Podcasting (Jenny & Joyce)

Jenny's interview
https://eportal.cityu.edu.hk/bbcswebdav/users/wailo2/jenny.mp3

Joyce's interview
https://eportal.cityu.edu.hk/bbcswebdav/users/wailo2/joyce.mp3

Week 12 - Technology in testing: the present and the future

This paper talks about the advantages and disadvantages of computer-based tests (CBTs).

I think CBT is good especially for MC questions, gap fill exercises and cloze passages. It is convenient that markers can save time for marking similar answers. This kind of repeated marking can leave it to the computer for calculating the scores. It is also easy to get the score immediately after taking the test. Besides, learners can choose the time and place to take the test. It is more flexible.

However, there are some disadvantages. CBT is only limited to some question types. For writing tests and reading comprehension tests that required writing elements, it is difficult to mark it through computer. To correct it directly on the question papers is much easier for teachers. It is because writing usually involves many possibilities. Also, teachers can write comments on the papers easily. It is important to get control of the time and place where the learners take the tests. If there is no limitation, learners can ask others to take the tests through computer. As the test is computer-based, if the learners have poor computer knowledge, the result may be affected.

Week 11- Learning Management Systems: The wrong place to start learning

This article mentioned about the advantages and disadvantages of Learning Management Systems (LMS). It is good in the way that it can enhance the learners' learning autonomy.

Although it is useful to provide a LMS platform for students to learn and interacte with others, I think it is quite difficult to promote the use of it in primary schools. It's because most of the young kids get confused in using the interface. They may find difficulty in searching the materials they need. Also, the learning effectiveness also depends on whether learners are actively participated in the learning process.

As the new technology develops so rapidly, I think it's a trend to use LMS in the coming future.

Jelly Fish

Week 10: Learner Autonomy and Tandem Learning

There are three approaches on learning autonomy in this paper: they are individual-cognitive, social-interactive and experimental-participatory approach. In the individual-cognitive approach, the learners can effect changes to the construct system through careful processes of reflection. In the social-interactive approach, it emphasis on interpersonal interaction and collaboration serves to encourage intrapersonal dialogue. In the experimental-participatory approach, the learners should be encouraged to take control over and responsibility of their learning process.

The second part of this paper discussed about tandem learning in some learner autonomy principles. Tandem learning is a collaborative learning partnership where two learners of complementary L1-L2 combination are brought together. They can learn from each other via different channels like email, the MOO or chat systems etc. Problems may occur as it is difficult to monitor whether the two learners work according to their learning goals. Besides, they work at a distance in separate learning environment and contexts. The communication mode may just work within the written medium. It has little chance for oral practice.

There are two examples mentioned in this paper: Tandem Email and Tandem MOO. Tandem Email provides asynchronous communication while Tandem MOO provides synchronous communication.

I think the MOO is more suitable for primary kids as they can communicate with each other at the same time. It also provides a contextually rich and permanent environment. Nowadays, as students can access Internet easily, they can find their tandem partners by using MSN, ICQ or yahoo messenger. It helps them to communicate with L2 learners, however, it may just involve written and informal communication.

Brief review of my action research project

I mainly use the Ohio ESL http://www.ohiou.edu/linguistics/esl/ for my action research. The learning objective is to arouse student’s interest to the topic “Halloween” http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/halloween1.htm and to train their reading skill. I expect students can explore more on the topic by doing other related language-use exercises like gap-fill, matching & jumbled sentence. For the evaluation, I will do class observation and a short survey about the effectiveness of this website. I may also interview some students if necessary.

From the class observation, I found that most of the students enjoyed to do the exercise and could be handled quietly themselves within the time limited. From the data of the survey, most of the students were interested to use the website. Some of them suggested if there are animations, pictures, audios and even videos, it will be more attractive.

I think it is a trend to incorporate teaching with online resources. It is especially true to arouse students’ interest and even support to explain difficult concepts with the help of animations and videos. I think schools can tailor made some online materials and buy some suitable software from different publishers which match our syllabus and the school-based curriculum. Teachers can also mark students’ work online. This would make teaching more effective in future.

Week 9: Practical Considerations for Multimedia Courseware Development: An EFL IVD Experience

I think IVD (interactive Videodisc) is quite attractive compared with the computerized graphic displays. Students may be interested in Authentic learning input such as their familiar movies.

To design this kind of Multimedia courseware, we should consider at least three things (as mentioned in the paper): the media, the institutional needs/constraints, and design principles. First, we need to know what the IVD is about and what are the strengths of the program. Next, we need to find out the language needs of our students and whether they can learn from these authentic texts as many idioms may be appeared. Third, we need to set the objectives why we decide such program – what language skills are we expecting students can learn?

The access to computer is very important. Before we use this program, we also have to consider whether we can provide support for students in this area. I know some of our classmates do not have a proper MMLC in their school. It may difficult to conduct this activity.

After reading Paul’s comment on this week’s reading, I also agree that this IVD program is a bit out-dated. We can find different kinds of similar resources online or from some publishers. It is no longer time consuming and too expensive to develop such courseware.

Week 8 - Hong Kong's Amended Copyright Law

Apart from educational purpose, it is important to set copyright law for protecting the writers and the publishers. We need to respect people’s work as their “Intellectual Property”.

I think that sometimes it is quite confusing to decide the meaning of "reasonable portions of copyright works". How many pages of the book can we photocopy? Is there any percentage limitations?

It is interesting to find out that teacher cannot play a DVD of a currently shown movie in class, but what about those not currently shown? Actually, many of the DVDs we can buy in the market are quite new but not currently shown.

As the development of IT is quite fast, people can download updated movies, dramas and pop songs by BT. It is quite difficult to stop people infringing the right of the owners.

Proposal of Group Project - Group 5

Proposal of Assignment 3 by Fanny, Jenny, Joyce and Sherlock

Our target students:
We design the CALL website for upper primary and junior secondary students. As Cantonese is their first language and English is their second language, students are weak in English comparatively.

Our aims:
Since students are passive learners, we would like to make use of this website to arouse students’ interest in learning English. We want to improve students reading and comprehension skills. We can expose students to read authentic texts such as online news articles and motivate them to share their feelings and opinions about the readings. Besides, students can do interactive activities and writing activities like writing instructions, “Dos and Don’ts” in a notice after reading some recipes.

Students needs:
This website focuses on reading and comprehension skill. We link to some interesting and attractive websites which provide a lot of online readings. We choose some simple, familiar and interesting topics for our students such as food. We also want to attract them by creating some interactive activities using Hot Potatoes (exercises like fill in gap, matching, multiple choices, etc.) We set some hints and feedback for students when they try the activities. Here, teacher becomes a facilitator and is responsible to explain rules and guidelines of these interactive activities to students. The doers are the students where they are also the active learners and controllers.

As reading comprehension is included in the school curriculum and the syllabus, this website is useful for teaching and learning in schools or at home. We will design one lesson to do these interactive activities. With Internet connection in the MMLC, students can use the computers and does the task. They are asked to do the activities and write down their scores. We can assign follow-up writing exercises like poem / recipe / notice. Students may download the writing frameworks from the website and can summit their work to teachers via email. Teachers can mark it or share it with the class.

Benefits
After the lesson, students can:
1. learn a set of vocab about food & action verbs [the verbs appear in the recipe]
2. learn another kind of genre [recipe + writing instructions]
3. tailor-made material to speed up reading texts

Technologies:
We design our website by using Dreamweaver and Hot Potatoes. We ask students to share their feelings and ideas about the activities on the website. Links will be set to our blogs, wiki, online dictionary and some useful and interesting English websites.

Week 6 - Theory-driven CALL and the development process

I do think that student's need is very important in designing CALL programme. Teachers have to consider whether it fits student's level, their interests and abilities. This can help to boost student's learning in an effective way. Besides, I think teachers should get a balance in the approach, design and procedure of a CALL programme.

In my school, students start learning IT from P3. We use textbooks and materials published in Hong Kong. However, we will tailor-made some materials that suits student's level in P5 and P6, for example, making webpage and animations. The technical support is also important. If students are not easy to access computers and materials online, they can't learn well. Evaluation of the CALL programme should also be done as to make a better 'fit' for students.

Group 5 Webpage / Project

Below is the link of our webpage:

https://eportal.cityu.edu.hk/bbcswebdav/users/wailo2/Group%205/fruit/index.html

By Fanny, Jenny, Sherlock and Joyce

Week 5- Language Learner Behaviour in a Virtual Environment

It is no doubt that doing language activity in a virtual environment benefits students in the following ways:
- Increase student’s participation in discussing issues using L2.
- No distraction will be occurred from learner’s different accents
- No time pressure and interruption either by teachers or classmates
- Encourage shy and introvert language students to speak

From the above reasons, it shows a distinct behaviour pattern when working online. However, there are some points need to be concerned. First, it depends on what types of language activities students are participating in. Not all of them are suitable in a virtual environment. Second, the grammatical accuracy cannot be guaranteed because most of the language used online is informal such as MSN and ICQ language. Teachers do not have a chance to correct student’s grammar. Third, learning language in the real world requires face to face interaction. Besides, the exclamation marks in the online language cannot show the exact meaning of people’s body language and facial expression. It is much depends on how the reader interprets the online language and expression markings.

Summary of presentation - Ohio ESL (by Joyce, Sherlock and Jenny)

Introduction

Our group evaluates an English learning website Ohio ESL http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/english in which English learners can find lots of resources. Our focus will be on the Reading activities of this website in terms of operational description, teacher fit and learner fit. Last but not least, four problems are addressed and solutions are suggested. As our target learners are upper primary and junior secondary students, we choose the Beginner level of the Reading activities.

Operational description
Ohio ESL provides theme-based materials for users. The topic we have chosen is about Halloween. In fact, festival is one of the themes which is included in our curriculum, so we believed that it will be practical to have some understanding on how to deal with it.

The activities we can find in the website are a reading comprehension with 5 multiple choice questions, 25 gap-fill questions, 3 jumbled sentences and 5 matching questions. The layout of the first page is divided into 4 quarters with a timer, the text, instructions and MC questions. These items are almost in black and white in order not to distract learners by other attractive elements. However, some colourful symbolic icons are included as a kind of hint to learners if they do not understand what Halloween is, as these symbols are jack-o-lanterns. Once the user clicked the text, the timer will start counting 10 minutes for reading the text and answering those MC questions.

As Ohio ESL is one of the menu-driven programs, so users can choose what to do after reading the passage, there is no particular sequence, they can move around freely in choosing what follow-up exercise they want to do. Thus, not just the program and the teacher, but the learner also has the control over the use of the software.

In terms of input judging, this website is quite user friendly, as users are just required to click the right option in the MC questions, jumbled sentences and matching exercises. And, for the gap-fill exercise, users need to key in the answers one by one and they can make use of the words given at the bottom of the page.

In the field of feedback, the reading comprehension provides users implicit feedback which is to eliminate the choices left for the users so as to drive them to the correct answer. But for the gap-fill, jumbled sentences and matching exercises, the website uses explicit feedback to respond to the users’ choices. As stated, the reading comprehension provides implicit feedback to users, so the help options are useful in this area. Once a wrong option has been chosen, the website will hint the users indirectly so as to further their understanding to both the passage and the questions.

Teacher fit
For the Beginner level, teachers will be the ones who teach upper primary and junior secondary. Our group chooses this reading activity as the text length is optimum, of about 200 words in total and the reading text is neither too difficult nor easy for the students. The practices are meaningful, contextualized in a coherent discourse. It provides the users with hints and explanations for incorrect answers (Reading comprehension). It also allows the users to anticipate incorrect answers (Reading comprehension—hints for wrong answers and matching—symbols for right and wrong answers respectively).

Learner fit
As what we have mentioned, the target learners are upper primary and junior secondary students. We choose this group because of their English language proficiency level. Students can manage to do the reading activity of their level without great difficulties. The topic Halloween fits students’ needs and interests as they have learnt about festivals according to the syllabus in the curriculum.

For the learning style, it is active in the sense that students can do the reading activity independently either in school or at home. It is preferred to bring the whole class to the MMLC for a better classroom management. This program is mainly focus on discourse/text and the learner focus is reading. As the language use in the text is simple without difficult sentence structures and tenses, the language difficulty is less varied, transparent with familiar topic and suitable text length. Besides, the program is easy to operate as it provides simple instructions and user-friendly icons. The content of the reading activity is related to the syllabus in ordinary language and students have prior knowledge over the topic (festival).

Evaluation
There are four problems we can address in this program.

First, the learner focus is only on one skill (reading). We suggest students can do some extended tasks after the reading activity such as group discussion, group writing and presentation on different festivals. Next, there may be some problems in the scoring system where teachers do not know how well the students are doing. If possible, we think that score recording system should be added in the program. For the gap-fill exercise, the given words are placed at the bottom of the exercise. To be more user-friendly, the words should be put on top of the exercise. Besides, alternative answers may also be accepted. Lastly, students may encounter new vocabulary which may affect their understanding of the text. Link to picture dictionary or dictionary can be provided as reference.

Review
This website is quite simple and user friendly, maybe it is useful if we want to have a revision with students over simple present and simple past tenses together with the theme of festival. This website can serve as a pre-task to students in order to give them a global view over others' cultures and how others celebrate their festival. In such case, students can tell some norms of any Chinese festival and express their views in simple present tense as we are talking about the habits. Then teachers may ask them to recall a recent festival they have just come across with to use simple past tense to state what happened or sharing their own experience towards the festival. Another way to use this theme-based website is as a model essay to writing exercises teachers will give to consolidate and better understanding of students over the issue.

Presentation--Sherlock Tang, Jenny Lo, Joyce Wong

We will lead our students to get access to the English learning website (Ohio ESL): http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/english/index.htmlCriteria:1. whether the activity type—quiz is suitable for the learners (operational description)2. layout—whether it is user-friendly (operational description)3. timing—whether the 10-minute time limit is good for students (teacher fit)4. 1st language interference (teacher fit)5. language difficulty (learner fit)

see also Joyce's blog: http://jjjjwwww.blogspot.com/

Planning Tips of Internet For Language Teaching

To use Internet for language teaching, it is important to have a good planning. I agree with the writer that a shorter or fewer tasks is easier for student to complete. It is especially important for the Primary kids that they can share the workload with their groupmates. Students will be benefit from doing Internet group projects because they can share the computer resources because some of the schools do not have enough computers for them to work on.

Besides consultation with different groups independently, teachers can also set up discussion board or blog for students to ask questions and share their resources with other groups.

For the teachers' preparation, they have to set up clear guidelines for students and the criteria to assess their work. Teachers in the same form can have lesson planning together to get to a smooth functioning of the Internet projects in different classes. To be more user friendly, teachers can prepare some useful websites which may help students to work more easily.

However, it is important to set tasks that are suitable for students' ability in using computer and other applications. For example, a P4 student has learnt some simple application in word processing like insert pictures, borders and draw tables.

Hello, everybody! Nice to meet you here! Please share you interesting things with me in this blog!