The importance of learning

My grandmother used to tell me I was always trying to learn something! In fact, I think I'm quite a learn-driven person (if this phrase exists). All my life I wanted to learn something. I remember nagging my aunts because I wanted them to teach me how to read words before I went to school and asking my brohter to let me hammer some nails (although I actually always hammered my fingers instead.)
Everytime I start learning something, I fall in love with it. I make a tone of projects, I get addicted to that and than, when I have learnt enough... I move on to something else. Thus I'm always learning something but I never get to be a specialist at anything. I think I've got a Renaissance spirit...

10 De Junho, Dia de Portugal

Today is National Holiday in Portugal. I leave you with our national song type FADO. I hpe you like Mariza and the poem by Fernando Pessoa. Enjoy

The hours

I was going to write "ten" weeks. Then I was going to calculate the days. Finally I settled for "The hours" (although I must confess I never read the book nor saw the film by that name).

It is impossible for me to calculate how many hours I invested in this course. It doesn't matter because being an e-teacher for me is to be an everywhere/ everytime teacher. In fact I got more conscious of how I teach, what is not so good and what I can do to improve it.

At first I was really excited about meeting people from other countries and those people were quite a pleasant surprise!!! Then this course caught me in some busy weeks - all of a sudden I had so many things to do I felt my time was not enough. But I managed. I learnt to use every spare hour reasonably - I had to give up reading before going to sleep because whenever I got to bed I fell asleep by KO. I went to the APPI congress in Lisbon and many things started to fit like a puzzle in my head (that was when I came up with the everywhere-teacher idea).

Curiously, the hours I remember were not the hardworking hours. I remember the excitment hours, the enthusiastic hours on-line, off-line, in the car driving home and thinking about projects and ideas, in lessons reflecting on how I could make things different...

You see, I started teaching without knowing if that was what I wanted to do. Then I fell in love with it and I remember my training year as one of exhausting work and deep enthusiasm. I worked hard and got feedback from it and tried new ways and was so tired and so happy! Then I spent almost twelve years regretting and questioning most of the time until now. Finally I got excited about my work again, fell in love with it again, felt that enthusiasm again because I was doing my best and getting feedback from it and support and appreciation.

In fact, some hours in our lives make up for years of doubt. No, this is not the part I tell you about the depths of my heart. All I want to say is that enthusiasm and appreciation change everything!!! This is the most important thing this course is leaving me with.

week 9- all my pictures

I've just uploaded my final report along with the assessment forms and the analysis I made of the students' answers.

I decided to make a graph with the students' answers. Remember I am a visual, global person so I love the general picture. These graphs are my work in colours and different shapes. It was really nice to do. I remember when I was a kid I was really great at drawing graphs, even those circular ones you had to make lots of calculations to be able to build. Now there is an amazing thing called excell where you write numbers and get perfectly drawn, colourful graphs. I also remember getting furious at a professor at university who told us we were studying languages, therefore we weren't able to understand graphs! I do understand graphs as graphs are pictures and languages can also be pictures as music can be a collection of pictures too.

My head seems to be full of pictures all the time and I always dream in colour, I'm sure. However, I don't like reading books with pictures because they interfere with the pictures I make in my head when I read them, as I don't like seeing films based on books I read as they rarely match my mental pictures and I always get disappointed. The problem is I can never put my thought into pictures- I'm lousy at drawing! - so I need words to make my picture and I'm usually good at that. Those graphs are part of my thoughts and feelings in a picture! I love computers when they solve our problems like that!

( picture in ramonaspainting.com )

Week 8 uuuuuuuuf

(This is my cat, Pintas)

I finished my report in time. I reviewed Gaby and Yaling's reports. I rewrote some parts in mine and improved it according to my peers' suggestions. It was good work and then I took time to relax.
Today I'm not working besides writing this blog and going around other people's blogs as usual (I already took a peep at the discussions pages) and then I'm going to walk by the river among books in the book fair. It's incredibly hot here and the best thing is really to be near water in good company - in my case, family and books are a good combination.

As for what I learnt this week, well, online test and exercise makers are great, creating a website is a thrill but takes time and dedication, the more I find out of the internet world, the more I like it and the more I want to search. I'm a bit anxious about my final report. My peer reviews helped a lot but now I feel a bit insecure - should I elaborate more? Should I include something else? Is this the best I can do? What can I improve.

I wonder if I'm too much of a perfectionist or if that's only because I'm not used to doing this kind of work and it wasn't as hard as I had thought before. I'm going to reread it tomorrow again and decide. Now, it's relax time! Everybody follow my lead and take time for yourselves- we need and deserve it!
Take care, enjoy yourselves, have fun!

Project Report

My draft is almost done but it has been hard. The weather is too good to work and this week I'm also dealing with two other projects - one related to assessing aural skills and teaching English to children.
So yesterday I spent most afternoon watching aural exams and filling in forms, in an hour I'll be driving to another school to watch a 4th grade English lesson and then I'll fill in some other forms. Then I'll have to rush back for a class meeting. I feel I am rushing all the time this week and with the hot weather kids are going nuts and driving teachers nuts! Everybody is tired around here and many of us have a lot to do, while others, surprisingly, don't seem to.
Now got some tests to correct and some more to make for next week and yesterday I had to work late at home so I'm quite sleepy and living on coffee.
Even so, I'm ok. I feel that these projects are what really keeps me going because they drag me from the paperwork and school routine.
Now something is annoying me - I can't do much with my 7A class in the next days because tomorrow and Friday are "cultural days" at school and on Tuesday we have the school "walk for health" and then on thursday a test! All those uninteresting activities preventing us from learning English! Unfair.
:)

Week seven - project development

Hi, everyone.
First of all I'm really excited about this project. I'm so excited I find it hard to write it down. I mean, I've written most of it but it doesn't seem to fit into the template. LOL. I'll have to work it round!

Yesterday was my mobile phone video lesson. Kids were really excited! First they were amazed because they were the only class who ever got permission to use mobile phones at school. Then they were very enthusiastic about making the video. Curiously, two of my best students didn't want to make the video, while the weakest who rarely say a word in English in the lesson were very commited to making it right. Two girls who are usually very quiet and shy in every class partenered together, borrowed my mobile and did some nice work! In the end, twelve kids made videos, while four didn't want to and, as I didn't want to force them into doing it, I asked them to partner and write dialogues about hobbies, which they did.

After having made the videos and watched them, the twelve students filled in a self-assessment form about the video activity. Afterwards, all kids filled in an assessment form about the technology-enhanced lessons anonymously. I thought it wasn't important to know who wrote what or who exactly liked what as I wanted to get a general impression of their feeling towards those lessons. On the other hand, I thought I could count on their honesty, as it was anonymous.

Now I'm going to have a look at the forms and maybe put the results in graphs and add them to my project report.

Some other kids saw my class outside with their mobile phones and later came to ask me what was going on. Actually, they thought they were fooling me and came to warn me that my students were breaking the rules! I told them it was a special project but didn't tell them anything else as they are not my students and I like the feeling of raising some curiosity among kids who may be my students next year. [Is this being proud?]

Anyway, yesterday my husband asked me what I get from these projects besides being overworked and tired. I told him they make me learn and make me happy in my work and he thought it is fair! :D

my project

Full permission from the school director! Now my project can roll! YES!

My first all-computer lesson

Can I be biased and talk about good things only? Sure I can, this is my blog! LOL
Activity- webquest
Autonomy - kids worked in pairs, helped one-another and seldom called me to explain anything (except to solve some technical problems)
Freedom - some were quite surprised that they were allowed to choose which places they wanted to tour virtually (the instruction was to visit at least five places but there were many possibilities)
Commitment - except for one pair who were always trying to cheat, they all sticked to the tasks and followed the instructions; most took the vocabulary quiz twice so that they could get a better score.
Time- it took a bit longer than I expected but time wasn't wasted as kids were involved in the tasks.
Problem - solving - they used online dictionaries instead of asking me what the words meant and I congratulated them on that but forbade the use of translator in the writing task
Teacher- that's me and I didn't get tired. I didn't have to talk much and only guided and assisted and ended up being very relaxed and quite sure that some learning was taking place.

If you want to you can have a look at our class blog: thecoolseventeen.blogspot.com
:D

Week six- still beat but less happy! ;)

Here I am, sunday again- I've never liked sundays much.
This past week was TOUGH.First, last weekend I didn't really have a weekend, I mean, I didn't get to rest at all, so it ended up being a long 12-days week.
Then I had to prepare a lesson to be assessed by a colleague (who I don't consider to have the skill to evaluate me n anyway) besides the usual work, and then I had a headache all week and on friday I found out it was low blood pressure because of the heat (+- 30ºC) and my tendinitis decided to strike again. As my tendinitis takes up my right shoulder and hand, it becomes hard to work on the computer - in fact, the more hours I work on the computer, the worse the tendinitis gets. Even though I have been training my left hand to do most stuff, I'm not that good with it, so my interactive powerpoint ended up being less-than-perfect.
As for my project, so far, not so good. The parents of one of the kids refused permission for posting his photos or work on the class blog and now I have to decide whether I exclude the kid altogether - which I find unfair- or I get round it. So I decided to transform the class photo in order to make us all look like cartoons (which I have not done because it requires a lot of movement accuracy, which I can't do until my tendons go back to normal). As for mobile use, school director was not at school this week and I didn't manage to get permission. If I don't get it, I'll have kids make their recordings outside school. Anyway, on Tuesday we are going to have our first all-computer lesson. We are going to do a webquest and some interactive exercises online. Kids are going to work in pairs and the writing tasks will be e-mailed to the e-mail address that belongs to the blog. They are really excited about it and so am I.
I was amazed to find out I was the only one -or almost- who nevr used Forum in class and can't explain why. Everytime I read on of the print editions I find something interesting but end up not bringing it into practice. I have to reflect on that!
That's all for now.


Sara

Just to tell you...

If you want to check earlier reflection on teaching strategies, check my other page - Previous reflections by clicking the link on your right.
:)

Some final comments about this week

It's been a hard, busy, tiring, rewarding, brainstorming week. It seems to have had I don't know how many days.

I've learnt so much and discussed so many ideas I think it will take my brain some more days to process everything.

In the end, rubrics are incredibly useful and rubistar is a must! Webquests are great ideas but I didn't manage to stretch my time into being able to create one though I have it all in my head (in fact I tried to create one two years ago but I'd have to look for it in my CD's and that would be cheating and I created it in a test-software so it'd probably not work well). Anyway, I'll do it even if I don't get extra credit.

Delicious.com has become one of my most used tools as now I save every link there whenever I'm surfing the web and find anything interesting on any topic (even if I'm only helping my godson with his oral presentation about nuclear energy).

PBL was also an issue in the congress and it is a way of structuring learning-by-doing as kids learn what they do, not what we tell them and PBL creates very good learning habits they can use for learning anything (ask a question, get informed, select facts, find a solution).

So, I wish all my weeks were as productive as this one!

so much to say - beat but happy

Hi everyone!!!

I bet you found it stange that I disappeared for some days and I was not abducted by aliens!

I was in Lisbon for the 25th APPI congress which went great (I'm aware that I use the word "great" quite often).

Lisbon is quite busy but still very beautiful. I got to walk around a bit yesterday (walking around is my favourite way of "meeting" cities) and there were lots of different people, tourists, musicians, shoppers or people who were just walking around like me and some homeless people too (they sleep near Prada and Louis Vuiton shops)!

I always get the feeling that I must stay for a week or more to get to know Lisbon but I never do - it's quite expensive to stay there.

As for the Congress, it was called "Shaping the future of ELT" and we had speakers from several countries sponsored by editors, by the British Council and the Ambassaty of the United States. The talks I went to were really interesting (there were often five at the same time so I had to select - which I was quite successful at)! I learnt about literature in class, speaking, the use of images, assessment, memorisation and some good tips about motivating students.

While I was at the sessions, I often made connections to things in our course and I even wrote down some stuff to comment with you (I'll do that another time).

I also met another e-teacher who took a course similar to ours and went to Baltimore (I'm not sure of this). She is a very interesting person and we exchanged some ideas. Just like me, she also found it hard to leave the computer and all the activities and go to teachers' meetings and classes sometimes because what we do on the courses is so much more interesting than some school stuff! I also found out a colleague I worked with 5 years ago is also an e-teacher. Soooooo cooool!

For two days I listened and spoke almost only English and the nice thing is that the speakers are really accessible people, they go to other sessions too and they comment on them and make connections.

My conclusion? I LOVE learning. At the workshops I'm permanently making connections, writing them down and thinking about my students and lessons. I come from workshops really motivated and full of ideas. I go to people and exchange ideas with them, I feel at ease with English and I want to take more and more workshops.

Finally I came home totally loaded with handouts and books and two great dictionaries besides a tone of literature (Lisbon Book Fair was just across the avenue and I spent almost 4 hours there getting great books for my mother and me) and I felt that if I was robbed in the subway I'd thank the guy for taking some weight off me!!! My husband said I'm crazy as I left home with a small bag with some clothes and came back with a backpack (which I had to buy) too other bags which in the whole weighed about 25 kg (I'm not exagerating, I actually weighed them!!!)

Well, I'm crazy but I'm happy!

final comment for week 4

There is nothing more to say, actually. It was a technology stress week. Even today I had to rush from a family party (which left my husband a bit unhappy) to be able to finally post my comments as I was worried that I might no be able to do it. I usually work well under stress but I don't like it - it makes me use too much energy. I prefer doing things in a planned way, taking my time and this week it was impossible.

I had to go back to school, deal with my students, prepare their lessons and put up with internet boycutt which was all making me get really irritated. In the end, I managed to get everything done but I felt I was running against the clock all the time.

This coming week is going to be nothing easier as I'll be travelling to Lisbon on friday for some workshops. Besides lessons and meetings and the online course I'll have the trips and the extra work in the workshops. I feel I'm just too busy all the time but I also fell fulfilled.

finally

It worked after too many attempts! uuuuf

technology is great when it works

This week has been hard. Apart from having a tone or two of work to do at school and my allergies and the medication that makes me work slow, I had some fight with internet. Everytime i found a reasonable period of time to go on nicenet or work on the tasks, there was no internet. Thursday morning, no internet. Friday, I spent a couple of hours updating my computer to make it work better, Saturday afternoon (finally I had all the time I needed) no internet at all until after dinner time.

So, technology is definitely boycutting me. And I find it extremely irritating because then I have to rush and do things in a hurry and then I can't do my best which is even more annoying.

Then I ask myself: why am I not like most people? Why don't I settle for minimum effort?

The fact is I need motivation, too and all this course activities and researching and websites and new ideas excite me and make me want to do new things which take a lot of preparation and consume a lot of time. I wouldn't like to be any different, I'm crazy but it makes me happy!

(Oh no!!! No I seem to be unable to post this! i've tried 3 times and no use! Unbelievable! It's 1:14 am and I give up after my 5th attempt)

Today is sunday and the situation remains!!!!

Hate it when things don't work.

Week 3 - final reflection

First of all I'm sad - no one commented on my latest posts :( (But then I understand it's weekend and maybe most of you are celebrating Easter.)

I've written about CALL and delicious.com, so I'm not going back to them.

As for projects, I realised I was being prejudiced (and I'm ashamed of it) as I chose the projects I thought might be more familiar to me in terms of country and students' age. Now I think - why shouldn't a project from Burkina Fasso or for university students be useful to me? I'm used to remaking and adapting materials and activities, why did I stick to "familiar"?
Well, maybe I was feeling uncomfortable about going through projects and more about writing a project of my own. Even though at school Class Projects are mandatory, they are actually a bunch of papers with little practical effect, I'm afraid.

I'm happy for the project I chose as it is absolutely practical and focussed on the students and technology without neglecting the syllabus. Something our leaglly imposed paperwork tone projects don't even get close to! (By the way, I hate paperwork, especially when it's totally useless for students)

Zoila said she's using this project as a model and I think it is a good idea as I think it's good, clear and manageable and is a good example of project methodology which will probably come to great effect!

Now, I know it's still early in Oregon but already Monday in Portugal (luckily it's a national holiday: Liberty day) so I think I'd better go to bed and have my beauty sleep.LOL

(image in: seekerville.blogspot.com)

Blog away

I just did a crazy thing: I decided to click the button "next blog" at the top of my blog page and I just wandered about. There are blogs about everything, from people all around the world. Blogs about families, films, cowboys, talking with spirits and even a guy who is sure he's right (probably the only one who does!) Funny enough, most of them are in English!
There was nothing really important about this but I still wanted to share it.

Delicious call

What can I say?

Listening/ speaking skills are a serious problem for my students and for students in general, I think.
It was great to find out so much about developing those skills (thanks Robert, those readings were excellent) and to discouver such good ideas to put that into practice. Until last year I didn't do anything special to develop those skills but when I met a class with students that could write well and understand written texts well but were extremely weak at speaking and listening, I decided I had to do something. So, I established that every wednesday we would have at least 15 minutes of pure speaking activities and I "made up" or adapted some activities to make them talk. The hardest part is preventing them from cheating (having a look at their colleagues "secret" cards or speaking Portuguese) but when they follow the rules, the outcome is great. They get more confident and enjoy speaking. Now I guess I'll have to work pronunciation with them. It won't be easy (their first question is always "does that come in the test?") and we are going to have very few lessons as they finnish in the first week in june but maybe I can work with another class, especially 7th form as they are at a lower level, so it will be easier to "mould" them.
As for delicious, I've already written about it on nicenet. It would be an answer to my prayers if I prayed!!! Over the years I tried to find a way to do what delicious does so well: save my favoutire links so that I could use them later. And it does more as we can have a look at other people's bookmarks and get even more links. It was a wonderful find.

week 2

ABCD

At first I had some trouble with it but then I found a great link and it all became very clear. It took me some time to post my objective as it was evaluation week at school and I spent all my time in meetings and writing reports and trying to pull myself together again after 3 days in Seville with 45 kids and 40.ºC. (By the way, Seville is wonderful!) Then I started reading all posts and I thought the people in this course are quite motivated. It was a bit hard to follow the posts - I'm a visual person and not too good with names and miss connecting the posts to people (faces). Fortunately, people's blogs are making that easier for me. I wrote my objective, got nice responses to it and felt fine.

SEARCH

It was nice to try new search engines. I like searching as I always find surprising things that are useful for my lessons or simple fun or interesting on a personal level. I have a problem with speed, I mean, when a website is slow I get impatient and sometimes give up on it. I realised I was using google all the time and I'll try to ensure some variety in my search from now on.

PROJECT

I guess I started a project without even thinking about it. All of a sudden I asked 7A kids if they would like to have a blog and it was like setting fire to dry hay - it went faster then I ever expected. Even though it was a bit rushed, I don't regret it as now they are eager to go back to English lesson after Easter. ;) Besides, I've been reflecting on it and I promise I am going to plan it really well.

WEEK SUMMARY

I was tired and overworked so I didn't take as much time as I wanted to go on nicenet and keep up with posts. I read all the posts (I really did!) and I think the people in this course are really GREAT. I was amazed at the number of students in most classes. I had never imagined people could have so many kids in a single class and I felt very lucky (We have to value the advantages we have) and now those teachers are hero-teachers to me - they never give up, no matter how difficult things are.

FINAL REMARK

A Portuguese Pedagogist called João de Deus said in the 19th century that "love is the only pedagogy" and I think he was right - only by loving what we do, can we do it fully.

Writing objectives is really a serious task - I already knew it but hadn't thought of it in these terms. I've just checked one of our readings and I was having some trouble in getting the idea. I decided to check additional pages and found a great activity to understand writing objectives (beware the specific maths vocabulary). Go check it out and tell me if it helped. Follow this link.

happy sharing

Yesterday I was telling my housemate how happy I was about this course. Despite being total beat from some hard days at school, I felt support from people who we thousands of kilometres away and who I've never met face to face. It's amazing how we share the same worries and face the same problems. There are no countries for teachers, only the world. :) So, I'm starting to get really confident that we are going to do a great job together as we already see each other as a classmate. Keep on sharing! (I won't be responding the next days as I'll be on a field trip with my students. I'll be back on monday, if I'm not too tired and sleepy to type!) See you!

week one

First advice - don't forget to save your new messages before you try to see your blog! LOL Silly me, I had just written my reflection and was so anxious to see the post I forgot to save it and... lost it! Now creating the blog was quite easy as I have had one for some time (thus I should have remembered to save!). I could add a link but it's in Portuguese and has nothing to do with teaching. I do it for fun to share some thoughts with friends. As for using blogs for teaching, I've thought of that but there is an issue related to the computer room. Although there is a computer in every classroom, only one room at school as enough computers for the whole class and that one is taken by ICT lessons most of the time. Besides, my ICT colleagues are very jealous of it. LOL We can use laptops but sometimes the network is not strong enough for all of them. As for asking kids to do them out of school, many haven't got a computer or internet at home. I think a class blog would be great to develop writing and commenting skills so I'll try to prepare one in advance to start in September. Do you have any ideas to share with me?