WEEK 5
This week we have been working on PBLs and alternative assessment. We have read excellent articles about new ways to face our lessons. Never has information been so easily available to everybody as it is nowadays with the advent of the Internet. Our society is changing, and so is our methodology in our lessons. The teacher is no more the center of the lessons, it is the learner instead; our lessons have to move towards more open learnig communities where learners feel themselves an active part of these communities. Thanks to alternative assessment the students may take part in the process of evaluation, teacher and students may come to an agreement on how the subject will be graded. That will contribute to a conscious learning on behalf of the student; what subsequently will result in more autonomy. Students still think that the teacher is the only person who is entitled to correct them; in fact, students may improve a lot with the help of their classmates. Nobody is going to explain better a concept than a peer. Teachers tend to give more academic explanations, whereas students at the same interlanguage level are going to understand the flaws of their classmates better; they are at the same stage in learning.

I've also discovered new tools to use in my lessons; my students are adults, what means that, in some way, they are not so open to new methodologies and new ways of doing things. There are some students who hate technology, or feel they can do very little with a computer. My students are very shy and don't communicate easily, either because they feel embarrassed when they make mistakes, or because they don't want to share their feelings about certain subjects, such as economy, politics or religion. Perhaps just the fact that they have to register when they are using a given service, may cause they don't use the website, although it is an excellent tool to learn English.

Reading Larry Felazzo's blog about websites to improve speaking in the lessons (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/the-best-sites-to-practice-speaking-english/) I saw a tool called "the art of storytelling" (http://www.artofstorytelling.org/write-a-story) and I thought that would be a very good tool to use in my lessons. The student can choose one painting to create a short story to later record it and post it on a students' website. It is a good way to practice written and oral production, based on a picture that may help them express better. The oral production won't be natural or spontaneous, (with more mistakes) the students will be able to rehearse and edit their oral production before posting. They will feel more relaxed than in daily lessons; and as Susan Gaer states in her article "Less Teaching and More Learning" (http://www.ncsall.net/index.html@id=385.html) "The sense of doing something meaningful that will exist beyond the classroom walls," will engage and motivate the students better.

Right now I am thinking of a suitable project for my lessons using a webquest. I hope to finish it on time! I feel I need to think a little more about it.
See you next week,
Begoña
Spain