Since it is the last time I am going to post on my blog, I will share with you the last project my class did last week before the school finished.

The topic was '' Make a parade mask''. Since there is a computer and a beamer in the class I thought to show them some pictures where they can find their favourite mask. First I divided them into groups of three. Then I asked each group to choose a mask. They chose animals such us a panda, a dog, a pengiun in order to create the mask and others chose to paint some half-masks and decorate them. Through technology, the process of making a mask becomes easier than before. They saw a video How to make a mask, saw some pictures of the animals they chose to draw on their masks. 

After they finished I asked all groups to present what they have done and to describe the masks they have made using more than 5 sentences. They are 4th grade students.

Eventhough they are fourth grader, they know how to cooperate with each other.

I combined Project Based Learning Method with Communicative approach. Of course, it was technology that made the lesson interesting and useful as well. 

At the end of the lesson, I asked each group to vote for the best mask. The winner will be given  parade costumes they may wear them during carnivals while the others will be given chocolates.

In conclusion ,

You have to know how to use technology , how to combine methods and how to manage the class effectively, but what is most important is that you have to know how to assess your students. 

Online teaching

Hello everyone! 

Have you ever heard about online teaching? I am sure you know something about it. If not here I am going to share with you some information about online teaching? How important is it to our students? Is it effective or not? 

The current challenges facing traditional colleges have caused many students to search for alternatives. Based on some studies and statistics, nearly three million students currently enrolled in fully online degree programs and six million taking at least one online course as part of their degree program. This fact has made online education one of the most popular higher education alternatives. Online learning can be just as effective as face-to-face education.

Why do the vast majority of students prefer online courses rather than the traditional ones? There are some reasons for this decision:

1. Variety of programs and courses. Students can find online courses or degree programs they need. 
2. Lower total costs: Online programs can be a more affordable alternative than the traditional colleges. There are no costs and there is not any required course materials such as textbooks because those are often available for free online.
3. The environment is more comfortable than the traditional one. Lectures and other materials are electronically sent to the student, who will then read them and complete assignments. Students will not have to fight traffic, find parking spaces, leave work early to go to class, or miss family time.
4. More interaction and greater ability to concentrate. In an online classroom you can feel comfortable and you have the ability to concentrate. The lesson is interactive too.

To sum up, students in online programs are able to manage time, learn the materials that are presented and of course complete assignments required. 

Have you have heard about Khan Academy?

It is an education organization created by Salman Khan in 2006 with the goal of creating a set of online tools that help to educate students. 

here you will find some information about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy

https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy

What is the difference between the traditional way of teaching and teaching through technology?

This is the topic I am going to discuss. 

Sometimes when we think which way of teaching is better, we choose the second one and of course the traditional way is replaced by a new one which is helpful and enhances collaboration, creativity and interaction and communication and that is what a student needs to become a good learner. 

There are some reasons why I think that the traditional way of teaching should not be used anymore.

• First, everything is learned mechanically. It doesn't give to the students the opportunity to interact, communicate.
• This way of teaching do not allow them to express their opinion and it kills creativity let's say. Everyone should be taught to think critically, to comment, to analyse, to compare, to give arguments and to be creative. 
• Another disadvantage of it is that it do not teach students how to overcome obstacles. Students need to put into practice what they learn and to find solutions to their problems. 
• the teacher stands at the front of the class and directs the learning. This way no student will be free to share his opinion, to talk about the lesson, to explain something using as many words as he can, to think critically and to be creative. The teacher should be the facilitator, to help students as much as possible. 

what about teaching through technology?

• That is the most interesting and useful ways I have ever heard before. The teacher is a facilitator, a friend, a person with whom you can talk about everything, about your problems. 
• Everyone has the opportunity to share his or her ideas and opinions, to debate, to communicate, to interact eith one another etc.
• The students have the possibility to think critically, to analyse and find a solution to a particular problem and to be creative at the same time.
• This new way of teaching help every student to interact and collaborate with one another. That is the purpose of it: to make every child a good learner and user of the language. It enhances the use of the language, communication and interaction.

What about you? What do you think about these two ways of teaching? Share your ideas. Feel free to comment on my blog.

Hello everyone,
The topic I have chosen to write about is "Teaching vocabulary through technology".
There are some aspects that we teachers should know when teaching new vocabulary. 
1. To know methods that will be used.
There are a lot of methods actually. When I teach new vocabulary to my students I use total physical response method, communicative and grammar translation method. 
Total Physical Response method means acting words. I.e. teaching new words such walk, read etc through acting.
Secondly, communicative method is useful when practicing these new words. Students need to listen how these words are pronounced and than repeat each word.
Thirdly, grammar translation method is as important as other methods when you need to translate words into Albanian.
2. To know how to use technology in the class, especially when teaching new vocabulary.
- Technology is as important as these methods. We should combine them together. We may start the lesson with the presentation of the topic through pictures, videos or songs. 
You may use them even later on. An advantage of technology is that through online exercises we know how much our student have understood the lesson.  At the end of the lesson, we may use these online exercises. They are like games and that' s why students like them very much. You may use even other exercises such as listen to the song and underline the verbs. Than you explain them the past tense of the verbs. 
There are a lot of ways a teacher might use to make the lesson interesting. 
The secret stands on the fact that you should know how to use these methods combined with technology.
Always remember that to the world you may be just a teacher but to your students you are a hero!

Hello everybody
This week I decided to share some information in relation to my first experience as a teacher and some steps a teacher should know when using technology in the class.
First I decided to choose the methods I will use in the class, to make the lesson interesting. I thought it would be better to use communicative method in combination with other methods as well such as grammar translation when needed and suggestopedia and total physical response. Something interesting is also the use of technology in the class. Every teacher should know how to combine all methods using technology at the same time. Teaching is not as easy as I thought, but you know practice is always the best way to make you perfect.
Below you will find some steps about teaching through technology:

1. Use videos for Mini-lessons
2. Add multimedia elements to  presentations . Include images, graphs, podcast clips, sound effects, short videos lessons, news, movie and television show clips etc.
3. Provide online activities for students who complete work early.
4. Gather student feedback.
5. Engage students and use games as well to make the lesson interesting

There are a lot of ways actually and every teacher chooses how to teach.

One of the best ways to get ideas is learn from others and blogs are a great way to do that. Here you will find some :

• UWB Learning Technologies
• GridKnowledge (blog of UWT’s Assistant Chancellor for Learning Technologies)
• Wired Campus, Chronicle of Higher Education
• Prof Hacker, Chronicle of Higher Education
• Agile Learning (blog of the Director of Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching)

Interactive whiteboard

Hello everyone
I decided to share with you some information about Interactive whiteboard.
You will understand what I am writing about , if you were present at the Europa hall. The lecturer discussed Interactive Whiteboard, why is it important in teaching process, what can a teacher do to use it effectively in the class. 
He also explained how this Whiteboard can be used.
It is like a book. The difference stands in the fact that this is a digital book, so we teach through this only using a magic pen. Click on a particular module and start a lesson.
What I really find interesting about it is:

1. The combination of reading part with listening to songs. While you see, you listen a song and it seems like telling a story.
2. You can hide words as a useful exercise to leave students find the right answer. And that's good actually because we engage all students to comment on it, to guess whether to use this or that word. 
3. The grammar section. You can explain grammar through a lot of examples.
4. Board games. The idea of using games in teaching is great. Why ? Because students feel comfortable and find it really interesting. There is a gap and students have to guess the word. This game is called The Hangman game. 
5. The revision. Different from the traditional way of making a revision of the lesson, in  digital books the revision is in the form of a song. That's amazing, especially for young learners. 

The quote of the week:" Every interaction is an opportunity to learn".

Hello everyone,
This week I decided to share with you another teaching experience. 
At the end of each unit, there is a project. The topic of the project,I and my students(5th grade) did last week was "Present your hobby". 
First I wrote down the topic and what were the hobbies of my students. Than I divided them into groups of three in order to draw something beautiful in relation to their hobby. 
Using this kind of method, Project Based Learning,  they interact, work in groups, share their ideas and create things. 
Below you will find some photos of my students taken by me, during the process of interacting, collaborating and creating something interesting.

Their hobby is playing with computer games.

Her hobby is nature photography.

When I asked these two students what's your hobby, they said dancing and singing. They thought to draw a ballerina dancing and singing and some musical notes.

They are football fans and of course their hobby is playing football. 

Hope it helps!

Hello everyone
This week I decided to post about using technology in teaching speaking skills.
Technology is an important tool that is used to teach not only speaking skill but also reading, writing and listening skills. Let's call technology a vehicle which is used to get access with this modernized world. And of course, technological tools have been regarded as ways of helping students improve language skills.
Communication is important in our life but if you are not competent in other skills, you can not use the language correctly. There is a strong relationship between them. If you are a good listener, you will became a good speaker as well. If you are a good reader, you will became a good writer.
How to improve these skills and especially speaking one? 
Today there are different methods you may use learning a foreign language and improving these skills. The use of technology has brought a lot of benefits. You may find different activities on the internet. On youtube there are videos which help you to improve language skills.
You may read different kinds of books online, learn a language through music and movies, communicate with your friends online in english and other languages and you may find exercises there in order to improve language skills.
Learning how to speak is not easy, but everyone knows that all good speakers were bad speakers at first and in order to be a good one you have to practice a lot and improve other skills as well.
click on the link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFige8LEWRE  It is a video that shows how important is listening in improving speaking .
Hope it helps!

The quote of the week:" Communication works for those who work at it".

  

An Webquest is an inquiry-oriented activity or lesson in which all or most of the information that learners use comes from resources on the internet. Teachers can create Webquests using different programs.

An Webquest is an introduction that sets the stage of the activity, an interesting task, a set of information resources, a process and a conclusion that provides reflection from students learning. 

An Webquest promotes student motivation and authenticity, develops thinking skills since it focuses on real world situations and encourages cooperative learning.

 In other words, Webquests include group work, prior knowledge and learning. Students use what they know before the lesson and will work together to figure out the overall goal of the lesson, which include collaboration and prior knowledge.

In addition, I will share with you something interesting about cooperative learning because webquests are included in Project Based Learning and Cooperative Learning.

Cooperative learning

It is all about the student at the center of learning process. Cooperative learning enhances collaboration, interaction, engagement, no competition, team building and the development of thinking skills. Another aspect of this way of teaching is about avoiding bullying situations and improving race relations. 

A simple way to start Cooperative Learning is to begin with pairs instead of whole teams.

Two students can learn to work effectively on activities such as:

1. Assign a math worksheet and ask students to work in pairs.
2. One of the students does the first problem while the second acts as a coach
3. Then, students switch roles for the second problem.
4. when they finish the second problem, they get together with another pair and check answers.
5. When both pairs have agreed on the answers, ask them to shake hands and continue working in pairs on the next two problems.

This is a Cooperative Learning Strategy taken from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/cooperative-learning-strategies

I want to share with you how I have applied it in my class. It is similar to Project Based Learning method but the main difference between these two theories is that PBL always ends with a final product. In addition, students in PBL activities have the option to work alone when they want to study a problem other groups are not interested in. But despite their differencies, both theories are referred to as best practices.

An activity would be:

Divide students into groups and give them the assignments. They have to work in collaboration with others, to work even with those they do not know and to share their opinions about the topic.

If the topic is family, they are going to be divided into four groups and each group has a task to complete for the final result. 

Hope it helps!

The quote of the week: Cooperative learning is not simple, but the rewards can be great!

PROJECT BASED LEARNING 

How to apply PBL in the class

Project Based Learning is a great way to put students together and to collaborate with each other. I will share with you something special in relation to Project Based Learning. I am taking part in a project and the way my students collaborate with each other is great. We as teachers give them some ideas and tips about the topic. The topic is ''It is spring again''.
They are divided into three groups: the little painters, the little actors and the recycle group. The recycle group starts the project by creating flowers, fruits, trees and other useful things using objects which pollute the environment. The second group has to draw everything they see, flowers, trees etc in relation to the topic, than the last group has to act like they are three months of the spring season. This way they share a message. Their drawings, their creations are amazing. As part of the project the whole class with us went to the Botanic Garden the day before in order to see nature and to draw flowers on their T-shirts.  
                                                                                                                             

Here they are going to create flowers, trees, and other things in relation to the topic. They give opinions and help each other as well. I have to help them by giving instructions how to create them.

Padlet, the easiest way to create and collaborate in the world

 

Hello everyone

This week's topic is about Padlet. I find it really interesting. It is a blank page you can dress it up or dress it down. Padlets help organize your life. It is like a portfolio where you can post everything:  a photo, a document, your hobby, your classnotes etc but most importantly,it is a useful way to share and to collaborate with one another. Collaboration is what makes padlet special. It is useful not only for students but for teachers as well. 

Everyone can collect photos there in relation to the topic, can list facts and opinion about a topic, a story etc, post a video and have everyone post comments, post a problem and ask for solutions, this way students are going to collaborate with each other, give a vocabulary word and have students write sentences etc . 

click on the link and you will find how to use padlet as a teaching tool: https://portal.uea.ac.uk/documents/6207125/17216872/Padlet/0230a983-2f83-4823-bc94-257c3afad953
Here you may find information about using padlet in higher education, have  alook at it :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYxGGHBfeAI  

Quote of the week: Competition makes us faster, collaboration makes us better!