Reflection on essential reading for week 12

This year, my school is trying to push students to revise what they have learnt in school by setting up an online assessment platform. After rearding an assigned English story book, students have to go online and answer 10 multiple-choice questions (eclass). By using this system, it is easy and convenient for teachers to monitor students' progress and get their results (statistic). However, teachers have to urge students to finish the online assessment on time. You know, students may have a lot of excuses, such as the computer doesn't work. Besides, only certain types of questions (M.C., Fill-in-blank, etc) are suitable. Open-end questions would be quite difficult for the system to gather data related to students' performance.

Reflection on essential reading for week 11

LMS, which refers to learning management systems, are being widely used in Hong Kong schools. The common ones are “E-class” in many primary or secondary schools and “Blackboard” in tertiary education. I could say these systems help facilitate teaching & learning among teachers and students. The writer of the article talked about some misconceptions related to LMS. He reinforced that learning had to be driven by the needs of students rather than the LMS design. He pointed out that it would be easier for learners to proceed life long learning when they were plugged into a community or a learning network, instead of having previous learning confined to a content locked LMS. In my opinion, the system can definitely provide a medium/ platform for learning. However, at the very first stage, teachers have to show students the real use of the system through well planned lessons with clear goals and objectives. Then, the teachers can integrate the learning into the real community groups through the system to encourage authentic and meaningful interactions. As time goes by, it is expected that learners can form their learning habits. Does any teacher have ideas on how to use LMS effectively?

Reflection on essential reading for week 10

Learner autonomy is regarded as a learner’s capacity for planning their self study, taking control of their own study progress, as well as writing critical reflection. The aim is for self-improving!

In the article, the writer mentioned that CALL courseware should be both technology and pedagogy based. The writer also introduced three approaches to learner autonomy: individual-cognitive, social-interactive and experimental-participatory. By modifying these three approaches, Tandem learning was implemented for helping students enhance their autonomy in learning. It’s about combining two groups of learners: L1 & L2. These two groups of learners would benefit from each other.

However, I think it’s quite difficult to do it in my school because teachers may find it very challenging to select these two groups of students. It needs a lot of human resources, especially for monitoring, assessing students’ progress, and evaluation. Do teachers have any similar experience?

Reflection on essential reading for week 9

This article talks about how to develop an IVD (interactive videodisc) courseware for enhancing TEFL project, including design considerations, objective setting, instructional design, implementation, evaluation and how it should be linked to language classroom, etc.

In my opinion, the principles discussed in the article can bring some considerations and implications to HK secondary teachers. For S4-5 students, they have to do a school based assessment (SBA) which requires them to give an individual response or a group discussion after reading an English book/ watching a movie. Many teachers find using movies is an effective way to arouse students' interests in learning English since students can see and hear how people use the language in a real context. It is more fun by just reading the texts in the textbooks! It has richer language input, such as verbal speech and non verbal visual items such as gestures, posture, facial expressions, eye contact, proximity.

However, it seems to me that teachers may not know how to integrate the videoclips into the language classroom and how to engage students in their learning, not just for fun! This article may help teachers to some extent. Do teachers have ideas on using movies in language classroom?

Reflection on essential reading for week 8

Many language teachers love using songs, books, video clips, movies in language classrooms since it's an effective way to motivate and stimulate students' learning. However, since a few years ago, the government has been reinforcing the importance of copyright issues. Teachers have to be very careful when they choose the materials used in classrooms. Teachers cannot use them for entertainment purposes. Instead, teachers can only use them for education purpose. But it's sometimes quite hard to find a clear cut between the two. For example, SBA (for senior forms students in secondary schools) requires students to comment on books or movies. Students have to watch the movie first and then appreciate it. Should I say that students learn through entertainment. To cope with this problem, very often, I cut the movies into different episodes and design related worksheets for classroom use. That is to avoid violatating the copyright laws. Do other teachers have any good ideas in using multimedia like movies in language classrooms?

Reflection on essential reading for week 6

The paper examines the nature of theory-driven CALL and how it relates to the development process.

From my teaching experience, whether a CALL program is effective depends on how well the teacher strikes the balance between theory and practice. As Ginsberg (1988) stated that the field of artificial intelligence is divided between those who are primarily interested in solving problems by formulating theories (formalists) and those who prefer to solve problems by writing programs (proceduralists). I think each party has to collobrate well for implementing effective CALL program. Theories can consolidate teachers' belief on what materials teachers are going to use and how those materials are presented. You know, the information technology develops in an incredible rate. Very often, the development of theories may not catch up with that of technology. The extended space of what I.T. can do or achieve may be underestimated by teachers.

Also, I agree that having a solid knowledge of the media in the earliest stage can help build a stronger foundation in any CALL program since that helps teachers design and develop the CALL programs easier and in a more practical way. Do any teachers have interesting ideas in running CALL program?

Reflection on essential reading for week 5

The writer mentioned the effectiveness of learning English through virtual learning environment. More relaxed and stress free atmosphere can be generated than that in the traditional classrooms. The writer also showed readers how passive students change their behaviours through the process.

I do believe that virtual learning environment can facilitate students’ language learning, if created, promoted, prepared and used appropriately. Like what the writer said, the online work benefits students who are shy and introvert language learners.

However, one problem faced by many Hong Kong students, especially for those who have very low language proficiency is that they do not understand the instructions given by the platform. As a result, they may become impatient and lose their interest in learning. So as I have mentioned before, teachers have to practice with students very well at the very beginning, let them be familiar with the learning platform first.

To make virtual learning more effective, suitable and ongoing assessment is required or a must (very often). Since students’ parents are usually very busy and they cannot monitor their children at home, students may spend a lot of time on playing computer without any learning purposes. To them, it may be much more interesting than doing learning online task. Teachers can monitor students’ progress through formative assessment. Both teachers and students can have record on what they have done and how well they behave in the virtual classroom. It’s a kind of motivation and reinforcement of what students learn.

Do teachers agree that assessment is important for promoting the use of virtual classroom?