Week 10 Reflection

Hello everyone,

I feel a bit sad to know that this will be my last blog to post in Webskills. At the beginning of the course, I thought it was a  very long course with hard- working assignments, how could I handle it. At the moment, I couldn’t believe that time flies quickly. Our Week 1o has arrived and the course will finish soon.

Webskills Course

It was a precious experience for me to take this very special and high demanding course. I am very lucky to have this great chance, to learn in a globally famous university with excellent team and great advisor like Donna, to have great colleagues from all over the world and our friendships will go on and on, it won’t stop like the Webskills course. I will keep this memorable event for life.

The most useful topics and the implementation

I like all topics I have learned from our course, but the most useful topics for me were  teaching oral skills with websites , delicious.com, websites for reading/writing Skills , project-based learning, the one-computer classroom,mobile devices and Padlet. I think these topics suit my teaching contexts and I can manage them smoothly.I will use them in my classes. I am amazed with the tools in this course; Nicenet, Blackboard, Wiki and Blogger. I plan to use them in my classes as well.

ANVILL is interesting and exciting, I will also use it some day in my classes but I need to learn more about it.

This is not my cup of tea.

I was not good at using Webquest, I created one but did not submit to Donna. I thought I needed more time to improve it. Maybe it was not relevant to what I do or will do.

My gratitude

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my supporters, Donna, our kindest and excellent advisor, the U.S. Embassy of Thailand for giving me this valuable opportunity, Oregon University and our instructors and coordinators, and very important ones,  all my colleagues who encourage and motivate me to learn. Thank you for a wonderful friendship. 

Welcome to Thailand

Please keep in touch and you all are welcome to visit me and Yaowapa in Thailand. I hope some days we will meet face to face.

I will miss the  time we were together for sure.

Best wishes,

Jirawan  Thani

Thailand

Week 9 Reflection

Hello Donna, Jeff and my dear colleagues,

This week assignments have provided me a little more time to rest than last week but  I feel a bit sad to know that this course will finish very soon.

Here’s my opinion about Week 9;

Learning styles, Technology Tools, and ANVILL

           

            There are not many assignments as the previous weeks so I have enough time to finish all reading resources about learning styles, technology tools and ANVILL and  do the quiz of Edutopia. You can find my results as follow;

1) What is your emotional intelligence? – I’ve got highly skilled result in most aspects, except recognizing emotions, I’ve got moderate attention to my emotions and those of my students. I need to pay more that attention to this aspect.

2) What’s your learning style? – I’ve got linguistic 83%, logical-mathematical 19%, visual-spatial 17%, intrapersonal 56%, interpersonal 56%, musical 38%, bodily-kinesthetic 42% and naturalistic 58%. – Luckily I am an English teacher which suits my learning style. I have very bad result with logical-mathematical and visual-spatial.

3) Super teacher traits-  The results show that;

            -  Rebound time: I always recover from a crisis or setback quickly,

            - Energy mode : I often like to be active while teaching.

            - Taking charge: I sometimes  like to lead others.

            - Agreement: In a disagreement, I always want to hear points of view that conflict with mine.

            - Perfectionism: I sometimes a perfectionism.

            - Reserve: I am always comfortable sharing my opinions.

              I am very satisfied with the results of  all three quiz. It’s excellent to know our learning style, emotional intelligence and traits. It will be easier to manage the class and teaching effectively. One of my colleagues at school always has problems with controlling his emotion, even if he’s good at teaching but the students don’t like to learn with him, it would be better  if he knew his emotional intelligence and students learning styles and then use his good traits to fix it  up.

Technology Tools

         
                Before taking this course, I rarely used technology tools. 
Now I’m very happy to have many choices to enhance them in my teaching. I have learned about Nicenet, blog, Wiki space, websites, and special tool as Padlet, ANVILL. Delicious.com is one of my favorite tools. I plan to be a New teacher who is much higher technology than before. I hope that I can motivate my students more and more.

ANVILL

          Thank Professor Jeff Magoto very much for teaching us about ANVILL, an amazing and excited tool. It is very good to teach speaking and listening with it. I plan to use it with my class in the near future, but I need to learn more with it.

Final Project Report

          I would like to express my gratitude to Yiling for giving great comments to help me to improve my project draft.  I first uploaded my final project two hours  before the deadline time (Friday  June 6, at noon), but when I went over it I thought that I should have put the specific topic  of my project and delete the word “template” . I then edited it  and replaced the new one 10 hours later.  It was 8 hours after the deadline time but still be on June 6. I hope that Donna, our kind advisor would forgive me for this delay.

All the best,

Jirawan  Thani

Thailand

Hello Donna and  Everyone,

Week 8 already!

I couldn’t believe that we have already arrived week 8. It is a challenging week with the most difficult assignments for me. Fortunately, my Webskill colleagues help me a lot to accomplish it. Thank you Husni who has created our Yellow Group on Facebook to share ideas and feelings with friends. I feel warm and happy to talk to all of you.

Let me share about this week assignments.

Online tool

I created Padlet for my Grade 12 as online exercise. It is easy to make but very attractive, motivated and practical. My students were excited to see this amazing wall.

First Project Draft

It took me a long time to finish the first draft. I had to get back to study the resources from week 2 , 3 and 4 to get more ideas. The template can make it more simple and then I could finish it on time.

Peer Review

My partner, Yiling, is an early bird. She finished her first draft very fast. I supposed to finish my project on time, but accidentally posted the wrong file . I  apologized  for this mistake and replaced the right one two days later. The checklist template can help me finish this peer review smoothly. Yiling has done a really good job, I am sure she will have an excellent full report.

Have a nice Week 9!
Jirawan  Thani
Thailand

Week 7 reflection

Hello everyone,

Discussion: Learner Autonomy, the One-computer Classroom, and Mobile Devices

I chose to read articles about the one-computer classroom and mobile devices because it relates to my project task which I am going to use websites as technology tool to improve my students listening skill. I have learned more about using computer in many useful ways such as  a teacher tool, multi-media chalk board or flip chart, learning center or station, cooperative learning tool and so on.
Emerging technologies going to the MALL: Mobile Assisted Language Learning article by George M.Chinnery  has confirmed me that enhancing technologies to lesson plans can engage  students more in learning.

                                                         One-computer Classroom

Task: Padlet
 
I visited http://padlet.com and saw the greeting statement “welcome to the easiest way to create and collaborate in the world. You'll feel like a superhero in no time”. I then found it is exactly true. I think we can use Padlet variously, we can see everyone's activity on the wall instantly and keep our wall private between friends. We can also make a public wall for the whole world to see.

Project Task 6: Suggest a partner for a  peer review
I love this idea so much, peer evaluation can help me to feel more confident about project task. Thank you Yi ling from Taiwan for being my partner. I am very happy to work with her  and hope that we will have great time together.
I have started using Breakingnewsenglish.com to improve listening skill  of my Grade 7 students , different level from what I first mentioned in Week  2. I have changed from Grade 12  to be Grade 7 because this semester I have been assigned to teach Grade 7, not Grade 12 anymore.

                 







My Grade 7 Class  






I am excited but a bit worried at the same time about writing my project report. I will  try  my  best  to
do  it.

All  the  best,
Jirawan  Thani
Thailand

Dear everyone,

Here's my reflection of Week 6;

Creating Student-centered Classes and Interactive Power Point

"Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand". I really like this Chinese proverb frome our Week 6  homepage. I strongly agree with it and will always think about it as a redar of my teaching. This week learning provides me many practical ideas to enhance  in my lesson plans as large class is my teaching context. Most of the classes in my school have students about 50-60 students and it's really hard to control and engage them. Thank you Donna and Rick Finnan for very good article, "Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students" which suits my teaching context indeed. I can use many activities in my classes.  I also read the rest readings which impress me  with its useful suggestions and knowledge.

- Interactive Power Point

Previously, when I needed to use PowerPoint, I just coppied the tamplate from someone and changed only the words, but not for this assignment.

At first, I didn't know how to create interactive PowerPoint, spending long time to study from readings resources in our homepage and surfing internet, watching some video from Youtube enabled me to make my very first  DIY Interactive  PowerPont. I'm happy to see my PPT on our Wiki even if it's not very good. I wish I could make it more interactive with motive animations with all assigned elements, but as a new creater, I had to decide that just finished it.

- Project Task 5: I have students to teach and the school just opened last  week, I'm going to implement my technology in my class this week and will keep a log of what I did for sure.

This is one of challengeing  weeks.

Best wishes,
Jirawan  Thani
Thailand

Dear Donna, Kelly and all my colleagues,

This week is the hardest time for me as I had to get behind in my assignments after being absent one week to Greece for a seminar. I am sorry to bother Donna to check my assignments afterwards.

Rubric and alternative assessment

Alternative assessment suits the new approach of teaching English with communicative approach as the traditional pencil-paper tests cannot be used properly anymore. The suggested articles can give many ideas about enhancing alternative assessment in my lesson plans. Rubric is very important for this kind of assessment and RubiStar is a special tool to  make appropriate rubrics, I am glad that this course let me know many good tools for improving my teaching.

Project-based Learning

My school has just started a new academic year last week and I have been assigned to teach Independent Study Course, it is delighted to have the chance to learn more about project-based learning and I will be able to use it in this course. I think project-based learning and independent study have similar process.

Create a Rubric

I had fun with making a rubric from RubiStar and I will make more for my assessment in the future. This  time I have made a rubric about oral presentation of tourist attractions in Thailand.

WebQuest

I tried to make my WebQuest, but I am still not satisfied with it, I then paused it for a while as the limit of the time. I hope that I can get back to improve it and be able to show you all the link later, hopefully I can get some extra points from it, Donna, please forgive me for being late.

I read my colleagues' blogs with impressive, you all are wonderful to make such great jobs.

Best wishes,
Jirawan
Thailand

Hello everyone,

I started Week 4 earlier than last week and enjoyed reading many good resources and surfing useful websites. This is exactly learning by doing and it will be the life long memory. These articles  gave me many ideas to enhance technology in my teaching.

Reading, writing and Vocabulary discussion task introduced me many good websites such as manythings.com and breakingnewsenglish.com which provide  printable handouts and worksheet. I will inform my students to use these useful websites and also enhance  them to my lesson plan.


 I hope that my ABCD objectives would be alright.

Technology -enhanced lesson plan took me the longest time of all this week tasks. I spent many hours to make decision what to teach, and  then made up my mind to choose the reading story from www.breakingnewsenglish.com as I posted on disscussion. I will try out this lesson plan with my students when the school open next week.

I took not long time to discuss on problem or issue as we just mentioned the problems, not the solution. Anyway, I will think about the solution and use it in my project work later.

Can't wait to read all of your blogs.

Best wishes,
Jirawan  Thani
Thailand