Let's talk about the path we have walked...
...and what lies ahead...
In the last 6 weeks there were many things I had to learn in Marburg. Although I am new in town, I have developed a liking to all my classes very fast. Mrs. Gueldenring's course is no exception. The small class size and the the fact that everyone had a computer for themselves was a nice experience. Also the people in class seem to be very nice and doing group work with them is also great fun.
The new media we are using, like the SmartBoard or just the computers are a good basis for solid class work. Of course computers are not very useful without adequate learning software or acces to educational internet pages. I must say that I have developed a liking towards www.wordle.net. This website is very useful when it comes to revising texts the students already have read. Especially texts in which words are repeated can be used in Wordle for memory games. These word pictures can also be used for lesson openers, to get the students interested in a topic.
Another feature in class I really liked was the pirate pad. Students can write simultaneously in a single document. This is a lot of fun for the students because they can see what their classmates are writing and the system saves a lot of time. Instead of doing group work first and then collecting all the answers at the blackboard the students can draft and redraft their thoughts via the internet and present the whole document as a class work.
What absolutely did not get my approval for in-class tasks are corpora assignments. I do not think that students have fun for a long time with corpora because it is too much based on reading, searching and has almost no activity in itself. Of course students need to know how corpora work and how to use a corpus because it is a cornerstone of English linguistics. But working with corpora more often in a semester will certainly kill the students' passion for linguistics or at least for corpora based assignments for good.
Another website that drew my attention was www.netvibes.com. Students can use it to create their personal learning environment and improve their skills in creating a web site. Also it is very useful to stay updated due to the fact that blogs and news sites can be linked in netvibes.
All in all I can say that new media in the classroom can provide innovative methods to motivate students and keep them entertained in learning. I am pretty sure that the coming weeks and months will still have some surprises for me with new media, software and programs that I can use in my future classes. I am very eager for future events to come...
The new media we are using, like the SmartBoard or just the computers are a good basis for solid class work. Of course computers are not very useful without adequate learning software or acces to educational internet pages. I must say that I have developed a liking towards www.wordle.net. This website is very useful when it comes to revising texts the students already have read. Especially texts in which words are repeated can be used in Wordle for memory games. These word pictures can also be used for lesson openers, to get the students interested in a topic.
Another feature in class I really liked was the pirate pad. Students can write simultaneously in a single document. This is a lot of fun for the students because they can see what their classmates are writing and the system saves a lot of time. Instead of doing group work first and then collecting all the answers at the blackboard the students can draft and redraft their thoughts via the internet and present the whole document as a class work.
What absolutely did not get my approval for in-class tasks are corpora assignments. I do not think that students have fun for a long time with corpora because it is too much based on reading, searching and has almost no activity in itself. Of course students need to know how corpora work and how to use a corpus because it is a cornerstone of English linguistics. But working with corpora more often in a semester will certainly kill the students' passion for linguistics or at least for corpora based assignments for good.
Another website that drew my attention was www.netvibes.com. Students can use it to create their personal learning environment and improve their skills in creating a web site. Also it is very useful to stay updated due to the fact that blogs and news sites can be linked in netvibes.
All in all I can say that new media in the classroom can provide innovative methods to motivate students and keep them entertained in learning. I am pretty sure that the coming weeks and months will still have some surprises for me with new media, software and programs that I can use in my future classes. I am very eager for future events to come...
