Week 4 Linking the Present- with the Past- for the Future

Week 4

Linking the Present- with the Past- for the Future

That is how it felt, off and on. The reference to key pals reminded me of our school days when we made pen pals. One’s pals were different from one’s friends because the former lived in distant lands. From exotic lands those pals sent us pictures of emus and kangaroos we had never seen, descriptions of tsetse flies we had never read about. With times the modus operandi has changed, but not the concept. Key pals promote language learning through culture and environment.

Then the article on Extensive Reading reminded me of our MA Part II syllabus where under a section we had to read the summaries of 75 literary works from encyclopedias and discuss them in groups. In the exams, we had to write about some of the works. It is nice to see its modern avatar. Also, I feel enriched by the web resources quoted.

Riding on email, the fourth week has served as the junction for the course; the language skills, the relevant technology. As we use our web pages to post adaptations and information from various web links, focusing on the lessons to teach Vocabulary, Reading and Writing, we invariably incorporate the skills of Listening and Speaking.  

This week has also made me draw certain conclusions based on firsthand experience:

An online course assumes its participants to be proficient in writing skills and computer skills. The lessons learnt are: If we, in India, plan to take courses in ELT to our thousands of teachers and students, we have to ensure they have adequate proficiency in the two.

As I coursed through the article on teaching writing using the internet by Krajka, I found myself capturing the essence of numerous things I had learnt over the past three to four weeks:

• web pages emails and class websites were the three basic techniques online courses rested on
• each classroom lesson had two parallel components, i.e. online and offline activities
• high time we designed courses which used ICT as their skeletal framework rather than just inject an occasional technology-based activity
• course in charge (here, it is Robert) must possess basic functional knowledge of HTML to create websites or class web pages (I would need to do that too?)
• LISTSERV or similar technology is a must for course administration  (I’d need a technical hand for that?) 
• ICT can be a very powerful agent of motivation. Though it is very public, it can be very private too. It connects us with the whole world yet while tapping on the keyboard it makes us drop our defences (psychological barriers), i.e. shyness, diffidence, facilitating better learning because we are ourselves.
• the lists of very useful websites are truly, truly useful. I need to select them as per my needs and drag them to my delicious page.

Pertaining to lesson planning: Not many college teachers of English undergraduate courses in India understand the challenges of planning a lesson as they emphasize only on the importance of delivering lessons. Amazingly they ignore the policies and the objectives, and consequently lesson planning. The standardized lesson plan template, the tenesse.edu lesson plan descriptions have standardized the model for me and fleshed out a few missing details in my lesson planning like the ‘student products as the artifacts’ reference. I used to not give it such importance.

This week again had a huge amount of information to share regarding websites, particularly on teaching vocabulary, reading and writing. But many of the activities in those Labs involved oral skills preceding reading and writing skills.  I enjoyed exploring Lauri's ESL Website http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/   and the ESL Independent Study Lab - Michael Krauss
http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html . I have yet to explore http://a4esl.org/ and
http://www.manythings.org/ and also http://iteslj.org/Articles/Liao-Emailing.html  and
http://iteslj.org/Articles/Constantinescu-Vocabulary.html. Besides the articles I read carry dozens of websites. I need to read up a lot, may be a little later.

The posts on the dashboard were as varied as the nations they flowed in from. I could relate to some of them and did give my comments. But Blogging again played mischief with me.  Occasionally, it wouldn’t show the postings in people’s Follower columns, then I would stumble upon some blogs which carried instructions in languages I don’t understand. I would still try to fumble through them, often successfully. And the most tricky part was when on a certain blog, my post wouldn’t get ‘sent’. I think some of these things are due to the internet connection getting very slow.

End of another fulfilling week. Thank you, Robert, for all your efforts. I am all smiles. Hope this continues.

Sharda