Survey - project 3 evaluation

Some ideas - you don't need to be dead serious ;)

 click for full scale
























An example of a lesson based on an infographic: GULF SPILL

ONLINE CLASS PROJECTS

PASSIVE VOICE - KAROLINA WOJTAN

LISTENING LESSON: VOC + ACTIVITY - EWELINA SUŁOWICZ

SCHOOL SUBJECTS - JUSTYNA JASIŃSKA

JOANNA JAKUBIK (we need interactive whiteboard)

PRESENT CONTINUOUS - KAROLINA SOŁTYS

FURNITURE - BARTOSZ URODA

SCHOOL EQUIPMENT AND COLOURS - MARTA TOMASIK

AT THE AIRPORT - ANNA SZKARADEK

THERE IS/ARE - MARTYNA GNYLA

An interesting FREE Coursera course

A quick heads-up!
Those of you who think about teaching as their future career may be interested in this MOOC:


Shaping the Way We Teach English, 2: Paths to Success in ELT

I haven't done anything from the Oregon Uni yet, so can't guarantee high quality, but it looks quite inviting.

The classes begin today, and it's a 5 week course.

How apt ;-)

Canva has just released three tutorials which focus on some topics we covered in the first semester!

Please revisit: COLOUR, FONT and LAYOUT DESIGN.
Go HERE and complete challenges 2, 3 and 4.

Follow the tutorials and complete all tasks. At each strage there is a YT video explaining step-by-step how to proceed.



Reminder: I should get links to your online lessons/tasks today the latest!

Infographics and wikiHow

In our last project we'll experiment with different tools for sharing information.

1. Google "infographics" (-> check "pictures")

2. Visit Canva.com and try out some of their challenges

3. Visit wikiHow

4. Have a look at one of their articles about predicting the weather

5. Take their Tour

Definitions of fair use: http://lightoftruth.tumblr.com/disclaimer

Interactive Whiteboard Software

In our class tomorrow we'll start working on INFOGRAPHICS but some of you have asked me about whiteboards.

I have yet to confirm which soft is going to be compatible with our boards at IJO, but you can check out the links below:

A blog by a teacher from WA (doh! :) ) on teacher-assisting technologies - THE INTERACTIVE CLASSROOM

65 FREE INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD RESOURCES - if you are more interested in using the board, not writing your own exercises

SANKORE - an open-source platform, which everybody in the know seems to be recommending.

Our first project is ready :)

Infographic tools

Five Good Online Tools for Creating Infographics

10 free tools for creating infographics

So far my favourite one is Canva.com - think Glogster on steroids ;)
It requires registration and has a library with commercial pictures. But you can use its free tools to make a successful infographic. 

Planning a grammar lesson

Lesson planning from David Estrella

Online editors

As you remember from the beginning of the course I normally use Audacity as my audio/sound editing software.

But there are numerous websites which host ONLINE audio editing facilities.

FREE (though limited options)

TWISTEDWAVE

PRZYCINACZ MP3


FREE SUITES (registration required)

SOUNDATION

AUDIO EXPERT

Listening exercises

1. How to write good multiple choice exercises:

Source: http://djackson.myweb.uga.edu/9080/Daily/Handouts/MCItemPrinciples.html

Some principles of writing good multiple-choice test items

Big conceptual issues:

• Analyze what the question is really testing - what would a student have to know, comprehend, or be able to do in order to answer the question correctly?
  
• Be conscious of asking questions on a variety of cognitive levels (according to Bloom's Taxonomy):
• knowledge (facts, definitions, simple concepts)
• comprehension (more complex concepts, relationships betweeen multiple simple concepts, comparisons and contrasts, alternative descriptions or interpretations of facts and concepts)
• application (using facts and general principles to solve specific problems)
• Note: multiple-choice questions are rarely appropriate for Bloom's analysis, synthesis and evaluation levels
• Make distractors (wrong choices) plausible based on various kinds of anticipated misconceptions, confusions or miscalculations, rather than ridiculous or trivial (unless intended for humorous value - see below).
• Write simply and clearly - avoid possible ambiguity in the meaning of a everyday words, or extremely long questions or answers.
• Check and double-check the logic and understanding required to arrive at a correct answer - avoid ambiguity in the correctness of answers, and explicitly state any substantive assumptions.
• The overall general issue to keep in mind is that the question should allow the students to focus their thought on the substance of the science involved, not other issues.
  

Technical issues:

• Choose and use a consistent number of choices - 4 or 5 is most common and reasonable.
  
• Vary the order of the correct choice, perhaps actually randomly if possible (except see below).
• Make all choices parallel in grammatical and/or other form.
• Avoid an unbalanced number of different length answers - one should not stand out in a superficial visual inspection.
• If students will handwrite letter choices, insist on block capitals, rather than lowercase, for clarity.
• Avoid any kind of clue that would reward pure "test-wiseness"
• Use choices such as "all of the above," "none of the above," "not enough information is given," etc., regularly or not at all, and place them consistently at the end of the list of choices.
• Avoid logical negatives ("not") in both stem and choices whenever possible. The use of "...except:" in a stem is usually somewhat more clear and therefore more acceptable if necessary.

There are plenty of other websites on that topic like HERE and HERE.

2. Video to audio converters + flash to avi/mp4/mpg converters.

Convert2mp3
Online Audio Converter
Convert Files
Free Online YT converter

Some examples of online (and offline) lessons

Ellys Grammar Lesson Plan from cyutafl

GLOGS

Krzysztof Rosłoński
Ewelina Żabińska
Jolanta Jaworska
JA gr 2/II

Joanna Jakubik

Anna Szkaradek

Karolina Wojtan

Karolina Sołtys







M.Maślanka, M.Gnyla, S.Siewiera, M.Tomasik

What works and what doesn't...

... or basically we are going to fool around taking different quizzes and playing language games to work out which types of online activities are the best to introduce/practise a given skill.

Some places we'll be exploring:

http://www.esl-lounge.com/student/index.php

http://www.agendaweb.org/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/quizzes/index.shtml

Creating a quiz online

Introductory reading about some free technology available for teachers:

TOP 7 WAYS TO CREATE AND DELIVER TESTS ONLINE

Additional tools:
- an example of a completely free (no registration) simple tool - MakeAQuiz
- a more complex environment - QuizStar


Some examples of listening exercises based on YT clips:
- life in Britain
- life in the USA

A website you should consider registering with: EnglishExercises + ESLprintables

HOMEWORK:

1. Make a list of all types of quiz activities you know (gap filling, multiple choice, matching etc.)

2. For each of the above activities decide a) which skill can be practised (e.g. vocabulary - matching a picture to a word, listeninf - matching a speake to an opinion); and b) when can you most successfully use a given activity (warm-up exercise, explanation stage, follow-up activity?)

3. What are advantages and disadvantages of each type (both for students and instructors?) - e.g. multiple choice questions are easy to correct but take a lot of time to write. 

Please have some NOTES so that we can discuss these things smoothly in class :)

Video for Thursday

Hi guys :)

We're back to working with media. I'm in 99.9% sure we have the computer room secured for this semester, so our work should go more smoothly now.

In the first class I'll let you finish your Glog projects and we'll briefly talk about the assignments for the second half of the year.

I would also like to spend 5 minutes discussing with you the video embedded below. It nicely summarises our theme of factual integrity in academic (and journalistic) work.

The video has Polish subtitles for your convenience, but you can turn them off if you want to have some listening practice.