Week 3: Aural/Oral skills, delicious, and more

It is a new and exciting week in which I learned valuable things. I read two articles about aural/oral skills development; Lindsay Miller's developing listening skills with authentic materials and Maria Busa's new perspective in teaching pronunciation. The first article discusses the three stages of listening and shares some ideas and techniques about integrating technology in teaching authentic listening like using radio, TV/video and the internet. I think the most accessible technique in a free technology context is recorded radio or TV programs and CD-ROMs played on the teacher's laptop or central computer connected with a projector. The sites I have surveyed this week provided me with endless resources about downloadable audio materials and activities for pre- and post- listening phases. Unlike the first article, the second one was quite difficult, it was about teaching pronunciation or as others called it; the Cinderella of the language. I spent hours reading, trying to check the links and download some programs but things became better when I found these sites: http://kristascott.edublogs.org/2010/03/04/vocaroo-for-the-classroom-too/, http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/the-best-sites-to-practice-speaking-english/.

I breathed a sigh of relief and felt that the theory came finally into practice. Many programs I intend to test further to check which ones I can use with my students. The overall experience was rewarding and I really liked to focus on these neglected, though crucial, skills.

"Delicious is really delicious" my impression about using this bookmarking site. Coincidentally, I searched a couple of days before about the best bookmarking tool for my students and I was comparing Diigo to delicious. I myself have a Diigo account and now I have a delicious. The advantage that makes delicious superior to Diigo is that it provides the user with the ability to check his/her bookmarks once he gets into the internet, so user can access his/her links from any computer. I still have to learn more features about Delicious and I need to know why I don't have same windows in Donna's handout. 

The third task as usual was the project. I felt it will be a difficult and hard job, but once I noticed Zlatka's project about webquest I felt safe. Being familiar with webquests facilitated my job.

I wrote a report summarizing the main features of the project so that others who haven't read the project understand what's going on. Points about what I think are effective and recommendations for some less effective aspects of the project-from my viewpoint-are also listed. 

A letter of thanks is dedicated to Donna for her guidance and feedback. When she referred to the way of creating a new post blog, I knew that this piece is for me. I hope I did it right this time. Thanks for your help.  Thanks for my colleagues for their comments and long posts, I thought my post will be the longest, but thanks God, I wasn't.

Regards,

Amira