniques, tools and approaches facilitates us to do more than 'stand and deliver our session' in our large classroom. 

While reading, I synthesized the following points and sub-points:

1.Keeping students engaged in large lecture classes 

o In Just-in-Time Teaching, the course participants have to respond electronically to web-based assignments, due a few hours before class which serves as a pre-reading task so that the instructor can response to Ss' reviews and problems in class hours. 

o'Beating the Numbers Game: Effective Teaching in Large Classes' lists in-class activities, out-of-class group exercises, and other ideas for keeping students engaged in large classes. 

o The effective use of technology and the group work are two ways to enhance large classes, increase student engagement, and minimize the time one spends grading.

2.Making technology work for you a.Using Technology In Teaching Large Classes 

•Online Assessment: With the help of online assessment software or teacher's own course pack. 

•Improving Lectures with Technology One can harness a great deal of materials for effective lectures with the help of technology. 

•Course Websites Make use of virtual class wiki, web quest sites and other types of course websites so that Ss can work off the classroom. 

•Enriching Discussions with Technology Use, as aforementioned, course websites and enrich and enhance one's teaching using discussion forums via posting comments and feedback. 

3.Getting groups to work well Although individual learners try to avoid collaborative learning, one can utilize it for many students, especially comparatively poor students. 

Keeping the population of students and outperforming competency of students, the ability to work well in a group is an essential skill for most college graduates observed in the academia. Moreover, as per Johnson et al. (1998), students who learn in collaborative settings both learn and retain 1.5 times as much as students who learn individually. Therefore, it intensifies the importance of group/collaborative learning. 

4.Assessing What Your Students Are Learning Keep observing and assessing your Ss' learning by means of various observation and assessment tools. 

One can utilize the rubrics alike to our previous week so that students assess and prompt themselves as per the magnacarta, and assessment becomes part of interactive learning. Accomplishment of the work aligning to the rubric can be used as an academic observation tool besides the classroom presentation and group work participation.

5.Additional resources 

a.Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Anticipate level-wise learning outcomes as per the rubrics. But, ensure that they are not ambitious.

b.Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) From the very beginning, as most university courses do offer, begin the classes with five to six goals; ensure that the virtual response system, to both T and Ss, for feedback and good comprehension works well; use classroom rubrics for this purpose too and craft and circulate adequate MCQ for scanning misconceptions and confusions.

Thanks.

Young & Yummy Yubaraj<3

Kathmandu,Nepal

N.B. Happy Valentines' Day <3

My Fifth Week Reflection

Hi Robert and  readers,

 One after another we have come to reflect the fifth week reflection. As earlier, the days are well-structured. Having exposed to numerous jargon and new learning on the web interactively, I have done pretty good jobs this week,I feel. After reading the journal article entitled Focus on Basics (1998) by Susan Gaer, there bulged out many ways to help students motivate more using PBL.  Here I posted on 'How can PBL be incorporated with technology in your class-or alternatively what limitation are there to using PBL in my class?' Next, I found that rubrics and alternative assessment are two of alternative assessment tools in assessing learning. Such assessment uses activities that reveal format and testing of the students' task seeking good points and being equally focused to performance of the learners, but not the weakness/es. So they are alternative tools to traditional ones.In PBL, Ss choose the topic of the project themselves and form a community of friends to work with, so are much more motivated. From this inception, it sows the seeds of independence although they can consult to their teacher whenever required. Further than this, Ss are expected to utilize an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most of or all information that learners work with comes from the web. From a learner to teacher/teacher educators, the WebQuest helps to meet ones' needs. For example, 'Search Techniques' in WebQuest enables Ss to find good resources on the web with stepwise guides: Step Zero: Before you Search, Four Nets for Better Searching, and Specialized Search Engines. 

Besides, I created rubrics using rubistar on evaluating an informal letter which coincidentally addressed my need of assessing composition/writing. Likewise, creating account on rubistar, I hope, would be very beneficial for future such evaluation or testing purposes. 

The third task was to stating how one can change the problems, which we talked in earlier week, into solutions. It is quite good to find out solutions from within which we call emic in research saying, "The truth is here ." So, I am planning to address problems related to speaking skills using webquest via zunal.com though I am unable to create it now. The sixth week, perhaps, I will make it. Using this webquest my Ss can work out in my absence or out of contact.

But, because of time constraint and pretty busy schedule I'm sorry to say that I was unable to create the webquest righteously. Hope I would be doing so this week.

That's all about my fifth week mirror on learning. 

How do you feel? Please reply.

Yours,

Young & Yummy 

Yubaraj

Kathmandu,Nepal

 

Commentary on Week 5 DISCUSSION: Assessment, Rubrics and PBL

Project-based Learning (PBL) is a more helpful, learner-friendly and voluntary participatory approach where learners are relatively released from the retention of language classroom and righteously happen to be learning. After reading the journal article entitled Focus on Basics (1998) by Susan Gaer, there bulged out many ways to help students motivate more using PBL. There are indeed many ways to help PBL in order to motivate a lot. Mainly, it releases freedom on the part of learners construing learning autonomy.
How can PBL be incorporated with technology in your class-or alternatively what limitation are there to using PBL in your class?

Limitations on PBL in My Classes
 

1. Access to the internet at home

2. Unbalanced team members due to unavailability of internet access

3.Much flexibility 

4. No holistic participation because of other additional classes of students 

5. Low effectiveness of guidelines because of aforementioned problems on the part of Ss

Role of rubrics and/or alternative assessment within PBL
Rubrics and alternative assessment are two of alternative assessment tools in assessing learning. Such assessment uses activities that reveal format and testing of the students' task seeking good points and being equally focused to performance of the learners, but not the weakness/es. So they are alternative tools to traditional ones. To be more specific, they help learners to be watchful on their both linguistic development and learning process: reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action promoting the upcoming reflection-for-action.
Alike to the alternative assessment tools, we can use more advanced content in the PBL from learners-oriented ones to teacher-planned ones.

My Fourth Week Reflection

Each week we are getting bigger and expanding the horizon of our learning and teaching as well. Overall, we are both being and becoming gigantic technology-enhanced teachers,I believe.

In inception of the week, I went through the article entitled 'Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books', by Mei-Ya Liang via the webpage http://iteslj.org/Lessons/ Liang-Extensive Reading. html . Through this, I came to know how learners can be facilitated to interpret, appreciate and respond to the literary texts enabling the off-classroom, especially virtual reading habit in increasing level. Likewise, I used the webpage http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/grammar/grammar.html and crafted the abcd objective of one of the activities associating with my classroom.

The next learning item piled in my brain is composing technology-enhanced lesson plan. I re-crafted a lesson plan on teaching 'Adjectives: Degrees of Comparison' using technology. And marked the difference between normal/previous and such plans. 

Under project task, I unfolded the issue of speaking skills of my students being aligned to the second week projection. This issue is proposed for my upcoming project work too. I hope I would be giving proper outlet to this issue right after I have implemented the project. 

With more and more interactive classes virtually among our guru & you guys and physically with my students, I'm really having a great time nowadays. Thanks a lot to the entire team of Interactive Web-based Teaching Team and mates.

See you online.

Young & Yummy 
Yubaraj
Kathmandu,Nepal     

I'm on Third from top-to-bottom on Left Row: Nepali New Year 2069(2012 May) visit with college-mates to Bhaktapur Durbar Square,a historical city east to Kathmandu

My Th-warty,yet Thickset Third Week

Hello all!

This week was more exciting and busy. Days are getting busier and we have been molded steadily. It's really worthy to be one of the participants.

In this week, I went through three different new learning. Among them, the novel experience was building a link repertoire: delicious.com/yubarajnp. We can store our favourite websites along with appropriate tags. Under project exposure,  I went through the final project report for the 'TEACH South Africa Programme' prepared by Runganayagie Nalini Reddy,USAID Southern Africa, Pretoria, South Africa. 

Alike to the common project tasks, she also shares the function of Oregon step-wise project task that it gradually develops the content and skills base of the participants while simultaneously working on developing the project plan for implementation and review (if possible) and reporting. As the course aimed, it gave a sort of mind-mapping for me for my future project task,too.


The third task I did was discussion-oral/aural skill building.This week, I went through the first article 'Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials' by Lindsay Miller on http://www.elthillside.com/up/files/Article4.doc , which was first appeared in the March/April 2003 issue of ESL Magazine. Here Miller draws the background of less researches on listening aspect in the past as compared to speaking or reading/writing given that it is the language skill most often used in everyday life. According to him ,the precise reasons for not carrying out researches are;more than forty percent of our daily communication time is spent on listening, thirty-five percent on speaking, sixteen percent on reading, and only nine percent on writing.
Later, he stresses on the importance of use of authentic materials in listening classes which are not meant for just carrying out the activities or used just for testing purposes, rather should aim at putting the learners at ease. Here the learners are aimed at looking for other pieces of information besides learning the content for testing purpose.

I scanned through two websites :
1. http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu
2. http://www.soundsofenglish.org

They are useful for teaching sounds of English for beginners and other listening activities for them later.

That's all.


Young & Yummy Yubaraj (यूवक युबराज न्यौपाने)
 काठमाडौँ ,नेपाल

                   Training participants in a humanistic game 'Scuba-duba' in my 'Internship' course