Reflection of the Week-8

Hi Everyone,
Greeting from Bhutan!!!

The days seem more cheerful as we move towards our destiny, taking each step very cautiously.  It is rightly said -Journey of a mile begins with a step.
We started our long journey from week-l, we started as a stranger, never knew that we would become one BIG family, instead of a class. It pains me, when I think about the GREAT moments that we shared in this course, now knowingly or unknowingly, is coming to an end.
All is well that ends well -Shakespeare, never knew we would become so close that the thinking to part away will make my heart ache. I feel everything must be happening for a reason and hope reason be good.

My Reflection of this week:
1. Partner Sign-up: Partner signing was the first assignment that I did in week 8, I emailed Mr. Prodhan to accept me as his partner, he readily accepted me and now I remain very much obliged to him. Thank you Mr. Prodhan. I also read and checked the project plan sent to me by my partner. I commented on his write up using checklist, which I am going to post in our week 8 resource page before 1st March.
2. Discussion: I posted on discussion thread regarding the tool that I am going to use in my future class.
Who will be my learners?
Will it encourage learner autonomy?
What are the constraints in using it?
I am planning to use nicenet as well, along with my other tools, because I think this tool is very nice and very user friendly for my students.
3. Task: Using nicenet I created nicenet class and even posted question on it with direction on assignment due-date.  My class name - My English Class.  I will use it for posting assignment topics and use for discussing on certain topic. I even up loaded my class in our week 8 resource page.
4. Weekly Blog: Wrote weekly blog, describing in brief about what I did the entire week 8 and also commented on my colleagues blog post.

Happy Reading

Regards
Pema
Bhutan

Reflection of the Week-VII

Hi Everyone,
Greeting from Bhutan!
The Week-VII, came with lots of interesting and thought provoking assignments, I really didn't know how the week came to an end as I was fully engaged in my assignments and on the other hand I should consider this week to be bit unlucky for me, because of net connection problem, it started,right from the start of week-vii, I had to worry a lot for my assignments but with the support from my instructor Mr. Russell,everything was made easy for me, for this I would like to acknowledge him and never to forget I would also like to thank Mr.Robert for sending me reading materials each week for my reading, as I had problem with my connectivity in downloading them from our resources page in our course.
Now, let me reflect upon what I did this week:
1. Discussion- The class did discussion on the topic-Learner autonomy,one-computer classroom and mobile devices. It was really informative and very much relevant to my situation, the many discussion post that I went through,were very interesting, my course colleagues came up with many brilliant  ideas and suggestion to support the topic. This is one particular  topic which I feel that we should discuss in-depth, for betterment of student's learning, I feel we should consider learner autonomy as an important matter to be addressed at, or to be looked upon it.
As a teacher we should matter our students learning before everything else, we are in the school because of our children, so we should live for them.
With the introduction of this topic, now I feel that I would be able to start a class, where there will be lot of learner autonomy, unlike in the past it was bit of dictatorship- I mean teacher do most of the talking and students listening in every school. Now it would be reversed. We did post TWO of our post,on this very topic,for this I had to take the help of my instructor to post for me, due to connectivity.
2. Padlet- Here too I had connection problem and had to ask help of my instructor, he made everything easier for me.
I think padlet is another tool that is very important to use in our classroom, which in-turn can act as a forum/board for sharing of ideas/suggestions/knowledge/information between teacher and students. I feel this should be must in every subjects. This is one tool that will make classroom learning more fun and interesting.
I will surely use this tool in my future classroom,as a wall for sharing of datas and information between my students.
3. Finding partners for peer-review, I emailed Mr. Prodhan for partnership, I am very grateful to him for accepting to my request. Thank you friend.
4. Project step- I am still working on my report plan as the due date for draft submission is very near, I know not how much I would be successful at producing the best final copy of my plan report.
5.Weekly blog- I wrote my weekly blog( this blog,week-7)  waking up at 1.15 am as net connection is better around this timing,during the day no connection at all.

Please comment and a very HAPPY-READING!!!

Regards
Pema
Bhutan

Technology Related Change

Hi Everyone,
Greeting from Bhutan...

"English pronunciation is considered to be one of the most difficult skills to acquire and develop". (Martinez- For et al. 2006; Aliaga Garcia 2007).

In week 5 project step-4, I have mentioned about the technology tool that I would like to use in my future class, at present I am not teaching, in my future class I would be using ASR- Automatic Speech Recognition based system and CALL -Computer Assisted Language Learning.
I feel pronouncing correctly is also a skill. We live in the era, where English language is dominant means of communication.  We are expert in pronouncing in our own language  but we are not very proficient in pronouncing other foreign language such as English. English the lingua franca of the world.
I have decided to teach Grammar, Pronunciation, Intonation and Enunciation to my students as I feel that these areas need to be carefully addressed to in learning language.
Phonetics constitutes the basic of all other aspects of language. The students first of all learn to hear the sound accurately and listen to them closely and carefully, more they hear better they will be able to articulate. For this students should be made to listen to videos on native English speaking constantly to learn on how to articulate words. They should be made to imitate the sound they hear and do necessary correction after they reproduce the sound.
Language is refer to as a tool of communication but poor pronunciation/ mis-pronunciation will never be a good tool of communication. If one is to speak well, he/she need to speak with correct intonation, one need to master the intonation.
Pronunciation plays a vital role in spelling, grammar and the meaning of the sentences, for beginners adequate pronunciation training  should be given usingcontrol of vowel, consonants, phonemes, question intonation, stress and rhythm to utter everyday.
Students don't have suitable environment whereby they can learn English and acquire the second language effectively as the community or the surrounding where they live dosent support them. Therefore guidance is really needed for the students to help them in pronunciation/grammar or basic skills like how to pronounce words that they learn, which includes vowels and consonants.
The students should be taught the major distinction between the following:
# letters and sound
# vowels and consonants
# simple vowels and depth ones
# voiceless and voiced consonants
# word stress and sentence stress
# falling and rising intonation
While using technology ASR and CALL, this will be the areas that I would like to focus in teaching pronunciation to my students, the grammar part I will start from basic like articles then move to more complex topics.
#The week seem to be of interesting and and at the same time more challenging, interesting because we are in the middle of our course and challenging because assignments are more complex and complicated than the previous week. The following are some of the assignments and task that I did during the week, week-VI:
1. Discussion  on Engaging students- I have posted TWO post  on this topic describing my views and perspective on it.
2.Create-created interactive power point , I feel this was the most toughest task I had in the week, as I was having connection problem and at the same time I could not get much from the resources on it. Though I know about power point presentation as we usually do in our school but was not aware about interactive power-point, anyway I did submit/post my assignment but right now I am keeping my fingers crossed as I am not sure, whether my interactive power-point assignment is correct or not. Anyway human learns from mistake.
3.project step- I didn't post in this thread as we were instructed not to do so,  I posted the topic project  step- Technology Change in my blog instead.
4. Blog -weekly blog- This week the weekly blog was quite different from what we did in the past weeks. Instead of writing more on reflection of the week, I wrote my blog on the topic -Technology Change, continuation of week 5 project step -4. I also commented on my fellow colleagues post.

Please comment, waiting for your valuable comments for my improvement.

Thank you all....

Regards

Pema Chodup
Bhutan

My Reflection of the Week: Week-V

Hi Everyone,
Nice Sunday Morning to you all...
Greeting from Bhutan...
Let me now share my Reflection of the week-v,with you all. The week was more interesting and the assignments were more lively than ever. I am very much excited,because we are in the middle of our course.
The assignments of this week were of more interesting and very much reliable to our very own profession.
The following are the task/assignments that I did during the entire week-v:
#Discussion on Assessment,Rubrics and PBL,I found this discussion to be very important and lively,as a teacher,we are very much into using these very tools for assessing students work.
#Task: creating Rubrics:
Creating of Rubrics was lot more fun,by this task, I am now fully confident that now I would be able to assess my students work without any mistake/doubt.
#Extra credit task: Creating Webquest:
It was again lot more fun working on creating Webquest for the first time and I do feel that this is another important tool for teachers in their profession.
#Project step-4:Describe a technology tool solution:
I have already mentioned the issue,regarding the use of technology in the class in my project step-3 and in this project I have writtenabout its solution on how to tackle the issue.
#Blog:Weekly Reflection :
I added my Weekly Reflection post on my blog and commented on others post.

Nice Sunday!!!

Cheers
Pema Chodup
Bhutan