Assignment 2 Follow-Up

Assignment 2 Follow-Up

I tried out a slightly modified version of assignment 2 in class so I thought I'd post a few quick thoughts...

The wiki went over very well. One downside was that in order to edit, you needed to be logged in with a Google account. This may have been how I set the permissions but I haven't been able to figure out for sure. I had prepared for this by bringing paper with me so that students could do it the old fashioned way but as it turned out, enough students actually did have Google accounts already so we were able to proceed as planned. There were a few other very minor hitches but overall it exceeded my expectations.

Things to consider in the future:

• need to have a Google account (it appears)
• only one person can edit the page at a time (no problem for my class but could cause potential problems depending on how the wiki is going to be utilized
• students need to SAVE the page when they're done!

I used the CDLP site as well but I didn't have the students read the articles; they only read the titles. It wasn't really necessary because they only needed to generate a few ideas quickly and the titles were sufficient to do that.

Assignment 4: Using video

Lesson topic: Leadership and responsibility

Lesson time: 60 minutes

Target: The target is a small group of Korean university faculty whom I tutor twice a week, we primarily focus on conversation and discussion skills.

Materials

               

• Edited Video on Dropbox (downloaded and clipped shorter using Virtualdub)
• Script with blanks
• Discussion questions with complete script
• Original, full length source video at Washington Post

Procedures

Pre-viewing warm-up (5 minutes)

1. Introduce the video using the description on the handout. (link above)
2. Discuss the following questions: (also on handout)

• What advice would you give to a person entering college? What advice did you receive?
• How would you describe a great leader?
• What do you feel is your responsibility to society?

Initial viewing and comprehension check (5-10 minutes)

1. Play the video without the script.
2. Discuss the following questions: (also on handout)

• What is Jim Young Kim's job according to the video? What work has he done in the past?
• In your opinion, what kind of a person is he? How would you describe his attitude?
• In the clip, Mr. Kim mentions that in Haiti, he and Paul farmer, a Caucasian man, were mistaken for brothers. Why was this?

Second viewing and vocabulary check (10 minutes)

1. Play the video with the script containing blanks.
2. Pause after the blanked out words are spoken.
3. Students attempt to fill in the blanks.
4. Confirm answers.

Third viewing (0-5 minutes)

1. Play video a third time to show vocabulary in context. (optional)

Discussion (30 minutes)

1. Discuss the following questions: (also on handout)

• In the clip, Mr. Kim’s father says that before he can study philosophy, he needs to get a skill. Why does he say this? Do you agree? On what factors did you base your decisions about what to study?
• Mr. Kim says that he is extremely privileged because of his education. Why is this? How has your education helped you?
• Mr. Kim also says that you can almost smell a good leader. What does he mean by this? In your opinion, what makes a good leader? Have you met anyone that you consider to be a great leader? Why do you think this?

Lesson review/analysis

How will you use this resource to meet the needs of your instructional purposes?

This lesson will continue a discussion on the topic of leadership. The video will be used to teach some vocabulary and listening skills as well as to inspire discussion.

Why is this topic, information or content appropriate for the lesson you to create? (e.g., level of authenticity, relevance to target language, interest level, and motivation)?

The target group are professors and administrators who are in a position similar to that of the video subject and hopefully can relate to what he is saying. I think they will be motivated also, by the fact that the subject is Korean-American and by the fact that he is a very well-known individual as the current president of the World Bank. I tried to choose language that I thought would be unknown yet possibly able to get from context and that the professors could use.

What are the potential problems, either language based or technical, that you may need to troubleshoot or prepare for?

I never like to trust online video in class. I have no wired internet connection in my classroom and the wifi can be spotty so I will make sure to have the video saved locally in case there are any issues. I will also have two devices to play the video on (notebook computer and phone) in case any issues come up.

What technical problems did you encounter while preparing the A/V?

There were a number of issues that came up.

1. I had trouble downloading the video from the Washington Post site. I tried a few sites without success but in the end I was able to use an open source program called Stream Transport to do it.
2. I had a bit of trouble editing the video because of some codec issues. I thought about just keeping it full length but I wanted it to be on the short end of 3-5 minutes so I used a program called Virtualdub to cut the video shorter but had to download plugins to make it work. (This may have contributed to my next issue.)
3. I had trouble (and failed in) uploading the video to the BlackBoard site. In the end I used Dropbox to host the video instead because I've used it before and know how to do it. (In the end I was able to post the video straight to blogger!)

Assignment 3: Google Apps Lesson

Lesson topic: Making recipes

Lesson time: 30-60 minutes

Target: high beginner students in a Korean university conversation class

N.B. This lesson will serve as the culmination of a unit on cooking in a conversation class. The vocabulary focus has been on food and verbs associated with cooking and the grammar has focused on imperatives.

Procedures

Warm-up (3-5 minutes)

1.       Groups discuss the following questions.

o    "What is your favorite home-cooked food?"

o    "What ingredients are in it?"

o    "How do you make it?"

Preparation Activity (5-10 minutes)

1.       Teacher elicits list of cooking verbs (previously studied) and writes them on the board and confirms understanding.

2.      Teacher elicits students' favorite ingredients and writes them on the board.

3.      One at a time, groups choose an ingredient they like.

4.      Continue until each group has 3 ingredients.

Main Activity (20 -30 minutes)

1.       As a group, students go to http://goo.gl/YnzycH (Cookin' With Google custom search) on their phone or tablet and enter their ingredients into the search.

2.      Group decides upon a recipe they would like to make and writes the necessary ingredients, equipment, and procedures on a piece of note paper.

3.      As a group, students go to http://goo.gl/Um4G48 (Google Docs form) on a phone or tablet and write their recipe into the form.

If Time Remains/Homework

1.       Students follow link to view other responses.

2.      Browse other groups' recipes and choose the most delicious sounding one.

Possible Follow-up

1.       Since there are no cooking facilities available, student or volunteer teacher could make the food and bring it to class next time.

Lesson review/analysis

How will you use this resource to meet the needs of your instructional purposes?

The aims of my lesson are to have students use vocabulary related to food and cooking and to form imperative sentences. They will do this first, by brainstorming what they already know and then by using Google to search for authentic materials related to this. They will then use Google Docs to recreate their ideas in sentence form using correct verb inflections.

Why is this topic, information or content appropriate for the lesson you to create? (e.g., level of authenticity, relevance to target language, interest level, and motivation)?

This topic is in the textbook and so is very relevant to the class. It uses authentic recipes written by people on cooking websites. I believe the authenticity will motivate students as will the topic itself. Cooking is very trendy in Korea recently and cooking shows are very popular on television.

What directions or tech support will you provide students before the lesson to focus learning and adapt this resource for your instructional resources?

I will instruct the students to bring notebooks or tablets with them to class in order to make reading in a group easier though phones will suffice as well. I will teach them to use the Google Docs form interface, perhaps by showing it to them before class or printing a sample for them to work with during class if they need help outlining their ideas.

What are the potential problems, either language based or technical, that you may need to troubleshoot or prepare for?

It may be difficult for groups to work together using a small interface like on a phone. I will encourage them to bring computers or tablets if they have them. (We don't have a computer lab available to us or I would use that instead.) The students could potentially also run into difficult language on the cooking websites that they are not able to understand. In that case, I will either help explain things in class, or encourage them to use a dictionary for help, or I'll help them choose another recipe.

Assignment 1: Website Review Revisited

This summer I'll be teaching a new class in our Premium English program. There is no course description or fixed aims for the course but the general idea, as explained to me, is that we are providing motivated students the opportunity to hone their skills through writing and debate on controversial issues… whatever that means.

So one thing that will definitely be necessary for the course is a place for students to find content. One of the links on the resources page, the California Distance Learning Project's Adult Learning Activities site, looks like it may be quite a good place for this to happen.

The site is organized by category on the first page and each category contains a large number of articles on each topic but there is more to the site than that--there are also built in vocabulary and comprehension checking activities for the students to use.

Using these activities is fairly straightforward. The page is visually quite clean and the directions are clear enough. A user can navigate many of the activities simply by pressing the NEXT button. It's a site designed for independent work and a lot of individual exploring of the material there and I don't see learners having any major issues navigating the site.

The site appears to be designed for learners at about an intermediate level. The articles are somewhat authentic but as far as I can tell they've been edited for length, grammar and vocabulary to facilitate lower-level learners. Many of the texts have accompanying audio tracks to further help the learners. The vocabulary, spelling, comprehension, review, and writing activities following each article seem like they may be challenging but the fact that there are so many of them, and that they mostly all allow a learner to check his/her work lead me to believe than an intermediate user could handle them.

As a whole, it seems like quite a good site. I think it would most effective for helping learners to practice their reading skills, and to learn to vocabulary. It wasn't clear to me how the site was able to evaluate the written responses but these are the last of the activities and perhaps the idea behind them is more of a self-reflection activity than anything else.

I will recommend this site to motivated students who are interested in additional work outside of my class for sure. I also believe it can be used in other ways.

As I mentioned already, the articles are organized by topic and there are quite a lot of them. This means that I could also use it as a sort of research tool either in class or at home. Reading skills activities could also be taught using these articles.

I've used number of news sites designed both for learners and native speakers in the past and many are great for certain things but this site's value comes from its ability to help students research on their own and it's strong organization. It's obvious that a lot of time went into the content on this site and I most definitely plan to use it in the future.

Assignment 2: Opposing arguments practice

Lesson Plan

Lesson topic: Thinking of arguments
Lesson time: 1 hour
Target: high-intermediate university students

Notes: This lesson assumes that I have collected the students' email addresses and shared the wiki with them beforehand.

Warm-up

1. Class brainstorms a list of controversial issues related to schools.

Research

1. Students navigate to the following website and click on school.
   http://www.cdlponline.org/
2. In groups, students read the article titles and decide which may be related to the controversial issues form the warm-up.
3. Groups choose an issue that interests them.
4. Students read the articles on the website related to that topic.

Creating arguments

1. Students navigate to the activity wiki page.
   https://sites.google.com/site/6611wiki/
2. Groups define sides to their issue, label them pro and con, and choose the side that they would like to take.
3. A member of the group writes this information into the wiki.
4. Students use the article sand their own ideas to create arguments supporting their side and write them in their group's wiki.

Further practice

1. Groups switch wikis and attempt to create opposing arguments for each other's topic.

Homework

1. Students fill in any remaining opposing arguments in their own wikis.

Lesson Review/Analysis


How will you use this resource to meet the needs of your instructional purposes?

The aims of my lesson are to have students brainstorm ideas for a debate class and to begin to formulate opinions ideas. I am using two different resources to do this, one to present content, the California Distance Learning Project's (CDLP) Adult Learning Activities page and the other, a Google Sites wiki page, to help students create content.

Why is this application and format appropriate for the lesson you plan to create (e.g., level of authenticity, relevance to target language, register, accuracy, interest level, and motivation)?

These applications are appropriate because they provide a specific platform for the aims of my lesson. To brainstorm ideas, students don't yet need in-depth knowledge of the topics. That's why the CDLP site is so great. The articles are short, edited texts that are already categorized and can be read and understood by high-intermediate learners quickly and efficiently.

The wiki is a very good way to help students formulate and organize ideas. Students will be able to work individually but also to interact with others and get instant feedback all at the same time. Not only should this make them more productive, but they will be motivated by this as well.


What handouts or directions will you provide students to focus learning and adapt this resource for your instructional goals?

The wiki does contain some instructions for completing the activity but beyond that I don't plan to provide handouts to my students at this point. I will be providing them with oral instructions and I'll be writing things on the board though. Both URLs will be written on the board before class begins to save time, as will the list of brainstormed topics for reference.

Additionally, I will demonstrate how to edit the wiki using my phone plugged into a projector. I use this setup on a regular basis to show multimedia and PowerPoint shows so I'm fairly confident it will work well.

What are the potential problems, either language based or technical that you may need to troubleshoot or prepare for?

The biggest problem I'm anticipating is that students can figure out how to use the wiki. Like I mentioned, I will demonstrate this to the students but there is always the chance that the site will be formatted differently on different phones. Editing the wiki could become an issue if it turns out that only one student can edit at a time. (I believe Google allows simultaneous editing from multiple users but I can't test that out myself.) If this becomes an issue, groups will have to share a phone to enter data into the wiki.

I don't anticipate any major language issues as this task shouldn't be too difficult for high-intermediate students but as we are not covering any reading skills or the language necessary to express opinions, there is always a chance that students may struggle with this as well. In this case, I may have to write some examples on the board that students can use as models.

Assignment 1: Website Review

This summer I'll be teaching a new class in our Premium English program. There is no course description or fixed aims for the course but the general idea, as explained to me, is that we are providing motivated students the opportunity to hone their skills through writing and debate on controversial issues… whatever that means.

So one thing that will definitely be necessary for the course is a place for students to find content. One of the links on the resources page, the California Distance Learning Project's Adult Learning Activities site, looks like it may be quite a good place for this to happen.

The site is organized by category on the first page and each category contains a large number of articles on each topic. I may assign topics for students to research so this alone would be useful but there is more to the site than that--there are also built in vocabulary and comprehension checking activities for the students to use.

Of course we will be doing some research as a class and I will be checking students' work as they go along but this site could allow the students to do additional independent research. Now, much of the vocabulary may be familiar to the students and the comprehension check activities may not always be challenging for students of their level but it will still provide them with plenty of model structures that they will be able to emulate in their writing and speaking.

I've used number of news sites designed both for learners and native speakers in the past and many are great for certain things but this site's value comes from its ability to help students research on their own. I most definitely plan to use it this summer.

Andy's Introduction

My ESL Program

Hi all,

I teach mostly conversational English with a bit of reading and a bit of EAP at Korea Aerospace University. My students are mostly Korean university freshmen and are a mix of future pilots, engineers, and business people.

Korea Aerospace University English Department Website
http://www.kau.ac.kr/page/web/english/main.jsp