Hi Everyone!

You can see the light at the end of the tunnel. This means you are very close to the end of your TESOL training. You can all be very proud of your efforts.
I have looked at a few of the group wiki projects and I am impressed with your results so far. You will have an opportunity to review your progress this semester in the final week of the course.

James’ Reflection

During this course you have worked a lot in group situations.  I know what this is like.  I remember working on group projects during my Master Degree.  One time, I worked in a group to design and create a website. The interesting thing was we used e-mail to communicate, we never meet each other in person! 

At times these experiences can be frustrating.  Other times it can be very rewarding, especially knowing that we have interacted on a human level and drawn upon all positive human traits to complete a task.  I believe it is important to keep in mind the reasons of getting our students to work in groups.  Here are a three of my ideas:

Human: 

As humans, our students need to develop a self-concept and empathy towards others.  Working in a group can help learners to understand that how they feel in a situation is how their peers might feel in the same situation.  From here the learners can develop empathy towards others feelings and position, which is the foundation for communication, compromise, understanding, and agreement.

Life:

Without a doubt, learners will end up interacting and engaging in groups in their personal life and in their future work environments.  The classroom setting is an place where the teacher can facilitate the development of group skills that students need.  This can be done in a safe environment, within the learners Zone of Proximal Development.

Teaching:

The idea of a communicative approach to language acquisition has been promoted throughout this TESOL program.  This is very closely related to the social constructivist learning model. In this it is suggested that learners construct new understandings and reshape current understandings by interacting with the people and the world around them.  With this in mind, group projects are ideal for promoting communicative SLA, especially when learners have a clear goal in mind.

So, I encourage you to keep these ideas in mind as you interact in the final weeks of the course. 

All the best,

James

Read along with this reflection

Hi Everyone!

Let me start this reflection by saying that I think Edublogs is a great resource.  However, like many great services, it costs money. Right now, you all have free blogs without ads and you can embed media like YouTube and quizzes into your blogs.  This is because your blog is attached to my paid ‘Pro’ Edublog. This will only be the case until the end of the semester.  If you wish to use your blog after the semester, for interviews or within their classroom, you will need to pay for a subscription (about $14 for three months).  You can access information about the benefits of being a Pro user on your blog dashboard, under the menu item ‘Pro’.

James’ Reflection

This is the first semester that SKK has run a multimedia course in the TESOL program.  In fact, we may be the only TESOL program in Seoul that offers this course. There are so many factors to consider when preparing and teaching a course like this.  As instructors, it is very difficult to predict and prepare for any difficulties that may occur.  In this course, the technical aspects have sometimes surprised us, such as the way Edublogs cancelled embedding computer code on non-pro users’ blogs this week.

For myself, I have had many years training and creating materials with computers and multimedia, so I am able to solve many problems that arise in class immediately.  The other professors teaching the course have spent many, many hours becoming familiar with the technology and thoroughly preparing their multimedia classes. I commend Professor Sara and Professor Monique for their efforts in doing this.

Because of our preparation, as professors we are able to find quick solutions and adjust the program to benefit our learners, especially when these unpredictable, technical situations arise in our classes.  Basically, we learn from the situation, improve the course, and improve or knowledge through this.

What am I trying to say?

I would like all students to consider the complex nature of the course, especially the technical aspects.  I would like to ask that all students realize that their instructor has prepared the class for many hours, with careful consideration for their participants. Please, have empathy when situations arise in class that may hinder the flow of learning.  These situations are due to unpredictable technical situations.  Sure, sometimes an instructor maybe unsure of a solution to a problem.  It is a professional and logical course of action for them to interact with other professors to find a workable solution for their student, which may take a day at the most.

Thank you to all participants who have shown empathy towards the points I mentioned here.  We want to provide the BEST learning for you and for future participants.  This takes time, effort, and patience from participants and professors, as we work together to create a better learning environment for our language learners.

Thanks for reading

James

P.S. Feel free to leave a comment on your thoughts below.

Listen and read along!

Hi Everyone

Another busy week has gone by so fast.  Everyone is doing a great job on their website evaluations.  Just remember; please contact your instructor, if your group has difficulties completing the task by May 6^th.

Thank you to participants who have made a commitment to keeping a regular journal on their blog.  There is also a group of participants who regularly leave comments on each other blogs.  This is a great way to build a community around your website and to make it more inviting and up-to-date.

James’ Reflection

I have just finished marking the assignments for the YouTube activity.  I was very impressed with the technical abilities that participants have demonstrated. The majority of results were ‘A’ or ‘A+’.  The reason that some assignments dropped marks was due to the poor written English and how this affected the overall learning.

In my experience at working with EFL learners, it is not the individual’s level of English proficiency that determines the quality of a written product, but rather the extent to which the individual follows the writing process.

The term ‘writing process’ maybe new to some.  It describes the steps that all writers should go through before publishing a piece of writing.  The steps are basically:

Pre-writing

• Thinking about the audience and purpose for writing
• Deciding on a form of writing
• Brainstorming ideas

Draft Writing

• Consider organisation, voice, word choice, and sentence fluency

Responding and Revising

• Engaging in a teacher or peer conference
• Discussions about how to improve the clarity, organization, and language in the writing
• Making the improvements suggested during conferencing

Editing (separate from revising)

• Making corrections to adhere to the standard conventions of English
• Publishing and Sharing
• Sharing your work with the intended audience

Interestingly, this process should be used for all levels of writing from young learners to academic texts.  Additionally, as a teacher, it is very obvious which learners have engaged in the writing process fully, due to the improved quality of their work.

Here are a few websites dedicated to the writing process:

OWL on writing and the writing process (mostly for academic purposes)

Daily Writing Tips

Wikipedia

Have a great weekend everyone!

James

Hi everyone

I have had a quick look at all the YouTube assignments and I am impressed with what I see so far.  The skill of embedding a YouTube video into your blog will be very handy for you in your classroom teaching.

Some learners have developed the skills of uploading their own video to YouTube.  With this in mind, you might like to video your final practicum teaching, upload it to YouTube, and put it on your e-portfolio.  From this, your future employer can view your teaching skills…Just an idea.

James’ Reflection

As we have been evaluating websites this week, a connection has been made between the resources you choose to use in your classroom and your knowledge of your students.  To me this is the starting point for developing student centered learning.  Here is a list of questions that you could ask yourself to assist in choosing appropriate multimedia resources for your students:

• What are my students’ language learning needs?
• What are my students’ English level(s)?
• What are my students’ ages?
• What are my students’ interests?
• What are my students’ cultural and social backgrounds?
• What aspects of my students’ cultural and social backgrounds may affect learning? e.g. parental support and assumptions towards education, lifestyle, schedule, social status, life-experiences.
• What are my students’ learning styles?
• What teaching approaches are my students’ familiar with?
• What teaching approaches can I use to engage my learners?

This is just a start.  Feel free to comment, if you consider anything that could be added to the list of questions.

I hope everything is going well.

James

Hi Everyone

Congratulations on the success of your recent Hot Potatoes assignment.  It has been great to hear that some participants have implemented their Hot Potatoes in their teaching settings already and received positive feedback from their students.  Additionally, I was informed that one participant has implemented a blog into her teaching setting and her students are impressed.

I would encourage all participants who are currently teaching to implement their new skills into their teaching setting.  This will have two benefits.  First, you will become more confident at using the technology.  Second, you will see the benefits of the technology in an authentic environment.  How do you really know how useful these technologies can be until you actually try your new technological skills out in your teaching setting.

James Reflection

Last week, I mentioned the importance of developing a collaborative, community atmosphere through blogging.  With the pressures of assignments and learning from the TESOL course, participants seem to be struggling to find time to maintain their blogs, let alone utilise the blogs full communicative potential.  How can this issue be addressed to ensure that the blogging aspect of the course is more meaningful and practical?

First, I believe that the multimedia course must be integrated more with the other courses in the program.  For example, journal reflections in the Methodology course could be posted ‘privately’ or ‘openly’ on the participants’ blogs.  Feedback could be given by instructors online and a community forum could be established based on participants’ reflections.

Second, the community aspect of the blog needs to be integrated as a graded portion of the course.  This would be part of the ‘Participation’ grade.  Within teams, participants reflect and provide feedback on each others’ created resources and reflections.  An issue in this is whether participants are engaging in the task to gain a high grade, or do they see a genuine benefit in the social construction of knowledge and ideas.

My question is; how do my Korean participants feel about exposing their thoughts and reflections to a wider group of learners?

In my experience, participants will overcome any anxiety of sharing openly once they recognise the benefits of a community of interacting learners.  It is my belief that modern Web 2.0 technology has the potential to initiate such a learning environment.  What better place to do it than with our TESOL classmates?

Hi everyone

It has been an extremely busy week.  I am sure that everyone is happy to have finished their Hot Potatoes assignment.  As I have told you in class, the Hot Potatoes assignment is the most intensive. Most of the technical skills you have gained in Module 2 will be important for the future modules.

I am happy to see many participants are leaving posts on the blog and comments on their classmates’ blogs.  This is great to see because the purpose of the blog is to develop a community of people with similar interests.  Additionally, if you have people interacting with your blog it will have a more active and purposeful feel to it.

James Reflection

I have looked at many of the participants Hot Potato assignments.  At this stage, I can say that I am extremely impressed with what I have seen.  Initially, as a way of compensating for the difficult nature of the assignment, I thought I would have to mark the assignments in a generous manner.  However, the quality, effort, and determination reflected in the web sites has resulted in generally high marks anyway.

Certainly, the rubric used for the assignment allows for differentiation between the participants who completed the assignment requirements and the participants who explored the authoring tool carefully and took extra time and effort to complete a comprehensive project.

As the course designer, I feel proud to play a role in the production of such wonderful resources.

Have a great week.

James

Listen and read along with this post

Hi Everyone

I am sure you are busy working on your Hot Potatoes assignment. If you have finished already, I would like to encourage you to take a bit more time to explore the Hot Potatoes functions and see how you can improve or upgrade your assignment. For example, I have now put up a new video on how to embed a YouTube video into your Hot Potatoes activities. Can you use this somewhere in your assignment ?

I just want to remind you that your instructors are here to help. If you have any questions or problems regarding the Hot Potatoes assignment, just e-mail james.caldwell1973@gmail.com

James’ Reflection

It has been great to see that most participants are adapting to the student autonomy that the tutorial videos provide. Yet, I am still a little nervous because I have had only a few participants actually approaching me with questions. I hope this is because the tutorial videos are more helpful than I originally thought.

I would like to comment on the high level of enthusiasm and determination from participants, especially those who confessed to being technologically challenged at the start of the course. Offering time, support, and tutorial videos for participants seems to have resulted in more confident participants. It has been great to see the satisfied expressions on participants’ faces as they complete small steps to achieve complex tasks.

I am glad that the Hot Potatoes assignment is at the start of the course because many of the elements involved are indirectly preparing participants with skills and knowledge for the later modules. Therefore, I envisage the following modules to be much easier and, as a result, participants can focus on the pedagogical aspects of their recourses as much as the technical.

Thank you…Have a great week

James

Read and Listen to Week 4 Reflection

Welcome to the Week 4 review.  I know that many of you will have a lot to do this weekend, not just in the multimedia course, but in other courses too.

 The Hot Potatoes Module is the most intensive of the Multimedia course.  Therefore, I would like to encourage everyone to spend quality time watching the tutorial videos.  If you take time to do this now, the following modules will be much easier for you.

 Remember, that there are extra revision classes available for you to get help.  So far, not many people have come to these.  Now maybe the time when you can take advantage of these extra lessons.

 James’ Reflection

 I am grateful to everyone who has taken time to watch and follow along with the tutorial videos.  I am sure that my voice will be the most well known voice to all students! The one thing that I have noticed is the uncertainty that participants have approached the tutorial videos and the autonomy that they offer towards learning.  I guess this is a very new way of learning for many participants, who may be used to more ‘teacher centered’ learning environments.

 It is important for participants to know that the videos have been designed for them to ‘watch and do’ at the same time.  In this, I think it would be most effective if participants watch the videos while having the software open and creating at the same time, even if what they are creating isn’t a final product.  I think to become familiar with the authoring tools functions is most important to start with.

 In light of this, I will prepare a tutorial video and section in the Introduction module of this course that informs the participants of my above suggestions.

 I hope that by Monday all participants have watched the Hot Potatoes Tutorials and are, at least, starting to create their resources for the assignment.

 See you next week,

 James

Listen and read along with this post.

The weeks seem to be flying by!  However, everyone has been doing a fantastic job on in the multimedia course.  Everybody has a blog now!  Additionally, everybody is able to add content to their blog, add widgets, and customize their blog to suit them.

I encourage you all to take time to explore your blog and make it fabulous.  Your instructors have only shown you the very basics of setting up your blog.  To make your blog even better, you will need to spend time exploring all the functions of your blog independently.  Looking at other blogs on the internet can provide you with ideas for your blog.  You can use Google and YouTube to help you learn how to do new things.  Also, there are the edublogs forums that can help you too.

Remember, we are offering extra revision classes for all participants who wish to fine-tune their multimedia skills.  You can see the times displayed on the message board in the TESOL hallway.

James’ Reflection

It has been a very successful week.  The tutorial videos are working well and all the participants are keeping up with the skills presented in the course.  The participants’ blogs are looking wonderful.  However, I would like to establish more of a community feel to the blogs.

Next week, I hope participants begin to comment on each others’ blogs.  In fact, if you are reading this reflection, how about leaving a comment below by clicking on the comments link at the bottom of this post!

Overall, I have been impressed with everybody’s efforts in learning new technology.  It seems that the participants are recognizing who needs extra help and are naturally ‘tutoring’ each other when I am busy.

Let’s keep up the fabulous work.  How about voting below for your favourite blog feature, you can vote for more than one!

Peace

James

Listen and read along with this reflection

Hi Everyone!

What a busy week we have had.  I know the pressures of study might be starting to be a reality for many of you.  With this in mind, I hope that the Multimedia class can be a calm place, where you can learn in a non-stressful, supportive atmosphere with your classmates.

Remember, we can help each other learn new things and never feel alone or worried when learning about the new technology.

This week you all made fantastic progress.  You defined your preferred teaching setting and you set up your own blog. If you haven’t done so already, please e-mail your instructor your blog address now!

Because you now have an edublogs user name and password, you can now leave comments on this blog (and your classmate’s blogs).  Here is how:

1. Sign in to edublogs using your user name and password
2. Visit this site
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and fill in the comment box.  If you have a webcam and microphone at home you can leave a video or audio comment on this course blog!

Let’s make a COMMUNITY of blogs.  I would like to see many comments on this blog each week!

You can also see that I have added a couple more photos to our slideshow on the right.

EXTRA MULTIMEDIA CLASSES

Don’t forget to sign up to the revision classes for the Multimedia course.  You don’t have to come to the classes each week; just when you feel you need help.  The sign up paper is on the notice board in the hallway.  I will be teaching the Wednesday revision class.

JAMES’S REFLECTION

I was pleased to read all course participants’ reflections regarding their attitudes and feelings towards technology.  From these reflections, I can see that we have a mix of confident and less-confident participants in the course.  With this in mind, I have done my best to create a supportive, calm and gentle atmosphere within the Multimedia classes.  I have done my best to keep my promise to offer extra support to my students who need it.  Additionally, the more confident participants are naturally offering support to their peers where needed.  This ‘peer tutoring’ is something I would like to encourage more in the classroom.

In the reflections, I was very impressed to see that all the participants, regardless of their confidence level, recognised the potential of technology in the EFL classroom.  There were two main reasons for this that were described by the students:

1. Participants recognized their students’ interests in technology as a part of society and modern culture.  Therefore participants recognized the potential of technology as a way of ‘reaching’ their students and making learning more interesting.
2. Participants recognised that technology had become ‘mainstream’ and there was no way of avoiding it as it permeated their lives to different degrees.

This was pleasing to see because, with these positive attitudes realized, we can move on to answering two important questions:

1. How can we integrate technology into our EFL classrooms to support Second Language Acquisition (SLA)?
2. How can we ensure optimum uptake of technology by teachers and administration within our EFL teaching institutions?

It is an objective of this course to discover practical answers to these questions.

I am grateful to all my participants’ honest reflections.

Have a great week

James