MY TRAINING WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY - MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES (MOOC) -                                                                          WEEK 1

Hello everyone,

It was a pleasure for me to take part in the Massive Open Online Courses, known as MOOC.
The beginning of the course was focusing on grammar review. I found it very interesting because it helped me revise the grammar points I already  know, but it also permitted me to have more information about some of the items.
In addition to that, having the opportunity to meet people from new horizons is something special for me. I have high hope that the interaction with other people will be useful to anyone in terms of acquiring knowledge.

Best regards,

Dagnogo

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON - 2013 WINTER WEBSKILLS COURSE

                              MY REFLECTIONS ON WEEK 10

Hello everyone,

Wow! How time flies! We’re already at the end of our 2013 Winter Webskills Course at the University of Oregon. What a huge experience!

We had ten (10) wonderful weeks in terms of learning. I can’t go through all the techniques and tools we had learnt, but I can say that I did appreciate “How to set a clear objective with the ABCD method”, the discussion board “Nicenet”, “The Blog” - because when hearing about a blog, I always had in mind something related to politicians – “Delicious” for tagging websites and pages of interest to us, etc.

I think that I’ll be using many tools we covered, but “Nicenet” is the only I have used so far. The use of that discussion board enabled me to initiate some of my students to the use of technology since the majority of them were not computer literate. But today, they are feeling, little by little, “comfortable “with the use of computers in addition to performing some activities on the Web.

I would like to say that all the tools we’ve gone through will be relevant, in one way or another, to what I do depending on what objectives I want to reach. Because I want to improve my students’ abilities in writing, I decided to work with “Nicenet” for the time being. When time comes for putting the emphasis of listening and speaking, I’ll certain use ANVILL.

I would like to say that talking about large classes was beneficial to me because I’ve only taught large classes since I entered the teaching profession. With the readings I went through, I had new ideas about how to teach large classes.

Long live the University of Oregon and the American English Institute! – because they succeeded in helping me to shift from the status of “a traditional teacher” to that of a teacher capable of using technology in his classes.

To conclude, I have to say that time has come for me to congratulate our dear Instructor Robert Elliott for his know-how and availability, Jeff Magoto and David Bentz for their rich collaboration. I’m grateful to all the other participants of this 2013 Winter Webskills Course. I have to say that you’re all smart teachers, and I did enjoy to be working with you for a span of time. To be honest, I’ll miss you all. But, what is endless in life?

Best regards,

Dagnogo

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON – 2013 WINTER WEBSKILLS COURSES

                                     MY REFLECTIONS ON WEEK 9

Hi all,

Week 8 is gone. Welcome Week 9. This week, we learnt what is referred to as “Multiple Intelligences”. I really appreciate this theory developed by Howard Garner from Harvard University because it helped me understand the kinds of intelligences that can exist, and encouraged me to be more tolerant towards learners. From what I learnt,  I come to understand that trying to find a person with all the nine (9) intelligences is a utopia.

This week was also the opportunity for us to “polish” our individual projects for submission to the Instructor. Wow! I come from far. In the very beginning of the course, when reflecting on the final project, one question was always going through my mind: “Will I be successful?” But with the expertise our Instructor displayed and the sincere collaboration with the other participants of the class, I moved smoothly towards the final project. Have I made it? Time will tell. All my gratitude to my partners, namely Brigitte Falkner from Austria and Nguyen Thi Lan Huong from Vietnam for the good job done when time came for reviewing my draft project.

The final point I’d like to mention is that I have a mixed feeling now because the countdown has already started. I’m happy because we’ve learnt a lot through the past weeks. At the same time, I feel nostalgia when I think of the days after the wrap up of these 2013 Winter Webskills courses. I’ll miss you Robert, Brigitte, Huong, Nazeer, Yves, Philippe, Irada, Peri, Nasim, Mustapha, Jinnat, Mandira, Renuka, Ricardo, Tatsiana, Elena, Aparna, Aurangzeb, Montana, Nahid, Sadia, Yubaraj, and Maheshwor. Anyway, “that’s the way life goes.”

Looking forward to starting the very last week, I wish anyone of us good luck for our final projects.

With regards,

Dagnogo

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON WEBSKILLS COURSE

                                             MY REFLECTIONS ON WEEK 8

Hi all,

This week, we’ve dealt with how to create a class site or make online exercises. We’ve also tackled online tools for enhancing learning. It’s in this respect that we spoke about ANVIL which stands for A National Virtual Language Lab. ANVIL is a speech-based toolbox for language teachers which is focused on the practice of oral/aural language. After going through the writings related to ANVILL, I can say that ANVILL can play a very important role in acquiring knowledge and enhancing learner autonomy.

In addition to that, in this same week, since we are approaching, little by little, the end of this Winter Webskills course, each participant was asked to submit the first draft of his/her project plan or project report to the partner(s) he/she has agreed to work with. I really appreciated this way of doing things because it enables us to put ourselves in the shoes of both a student and a teacher.

I also found the content of the webinar session of March 1, 2013 - with Jeff Magoto and our Instructor Robert - very interesting even if I joined it a bit late. It enabled me to hear some of my classmates' voices in addition to the videos of others.

In sum, it was a wonderful week despite the fact that we worked tirelessly.

With regards,

Dagnogo

MY REFLECTIONS ON WEEK 7

Hello Robert and Other Participants,

This week, we have gone through “Learner Autonomy” and “One-Computer Classroom”.

After reading the documents provided, and from my own experience as an in-service teacher, I will argue that learner autonomy is very important – even indispensable in a learning process. And this learner autonomy can be promoted through active practice on the part of the learner, and by the means of activities such as pair work and group work. These kinds of activities will enable students to acquire more confidence and knowledge through self and peer assessments.

In this same week, we were taught what Wallwisher is, and how to create a wall for instance.

Another aspect of what I did in Week 7 is that, on Thursday February 21, I resumed the implementation of my technology change after the four-day holiday that was granted to students. In my Grade 10 class, I did a lesson on “Making Suggestions”. At the end of the lesson in class, I gave students a follow-up activity related to “Making suggestions”. It had to be performed out of the class, on Nicenet, in its “Conferencing” section.

Since it was the very first time my students would perform such an activity with the Web, I decided to conduct a survey, after the students had finished doing the activity. The survey was about the use of the Web, and especially Nicenet. The “rubric” for the survey had three (3) “dimensions”, namely “Satisfied”, “Not Satisfied” and “No Opinion”. In the end, 68% of the students were satisfied, 7% were not satisfied, and 25% had no opinion.

To put it in a nutshell, the vast majority of the students were satisfied with the technology change that was brought in. Even some of the students came to me, and asked for the day the next activity would take place. I noticed a certain satisfaction on their part, and a challenge they were willing to take up in order to become computer literate for using Web materials.

Best regards,

Dagnogo

MY REFLECTIONS ON WEEK 6

Hello everyone,

Well, Week 6 was as rich as the other weeks we have already experienced. And this in terms of learning.

This week, I was really interested in one of the main subject matters, namely teaching in large classes. I was interested, especially as I have been teaching large classes since I entered the teaching profession. I had my own techniques to deal with some of the problems encountered in large classes, but with the reading I was recommended about large classes, I ‘m now aware of some new and interesting techniques I’ll certainly implement to make my activities more interactive. This change will bring learners to be more interested, moving from the status of passive students to that of active ones. Relating to the problem of “shortage of time” during lessons, I think that things like discussion boards, Emails, blogs, etc. are appropriate solutions as far as a good time management is concerned.

This week, we were asked to start the implementation of the technology change as solution to the specific problem we’ve pointed out earlier in Week 4.

Thus, to start the implementation of the technology change in my Grade 10 class, I found it important to talk about what the change will consist in doing and my expectations. Since the vast majority of the students (90%) are not computer literate, I had to give them a theoretical and a bit practical course related to the use of a computer. For that, I had to bring in my class a desktop and my laptop. The objective was to show them the different parts of a computer with their corresponding uses. To make sure that the message would go through, I decided to give all the explanations in French - our official language - so that everything would be clear in their minds, and that they could be able to ask me some questions. Then, I connected my laptop to the Internet to show them what a “Nicenet” page looks like. After creating a class on Nicenet, I gave them the URL of the website, the class key and asked all the students to join the class, after I had given them some explanations about the different stages to join the class. It is useful to recall that my technology change is about how to deal with the problem of time constraints during a lesson (time management). To ensure that things move ahead quickly, I gave the students a deadline to join the class.

As observations, I noticed that some of the students were a bit “scared” about the idea of using a computer without assistance. Others were very excited because they were looking forward to discovering new things thanks to the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It’s at that time that the students were granted a four-day holiday on the basis of the schedule of the Ministry of National Education. So I have to wait for next Tuesday to keep on doing the implementation of my technology change.

Best regards,

Dagnogo

MY REFLECTIONS ON WEEK 5

MY REFLECTIONS ON WEEK 5

Hello everyone,

This week, we have tackled some other aspects of our training, that is to say Alternative Assessment and Rubrics, Project-Based Learning (PBL) and WebQuest.

To start, I would like to say that I came to understand that Alternative Assessment uses activities that reveal what students can do with language, especially the students’ strengths instead of their weaknesses. It is based on authentic tasks that demonstrate learners’ abilities to accomplish communication goals.

Another aspect I found very interesting is the Project-Based Learning (PBL) in the sense that PBL enables students to work together, to create a sense of belonging to a community. And this leads to motivation among students. Susan Gaer thinks that projects must be geared to students and students must see value in projects. I completely agree with her because students are more motivated when they see that what they are doing represents a valuable thing for them personally or for their community. PBLs proved to be integrative tasks because, in such a task, all the four skills of language learning are implemented.

The week was also enriched with the introduction to rubrics. I appreciated that introduction because when I was a school boy, I was wondering the criteria on which I was assessed. Rubrics give me today the opportunity to alleviate the anxiety of learners at this point. In fact, I had been more or less scared since the day of an assessment in class till the day I had my paper back in my hands. For the younger generations, rubrics allow them to be aware of the criteria which guide the assessment of students, which can permit learners to have a certain idea of their final marks. If he/she has a bad mark in a given task, the existence of rubrics can be a source of motivation in the performance of that particular task so that he/she can catch up.

The final point I would like to mention for this week is related to WebQuests. Frankly speaking, I found the creation of a WebQuest very challenging, but I understood later that it can be a useful tool in language learning. However, I would argue that the use of WebQuests can be a little bit difficult in schools and learning centers where access to the Internet is difficult or if the learners are not very much accustomed to computers. I’m looking forward to entering Week 6.

Best regards,

Dagnogo