WEEK 6

Crazy week! I was on holiday last week, so I was on the beach with my laptop. A freak at the beach!

Well, let's start with everything I did. I think it is the week I have read more in all the course. I read the compulsory and the extra materials. I found all of them very interesting. At first we learned about how to manage a big group, and that brought me back memories of my teaching at university.I really enjoyed the article "Teaching Large Classes II - Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students" by Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw (https://sites.google.com/site/webskillsuo/home/assignments/week-6/engaging_students_handout%282%29.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1) I felt I could have written many of the things which were said in the article. One of the most difficult things to do in such big groups is to find out the needs of the students. You always give them times for tutorials, but it is rare that they come to see you. I read about the pace of the lessons, variety of activities, and interactive Power Point presentations as a way to get the students engaged, and monitoring their own learning. I was surprised to know that the attention span of a university student is 20 minutes at most (https://sites.google.com/site/webskillsuo/home/assignments/week-6/engaging_students_handout%282%29.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1). I thought it was longer. The thought of large groups made me think about the spatial layout of the classroom, and how important it is to develop the lessons well. My classrooms at university had very long continuous tables that would not separate, so making groups for speaking was really difficult.

I learned about jigsaw activities, that enhance peer interaction and high level thinking skills, such as analysis and synthesis. I also learned about JiTT. (http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/justintime/index.html) the "Just in Time Teaching" An excellent idea to work WarmUp activities; previous tasks to be done at home that will help develop the activity better in the classroom.

In my final project I'd like to introduce JiTT, so the first step was to create an interactive Power Point, something I hadn't made for long. It was a bit chaotic at the beginning, I didn't remember how to include animations or hyperlinks. Even the version of the program was new to me; but in the end, I got used to it easily. The worst problem I had was when I read about interactive jeopardy games, and I felt attracted to them. I decided to create that kind of game to work on listening comprehension. And although I succeeded at first, I made some kind of mistake when I tried to copy paste it, and I have lost most of it. I'll keep on working, and I hope to include a jeopardy game in my final project. It's been very hard to understand how to create one.

I've changed my mind about using the website of the Delaware museum to write a story about a famous painting (http://www.delart.org/education/the-art-of-storytelling/) I was working with the application, and I don't think it is useful and quick. I decided to use voocaroo instead, to create a podcast and post it on a wiki afterwards. The activity of creating a story from a painting is going to be much more guided. I've chosen Edward Hopper paintings. I think they are suitable for the purpose of the activity; most of them are set in urban scenarios, and there are people involved, so there are characters and setting for the story. I found some examples in the form of videos on you tube, so I think they can be very valuable for my students.

The interactive Power Point presentation is about the parts of a story; I know my adult students know a lot about all these things; but when they write, they sometimes forget to plan their writings to organize their ideas. I would like them to be more critical about what they see and write, to help them understand the rubrics I use to correct their assignments.

In the presentation, by means of two very well known fairy tales, (Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella) students will explore the elements every story has. Then they will listen to a story based on one of the Hopper's paintings, (Nighthawks) and they will play a jeopardy game to check understanding. In the end, they will write and read aloud a story based on one of the works of art. I am still thinking about the length and the format of the assignment.

And I think this is what last week was to me. I had a lot of problems to connect to the internet from the beach resort, but I had sun and webskills course in the end!

Cheers,

Begoña

Spain