Week Three's Reading

Chapter 7: Sample Web Projects
This chapter describes several projects which explain how teachers use the Internet in different contexts. There are ten examples in total, five from K-12 schools and five from universities. I’m going to explain it one by one.

1. Primary School Webfolios
This project was carried out by Rachel Arenstein, who teaches English at Arazim in Maalot, Isreal. Fifth- and sixth- students were asked to create portfolios and design their own web pages on webfolios in English during the computer laboratory time.
Topics and tasks for the portfolios corresponded to the specific elements of a portfolio recommended the national English Inspectorate of Israel.
The merit is that the project has tapped students’ multiple intelligences well, but the downside is that it takes a great deal of time for children to master the computer skills and carry out the tasks.

2. A Primary School E-Mail Cultural Exchange
This project was carried out by Teresa Almeida d’Eca, who teaches six-grade English in Portugal. D’ designed a whole-class cultural exchange project via e-mail as part of her curriculum. The project began in October and lasted until early January.
Students were asked to work in groups of five with some topic, including Christmas decorations, shopping, and the meaning of Christmas during class, with d’Eca’s assistance. After school, volunteers from each group took turns typing the letters on school’s computers, and D’ sent the e-mail from her home computer.
Students’ enthusiasm for English increased a lot because of this project. Their writing skills also improved a good deal.

3. A Middle School Web Publishing Project
A web publishing project in a seventh-grade English class based on a detective story was carried our by Markus Kneirum and Alexander Mokry, who teach English and social sciences in Germany.
Aim of this project is to give their students the opportunity to develop their writing skill for more natural and communicative purposes.
Students need to finish three writing assignment for the project, including a short summary of the book, a writing activity with students working in groups to develop ideas on a topic, and a personal home page that were include in the site.
This project imposed many new expectations on students, like independence, creativity, cooperation.

4. A Junior High Virtual Classroom
Jack Tseng, who teaches junior high in Taiwan, created a bilingual virtual classroom on the WWW called Jack’s English Classroom to assist his in-class teaching of a grammar-based curriculum.
Students can access the virtual classroom through their computer at home. They can post homework and discuss them on-line, and sometimes they discuss the on-line activities during the regular class time.

5. A High School E-Mail Exchange Project
A collaborative, task-based e-mail exchange project was developed by Roseanne Greenfield , who teaches English at a secondary school in Hong Kong.
Exchange between Greenfield’s students and a class of native English speakers from the U.S involved three elements: project-based learning, cooperative learning, and process writing.
In the e-mail exchange, student in this project worked on essays in two genres of academic writing, descriptive essays and imaginative essays. First, they exchange personal letters containing their own descriptive essays; second, they work in groups at each home school to propose topics for the imaginative essays; then, students employed peer-editing techniques by using a grading rubric developed by teachers.
The project helped students see English as a valuable tool for international communication rather than only as a subject required for the national examination.

6. An Internet Research Project in an Intensive English Program

7. A University-Level Content-Based Course
This content-based language course which was taught by Randall Davis in a university in Japan called Crossing Borders via the Internet. This course can help students to develop skills and knowledge about hands-on technical, language and intercultural communication via the Internet.
Students need to learn how to get information and materials from a variety of Internet sources. A research paper and home page project were also included in this project.

8. A University On-line Writing Course
John Steels’s on-line writing class is set up to maximize students’ opportunities to communicate in writing with each other while teaching them to access resources from the www. Students can get textbook, post homework, get teacher’s answers and other’s comments through the home page and e-mails.

9. A University-Level Problem-Based Learning Course
This course was established by Susan McGregor to help students develop their Internet and English skills while solving a practical problem related to their own life goals. This language courses focuses on many things, including planning projects, preparing curriculum vitae, developing written communication skills and oral communication skills and so on.
This course helps students develop language and technical skills as they work on a task important to their own future.

10. A University Environmental Project.

Helen's feedback about the presentation

After the presentation on Monday’s class, I find that the situation in Mainland China is quite different from the situation in Hong Kong.

Many teachers in Mainland, especially primary and secondary teachers, use less new technology in their classes. I think there are several reasons for this issue. Firstly, many schools are equipped with poor hardware facilities, teachers or students are not permitted to get access to enough technological tools or tools of high quality. This is a common phenomenon in Mainland China. Secondly, teachers don’t have enough knowledge about new technology or skills of using technological tools. This maybe because new technology in language teaching hasn’t been taken so important recently and teachers really lack such kind of training. Thirdly, PPT is usually the most common skill and the only skill that many teachers can use in their classes. Its effect is limited Students would lose freshness and feel boring when looking at it every day. Fourthly, Mainland English course is always strictly carried out according to the teaching syllable. Teachers always have corresponding teaching tasks of every class. They usually don’t have time to give specific training programs of language skills to their students. Using on-line programs in schools is often impossible because the condition of network doesn’t permit. Lastly, class number of students is also a problem, too. It’s quite common that most classed in Mainland have over 60 students. It’s really hard for teachers to control such big classes especially when students get excited.

Comparing the presentations between full-time and part-time students, full-time students usually talked about learning experience of new technology, and a few of them who have teaching experience provided some information about new technology in language teaching in Mainland, but really limited information. Oppositely, Hong Kong teachers often had much to say. They shared a lot of useful and interesting experience and ideas about using new technology in language teaching. I think they are quite familiar and skilled to use different kinds of technologies and tools in their teaching. For me, I am most interested in their on-line English programs, and I think using on-line programs is really an effective way in language teaching.

First Post

Blog is really a good place for communication and sharing experience, especially for people who are not good at talking, just like me. You can know more about me through browsing my blog, and I'm also quite happy to share opinions with all of you.
Here is my first blog, and I'm going to introduce a bit about myself and share something that I think useful with you.

As an English learner, I usually use PPT and WORD to do assignments and papers. I like surfing the Internet and doing some English listening and watching. Fantastic literature, horror fictions and movies are my favorite. There are also some websites that I usually use to get materials and learn English, and I want to share some of them with you:

http://som.twbbs.org/klee/notebook
http://www.eslpartyland.com/default.htm
http://www.eslcafe.com/
http://www.englishbaby.com/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com
http://www.eztalk.to/
http://engsite.ncu.edu.tw/database
http://www.nationalgeographic.com
http://chinadaily.com.cn

I will be very glad if these websites would interest you and give you some help in you teaching or learning.

Talking about this course, I hope to learn more concepts about new technology in English learning and the teaching implication it brings to us. I want to know how to choose and use the right technology in specific learning contexts and apply it to my future language teaching.
At last, welcome to Helen's small house and give comments. I'll be really appreciate.