Week 3: Aural/Oral Skill-Building Websites and Delicious

Hi again!

I'm posting this message a few hours before close of week 3. I decided to leave this activity (the blog) for the end so that I could give a more general appreciation of this week. The course is still less than half way for the final project, however I feel I have learnt so much already!

As for the Aural/Oral Skill-Building Websites, I found out about many great online resources to teach pronunciation and to help students develop their speaking and listening skills. Two of my favorite:

- http://www.pronuncian.com/, which offers hundreds of pronunciation lessons with options of tests, quizzes, audios, videos and progress tracking.

- http://lyricstraining.com/, where students practice their listening skills by watching music videos. They also learn vocabulary and spelling because they have to type the words missing from the lyrics. Educational and fun, all in one!

Then, I created an account at http://delicious.com. I was fascinated by this tool. It's very useful and user friendly. I'm adding new sites every day!

Finally, I read and analized a sample project which was an important step in the way to creating my own. I liked how it was organized and how the situation was presented and approached. This reading gave me a very good overview of how I should do mine when the time comes.

Lore from Argentina

Week 2: web searching and ABCD objectives

Hi everyone,

During this second week of the course, I had the opportunity to discover many interesting and useful search engines in www.noodletools.com. Some of them were completely new for me (e.g.: www.teachertube.com) and others rung the bell but I had never used them before (e.g.: www.quotes.net). It was a great experience to go through all those sites and see that the web has so much more to offer than we can imagine.

Apart from the web searching experience, I read about the ABCD objectives for the first time. It's very important to have our objectives clear before we start a new lesson because both students and teacher benefit from this method.

Lore from Argentina

Week 1: A few words

Well, I'm new at this. Even though I have visited and read tons of blogs, I had never created a blog before (or posted in one). So it's a completely new experience to me. And I love it! It's easy, it's simple and user-friendly, and it can be very useful. I feel very excited about posting in this blog each week. I know already it will enhance my learning experience.

I think blogs are very powerful tools for teaching. They are the perfect environment to make students participate and engage in a topic. Plus, they come handy to assess a student's writing skills as well.

Blogs are an invitation to express opinions and points of view. Furthermore, a blog is capable of triggering new ideas among its particiant bloggers.

I'm really looking forward to applying this online resource to my own classes!