Week 14. The New Way to Provide Feedback

By Vanesa Paniagua

Article: How to Use Technology to Provide Feedback.
Rate: 5

Provide feedback to students it is an essential step during the learning process and for this reason teachers cannot skip it, since students also learn when they are corrected and it is become more significant. Moreover, there are many ways to provide an effective feedback and the one presented in the article of this week was about the use of technology when giving feedback.

Screen capture technology refers to record the screen of your computer, it also record your voice allowing you to make videos where you talk over whatever you are showing on your video screen. In my experience as second language student I have been provided with this kind of feedback and I can say that it is conventional and interesting since teacher can interact with you as if they are present in the real life while you are saving time.

Besides, screen captures could be useful for online courses, where teachers and students are not able to be present in a classroom to provide feedback. Also, can be use for many purposes, as to check a paragraph, a conversation between students and others. 

Week 13. Ten Steps to Create Meaningful Project Works in Schools.

By Vanesa Paniagua

Article:Maximizing the Benefits of Project Work in Foreign Language Classrooms.

Rate: 04

Article: Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning.

Rate:02

Sometimes students are assigned with groups Project that are meaningless for them because they think the topic is irrelevant. Moreover, they do the assignment just “because”, but the worry is that even they present it, students have not learned anything about the topic and it is clear that the project work was not effective. Furthermore, teachers need to increase students motivation by taking in to consideration the following steps presented in the article of this week.

1.    Students and instructor agree on a theme for the project.

2.    Students and instructor determine the final outcome of the project: Teacher discus with the students the appropriated time to present the final project.

3.    Students and instructor structure the project: Each student considers their roles that will develop in the group.

4.    Instructor prepares students for the demands of information gathering: Teacher provide instructions and strategies about how to perform the project.

5.    Students gather information: Students collect the data by interviewing, library researches and others.

6.    Instructor prepares students to compile and analyze data: Students analyze and synthesize the information they have collected.

7.     Students compile and analyze information: Students organize the data and then discuss the value of it.

8.    Instructor prepares students for the language demands of the final activity.

9.    Students present the final project.

10. Students evaluate the project: Students show their language mastery acquired during the project. Also, teacher provides feedback. 

Week 12. The Importance of Students' Interaction in Classrooms.

By Vanesa Paniagua

Article: 10 Benefits of getting students to participate in classrooms discussions.

Rate: 2

Article: Increase student interaction with "Think-pair- shares" and "Circle chats".

Rate: 5

A quote about the reading of this week that calls my attention was “Would be difficult to become a good piano player by listening to someone play, with no opportunity of your own to practice”. I am totally agreed with this quotation since practice it is the most important step when we are learning something.

Moreover, in the teaching field students must be encourage to interact with their classmates, but sometimes this could be difficult for students because they feel afraid to make mistakes or they do not feel comfortable or they are not ready to share their points of view in public. Therefore, we teachers have the responsibility to create different suitable activities where students can develop and increase their interaction.

Also, in the article were mentioned two fantastic activities to increase students’ interaction: “Think-pair-shares and Circle chats”. In my opinion any activity that involves the speaking skill would be awesome to develop students’ interaction, but also taking in to consideration each student’s participation, so then all the class will share opinions and they would be provided with feedback. 

Week 11. Mobile Phones, the New Tool for Second Language Students.

By Vanesa Paniagua

Article: Twenty Ideas for Using Mobile Phones in the Language Classrooms.

Rate: 5

Nowadays the access to technology has become very easy and common. One example is the use of mobile phones, as it has become a necessity most of the students have one and as teachers we need to find a way to make cell phones part of our lessons. Moreover, the article of this week presents 20 ideas to apply mobile phones in a second language class and here I’m going to explain the most interesting ideas for me.

The idea number 5 was related to the use of voice memo recorder feature, and students can use it to record conversation during the class and outside the classroom. Moreover, as homework it can be use to record interviews or conversations outside the classrooms and then presented in the class so the teacher can provide feedback.

Also, the idea 8 which is the use of text messaging feature for circular writing, for me it was awesome, since the whole class can create a story by contributing one text message at a time. Each student writes a sentence and sends the message to other students, who add more information to the story, and so on until the story is complete.

Moreover, another idea that calls my attention was the number 10, which is related to the use of mobile phone to keep a blog. This is a great idea for advance students to practice the writing skill, and it was interesting for me because, my professors have applied this technique in our classes, and I can say that it is a useful and innovative idea.

To sum up, technology is in our hands so we as teachers and future teachers must find ways to introduce every technological tool in our lesson, as it was presented in the article for this week.

Week 9. Online Tools and Softwares for Reading and Vocabulary in Second Language Learners.

By Vanesa Paniagua

Articles: Online English-English Learners Dictionaries Boost Word Learning.

Rate:3

Article: Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprenhension.

Rate:3

When learning a new language it is necessary to develop each language learning skill in order to acquire and produce the language properly. Moreover, one of the skills that we as teachers should improve in our students is reading and vocabulary and a way to help students with this it is using Internet tools. For example, teachers must encouraged students to use online dictionaries but taking into consideration some aspects:

1.Corpus based compilation of words: which means the content based on real –world spoken and written.

2.Word frequency data: high words frequency and low words frequency.

3.Collocation guides: the use of Corpora, which is the word combination that normally go together.
4.Authentic examples of how words are use: the abundance of examples sentences.

      5.Topical vocabulary: indicates how the words relate semantically to different categories.

However, multimedia can be use as well for vocabulary-building, since it is a central component of good computer-assisted skill-building software. One example is CAVOCA which is an interactive program where students have different stages “deduction, consolidation, long term retention”, when acquiring new vocabulary.

To sum up, reading and vocabulary are very important abilities that needs to be developed in students and can be accomplished by implementing different software and internet tools in second language classes. 

Week 8 Online Tools for the Improvement of Students Writing Competences.

By Vanesa Paniagua
Article: Online Collaborative Writing Using Wikis.
Rate: 2

Learning English sometimes could be a pain in some students since they face problems with writing skill because as we know when pronouncing English it is totally different as it is written and for this reason, second language learners need to be careful with this.

Moreover, the information that was presented in the article for this week  was king of interesting, since it is focused in the writing skill while using technology and the tool that they mentioned was “Wiki”, which is a website where anyone can edit anything anytime that it is necessary.  Beside, wikis are useful for students to practice and develop writing by creating books report, poetry, class blogs, short stories, and others.

Therefore, Wiki it is a great tool to practice online writing as it is showed in the article, which was focused in a writing lesson and students needed to create a collaborative writing by using different prompts related with school, and this article was required to pass  through many stages like to revise carefully each paragraph to then publish it. In my opinion, it is a good idea to design wiki writing projects because promotes the use of technology and the improvement of students'  writing competences.

Week 7 Internet's tool for the improvement of students' reading and writing skills.

By Vanesa Paniagua

Articles: Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction.

Rate: 4

Article: Using Internet-Based Children's Literature to Teach EFL.

Rate: 3

Nowadays technology has become very popular mainly in kids and teenagers and for this education should take advantage of this fact in order to implement technology tool to improve different students’ skills. Moreover, for this week was related with the use of Internet tools for writing and reading skills. Also, in the article it is stated that for a reading lesson students must be given with text related to meaningful issues for the present days, since Internet provides a number of sites to choose and in this way students will be encouraged to do something different and then share their ideas during the class, rather than assign the same reading for the whole class.

Furthermore, for the improvement of writing we can encourage students to find different styles for writing a document.  Besides, in the text it is been presented a lot of awesome and useful links where students can practice their writing by creating a letter to a friend, a bibliography, a description of a person and even an argumentative essay.

Otherwise, when using Internet tools in education teachers have to prepare carefully all the materials, taking in consideration the advantages and disadvantages, as well as the time management for each activity developed online and the most important to be heedful that students make a good use of the Internet during the classes.

Week 6 The use of CALL in speaking skills.

By Vanesa Paniagua

Articles: Using original video and sound effects to teach English. 

Rate: 3
The employement of CALL in teaching second/foreign language speaking skills.

Rate: 4

Learning a foreign language can be difficult for many people most if they do not have suitable conditions to learn it. Moreover, something interesting that I read was that beginners’ students feel uncomfortable when producing the speaking skill since they are afraid of making mistakes in pronunciation.

Besides, the application of CALL on pronunciation training offers a private environment helping second language learners to make as much repetitions as they want.  This link on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/TeacherMelanie would be an appropriated website to practice pronunciation in students’ home comfort.   

Also the article stated that according to Pennington (1995), the spoken language competence covers two aspects “The mechanical aspect” that is engaged with the production of sounds comprising syllables, words, phrases and longer utterances or decoding phonemes. The other is the “Meaningful aspect”, which is related with grammar rules of pragmatic appropriateness in speech.

Therefore, in order to improve students’ communicative skill, teachers must find suitable softwares to improve the two spoken competences and of this CALL software is SLIM (Multimedia Interactive Linguistic Software) which helps students’ performance in perception and production of spoken languages activities. This program is able to detect significant deviation “word/phrase/utterance”, production as well as offering visual aids and written diagnosis of the problem and how to overcome the errors. 

Week 5 The Critical Thinking Development on Students.

By Vanesa Paniagua
Article: Critical Thinking and Techonolgy
Rate: 4


Critical thinking it is fundamental in students learning process and for this reason teachers must help students to develop it. Moreover, the reading for this week shared important information about this topic and how to introduce technology while developing students’ critical thinking.

Besides, the article stated that in order to create in students a critical thinking, teachers must look for a way to make attractive the common topics, since when students are interested in something, they feel more encouraged to express their points of view. Meanwhile, they said that it would be useful less telling and more asking, since the learning process it is more focused on students, to let students develop by themselves their critical thinking capacity.

Furthermore, each student have it is own way to acquire the knowledge and for this reason teachers needs to know students’ personalities and capacity, thus it could apply different kinds of input to create diversity during the lesson.

Nevertheless, the use of technology for teaching does not means it would be easier to understand for students and that it is why teachers need to be careful when introducing technology in the learning process and at the same time handling a goal focused on the students’ development and acquisition the new knowledge in order to improve the critical thinking. 

Week 4. Internet's tools to apply in classrooms.

By Vanesa Paniagua

Article: CALL Me… Maybe: A framework for integrating the Internet into ELT.

Rate: 5

Nowadays, technology makes humans’ life easier and the correct use of it can help to expand our knowledge, that it is why the reading for this week was very interesting since describes many links or websites that teachers and students can apply in their classes when teaching or learning a second language.

Also, a website that was mentioned in the article is the use of YouTube, which contains videos with a variety of topics and they can be used during a lesson in order to develop any skill as listening, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc. Another interesting website it is “Free rice” (freerice.com), where students can practice vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling and at the same time that students practice, they are helping to donate rice through the World Food Program.

Moreover, the article stated that even with the lack of Internet in the classrooms, technology can be always used.  Some ideas of this it is to print WebPages on to paper, also we can save the information in the computer or in an external drive, as well as covert the data in to another file type such as PDF and by downloading audio and video materials from podcast in iTunes (apple.com/itunes) or from video-sharing websites.

Therefore, we do not have excuses to not apply Internet’s tools in our daily lessons for teaching a second language.

Week 3. Podcast as a listening tool.

By Vanesa Paniagua

Article: Integrating CALL into the classrooms: the role of podcasting in a ESL listening strategies course.
Rate: 4
Article: Blending technologies in ESL courses: A reflexive enquiry.
Rate: 2

The technology age is already present and it has become very common in different fields and one of those is the education field, which have implemented some software in the learning process of a second language.

Therefore, the technological tools that have been applied are used to develop in students a specific skill in order to acquire or improve a language. Moreover, as a listening strategy in a second language class the use of podcast have become frequently. Podcast are a digital audio or video file made available on the internet.

Furthermore, a podcast can be integrating in a listening lesson for many purposes as, to check pronunciation from a native speaker recorded, to develop listening skill and to practice writing as well, helping students to have a sense of native speakers’ accent. Also, podcast innovates the teaching process, since text books can be substituted, by some podcast that contain transcriptions for students to read while listening to an audio record. For that reason, CALL can be attractive for students since they are more in contact with the technology and teachers should take this advantage to integrate the use of podcast and other software during the lessons and to encourage students to explore and to be part of the new technological tools in order to improve their second language learning.

Week 2: Autonomy in students.

By Vanesa Paniagua

Article:Effectiveness of the integration of ICT tools and activities to foster awareness as the first stage to reach learning autonomy.

Rate: 4

The importance of create autonomy in students should be a priority in education, since students will be encouraged to learn new knowledge by themselves triggering a meaningful learning and even to develop skills that would be useful in their academic life and real life. The reading for this week was a clear example of how autonomy in students brings positive results in their learning.

The article was about a research study that showed the importance of metacognitive control strategies and independent process, when using ICT tools in the students’ learning process. Moreover, what impressed me it is that the article stated that CALL promotes autonomy, and because of this, students were encouraged to make self-evaluations and self-monitoring using CALL that allowed the learners to explore the resources that internet provides and to identify the web tools that would be useful for their learning. Also, including these tools in students self-learning will help in the construction of new habits as time management and prioritizing the relevant.

Furthermore, my favorite quote from the article was “The more self-corrections and repairs that were used by the learner, the grater the gain he or she achieved”. Golonka, (pag, 503 ). I am agree with this quote, because when students become autonomous, they are able to learn and produce the new knowledge by themselves, and even realizing their own mistakes  incites a meaningful learning and creates in students the awareness of their responsibility as students.

Week 1: The use of technology in education.

By: Vanesa Paniagua

Article: Computers and language learning: an overview.

Rate: 3

The importance of technology in the education field it is increasingly apparent and for that reason CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) it is been frequently use to improve students’ language skills.

Technology facilitates and innovates the way of teaching, since there are many activities that can be used in a language class. For example, if the teachers want to focus on a specific skill, they can go and find a good activity to use with the students. Also, learning process can continue in the students’ home by practicing in certain websites. Moreover, we can say that technology is an important tool during the learning process, but teachers help will always be relevant and we cannot set aside the knowledge and feedback that a teacher can provide because it is necessary the teacher-students interaction.

For this reason, my favorite quote from the article was “It’s not so much the program. More what you do with it”. Chris Jones, 1986. I agree with this quote because there may be many good programs or activities to use during the learning process of a second language, but if it is not correctly been used will not work and for me is very important the teacher’s role and the creativity to adapt these technological programs to the class. To sum up, technology takes an important place in education but without teacher’s input and management, the purpose of using CALL will not be achieved.