Reading Post #6

A good activity mentioned in this articles is the one about "researching your comunity", such as the weather, geographical location, physical description, population, time zone, points of interest, and you can add much more. The students can use technology tools such as the Internet, local newscast, and a software program such as Kidzpiration to gather and organize their findings. This would be a great group project. For inquiry and proble solving, the students would pretty much be learning English as they learned their fisrt language. That is by trial and error, making comparisons, making obserbations while using metacogniytive skills. These activities support language learning in so many ways. First of all, they can apply the strategies to every day situations outside the classroom where they make important questions, recognize patterns, reflect, and make conclusions. Podcasting could be used within the inquiry and problem solving process because this multimedia tool allows for recording and publishing their research findings, such as interviews,oral history projects, storytelling,and so much more. This offers the opportunity for students to hear other students' native-like voices all around the world. -Rosario

Reading Post #6

A good activity mentioned in this articles is the one about "researching your comunity", such as the weather, geographical location, physical description, population, time zone, points of interest, and you can add much more. The students can use technology tools such as the Internet, local newscast, and a software program such as Kidzpiration to gather and organize their findings. This would be a great group project. For inquiry and proble solving, the students would pretty much be learning English as they learned their fisrt language. That is by trial and error, making comparisons, making obserbations while using metacogniytive skills. These activities support language learning in so many ways. First of all, they can apply the strategies to every day situations outside the classroom where they make important questions, recognize patterns, reflect, and make conclusions. Podcasting could be used within the inquiry and problem solving process because this multimedia tool allows for recording and publishing their research findings, such as interviews,oral history projects, storytelling,and so much more. This offers the opportunity for students to hear other students' native-like voices all around the world. -Rosario

Software Evaluation #1- TELL ME MORE

TELL ME MORE by Auralog Inc.
This program is designed for beginners, intermediate, and advance learners by offering 4 levels: complete beginner, beginner, intermediate, and intermediate++.It is available in 9 different languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, hinese, Japanese, and Arabic.The software seems very innovative. It comes with a help feature or icon which is very friendly-user.This sofware is designed for one-to-one with the computer. It is interactive, though because it allows you to speak to it by responding to its questions. It also comes with a voice recognition tool, which allows the learner to practice their pronunciation. Each level has 6 different workshops to choose from. These include: vocabulary, culture, oral comprehension, speech recognition, phonetics ,and grammar. Within these workshops, you can find grammar explanations, a glossary, geographical maps, stories, dictations, cartoons, games, and illustrations.Everything is classified by themes, level, and categories. This sofware also comes with an Educational Path feature that allows the teacher to personalize, modify, and set limitations to any lesson. These can be done by individual students or by groups. The teacher is also able to track the students' work and progress because it has its own assessment tool. The main language approach being targeted is the communicative approach by addressing four important language skills: oral, written,expression, and comprehension.I would definitely use this tool as a complement to my lesson plans with ESL learners because it allows for the development of communicative competence and lesson extensions. The cultural workshop is great. It that has very good video clips and good audio files. However there are a few activities that are a little dull or even cultural-biased. The beginner level is also a little advanced in certain activities, but there are so many that you could easily avoid them and still take advantage of this great tool. I would also take advantage of the teacher guide to keep track of the students' performance and create my own lesson or assignment according to individual skill levels. Even though this sounds time-consuming, depending on how much modification is needed to be done, overall its worth giving it a try. -Rosario

Reading Post #5

Output is just as important as input because we want our ESL learners to be able to apply what is being learned in the classroom in different domains outside of school, in the real world. Computers are a great tool in helping us to elicit such output by allowing for creativity and production in many ways. Egbert gives us great ideas on how different projects can be done with the aid of technology. It is also important to give our students choices and allow them to take the initiative and control of their language production. For example, I like to give my students the freedom to choose a topic within limits of course, and I also allow them to use different software. For example, we did a unit on telecommunication and media. We looked at online newspapers in Spanish first, such as El nuevo Heraldo to get ideas and examples first. Their project was to create a headline or a front page of a newspaper or an article. Some of them used Publisher and others used Microsoft Word. All work had to be in Spanish and include illustrations. The work varied in terms of creativity and design, but I was pretty happy with the production. After i'm done with this class, I'm sure I'll be able to assign an even better project that will incorporate more technology. On the next project, I will try to implement the use of Wikis. I ahd no idea what a great tool these can be. I have never used a Wiki before. They too seem to be a great way to expand audience for students. This is important for there collaborationa nd communication of the language. These can also let them realize how many ESL learners there are, for example, if we create a Wiki just for language learning. This way they can write about their experiences and struggles with the language per se.

Reading Post #4

Communication and collaboration are related to one another in that here collaboration is thought of as a process in which learners interact socially to create shared understanding, which is what communication means. This defenition is aligned with TESOL and NETS standards. Students can benefit by interacting socially in many ways, such as by solving, receiving incomprehensible input, transfering info., gaining control of a situation, ans by using language appropriately as well as creatively.Teachers need to allow the students opportunity to successfully and actively interact with each other by assigning group work per se. Group work must be guided and well structured. Computers cannot provide social interaction, but they expand communication. It's important to remember here to develop an assignment based on the goalsof the curriculum and not based on the technology tools. I love the idea of the Reading Circles assignment. I don't remember using technology to learn English when I was in ESL classes. We are so lucky to have such useful tools now to facilitate language learning.

Reading Prompt #3

The pedagogical divide that separates instruction between ELL and affluent learners has to do with the teacher's expectations of the students. There is a tendency for teachers to teach lower level skills to ELL or lower-income learners. I don't understand why. Every learner needs to be taught with the assumption that they potential and ability to learn. The learning style or presentation is what needs to be adjusted accordingly in order for our leraners to achieve the three frameworks described in this chapter, which are engagement, generativity, and control. Just as we are learning in this class, technology is merely a tool to language teaching. It is the same for language learning in the classroom. Egbert explains the different ways in which computers can assist listening and speaking. The most important is that they are able to interact socially and receive input from other peers, I think. They have a wider audience too. Learners can speak around, through, as well as with the computer. Interactivity is the key here.

Reading Prompt # 2

Cummins describes multiliteracies as having skills in conversational fluency, discrete language, as well as academic language proficiency. As teachers we need to make sure that the students are learning beyond reading and writing. They must learn how to apply literacy skills in different domains outside of the school. For this it is important to use authentic materials in the classroom. Egbert is right when he questions what authentic materials are. We need to keep in mind that materials that we use need to be authentic from the learner's point of view. This way the teaching of reading and writing through authentic materials would be successful. One way that we can ensure we are using authentic materials is by simply asking the students what they like to read outside of class. Through a blog, we can post surveys or have the students choose from a list of materials posted by the teacher, or create literature circles. My experience creating a blogger was as I expected it to be. That is, I didn't really have much to add. I need to post some pictures, think about what I want to say on my profile, and links as well. Now I really need to get access to the Internet at home!!!!