This week’s tasks included: – working on our Instreamia lessons (that’s both English and Chinese for me), including adding flashcard exercises – Adding a grammar explanation to our lessons – Designing and creating an open-ended assignment (see sample assessment in previous post) – Grading and example open-ended assignment – Listen to an interview with Daniela…
For this week’s blog activity we were asked to brainstorm a simple blended learning activity including its assessment and answer the following questions: What is the Blended Learning Activity? The students will review a previous speaking task (which has been recorded and the video clip made available to students through a shared online platform) where they…
Reading about Assessment Goals This week we spent time thinking about how we can attain our assessment goals. First we read Flint University’s overview and strategies for learning assessment. The overview cites seven questions to think about when designing assessment. We also read Educause’s initiative for assessing collaborative projects Finally, we read Carnegie Mellon’s guide…
CLT classroom activities often take the form of pair or group work, which help students develop their communicative competence in an authentic context.
As the thought crosses my mind about developing authentic materials for teaching Chinese, I am invited to a webinar next week on the exact same subject. Actually, that’s not true. The subject is publishing your own ELT materials, but I think it will be very informative to attend, as the general process should be transferable….
So before the LTMOOC, came the SpanishMOOC! Apparently, this was the first time a language had been taught in the MOOC format, and I was very excited to make history! Technically, I was not a beginner in Spanish when I took the course. (A recent online test graded me at CEFR Level B2). However, I…
Why participate in LTMOOC? Because I love learning languages! So it all started about 20 years ago, my first year of secondary school, and French was obligatory. Not that I minded, my teacher loved her subject, and that love resonated with her students. Fast forward 10 years, and I lived and worked in Paris for…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeJZwrrRFQU?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281 This week we watched an interview with Kathryn Murphy-Judy of Virginia Commonwealth University. Kathryn’s Bio Kathryn Murphy-Judy holds the MA from Colorado State University and a Ph.D. in French from the University of Minnesota. Throughout her forty year career as a language educator, she has worked in technology-enhanced language learning (TELL), from reel to…
Interaction in Distance Learning One of the tasks for Week 3 was to read an article about Incorporating Interaction into your Distance Learning Course, published by Worchester Polytechnic Institute. The article describes several possible benefits of interaction in a distance course: Learner>Content interaction, which results from students examining the course content and participating in class…
A better way to learn Chinese? That’s the title of an awesome article I just read about. It discusses – a) the frustrations of current language teaching methods in China, and b) one team’s research into finding a mathematical answer to the problem The fact that even Chinese people forget some of the basic 3,500…