Week 2 - Declare, Where?

Photo Credit: madelinetosh via Compfight cc

I made a lot of rash promises in my last post. I said I was going to follow my 5 EVO sessions, plus the SEETA course, plus the OLDS MOOC. I said that, in this blog, I was going to give weekly digests of my learning progress. People even took me seriously. In the meantime I signed up for two more MOOCs on Coursera, which promise to be very interactive (EDC MOOC and Fundamentals of Online Education). At work, the week was hectic. And I have a presentation for a conference to write.

Still, I am here as promised. A little late, but I have definitely survived Week 2 in all my online environments. My level of participation was not the same everywhere at all times and I suppose I can say that in some of my groups I was sampling and browsing rather than studying seriously. And whether I do all my weekly tasks or not will depend on the amount of workload. OLDS MOOC, for example, is a fascinating course, but the workload is a bit too much for me at the moment. So, for this course I have a new plan - I will do what I can and curate the rest somewhere for further reference. I still might decide to share snippets from this course in my blog, but this definitely won't be enough to give you an idea about the scope of the MOOC. The same probably goes for my new Coursera MOOCs.

So, let's start with Neuroscience. This week we looked at the link between the emotional brain and motivation. I find the following video fascinating:



What it is saying, in a nutshell, is that the way we raise our children or teach our young students can influence how smart they are in ways much more direct than we thought it possible. Is it surprising, then, that adult students need so long to start believing that they can learn? People who come to my classroom have usually spent 12 (yes, twelve) years of their life sitting in English language classrooms, failing to learn the language. It takes quite a while to convince them that they are not going to fail again.

Several years ago I created this PowerPoint on learning and motivation:

Motivation from Natasa Grojic

Sorry for all the bullets and death-by-PowerPoint stuff. This was before my online days. One thing that I am especially interested in (and I believe this shows in the PowerPoint) is the supportive power of groups on an individual's learning.

It is good, then, that this week in Mentoring we read this text on scaffolding. I find the questions provided in the text very helpful, something that every teacher can use in his/her class.

And in OLDS MOOC we focused a lot on personas and scenarios. Thinking about who your learners are going to be even before you meet them is a useful starting point. Here's a PowerPoint explaining scenarios and here's the template we used. An important part of scenarios are personas. And the template for a persona card is here. One last snippet from last week in OLDS MOOC would be these cards. And here's a short video on how to use them.

Let's finish with Multiliteracies. This course is the glue that binds everything together, it is the reason why I am able to cope with multiple sessions. Multiliteracies has given me something essential - the method. You remember how at school your teachers told you that the most important thing to learn is how to learn? By learning about MOOCs through an environment similar to a MOOC, I have learnt that all this is not about curriculum and homework, but about me. And it is OK to forget where you are supposed to be and what you are supposed to do. It is OK to choose not to do something if you don't find it relevant at the moment. It is also OK to modify assignments and do them your way.

Last week in Multiliteracies was the week when we were supposed to declare, i.e. to state our own learning goals.

My goals this year are as follows:

1. to reflect on the course topics
2. to reflect on my past and present experience in various MOOCs
3. to reflect on my 2011 Multiliteracies posts

Reflect, where?

Well, here, of course. Where else?

I would like to finish this with a short Animoto video I created for my MachinEVO class:

Technorati Tags: #evomlit, #mmooc13, #BaW13, #2013evo, ##machinEVO, #brainelt, #oldsmooc, #edcmooc

My Blog is Five Years Old

It is my blog's fifth birthday today. What I usually do on this day is create a retrospective of sorts. I look back at the previous year and the blog posts that I believe are worth sharing again.

2012 was a strange year for me. At the beginning of the year I was awarded a scholarship for a course called Webskills. You can read about this here. I had to start another blog for the course and, consequently, I spent less time in this one. I still managed to follow two EVO sessions and even post occasionally. Here's a post about how to use five-card stories as writing prompts. Here's one about using video resources for listening, and another post about online tools that can be used for speaking. For my Podcasting course I created another blog and this post introduces both the new blog and the listening/speaking activities within it. In this post I am trying to summarize my Webskills experience.

Moving beyond the EVO sessions and Webskills, I made a collection of April Fools online clips and turned them into a lesson here. Here I talked about a platform called Nicenet.

After that, strange things started happening. First, in June, I joined DS106 on a whim. DS106 was a perfect summer course for a teacher who is on a long holiday. I used this blog to post, but posts got stranger and stranger. Still, I believe those posts contain potentially good lesson ideas. Sometimes I even wrote about the ways to use a particular digital storytelling exercise in an EFL classroom. For example, here I turned a short clip featuring Kurt Vonnegut into a speaking exercise. This image illustrates an idiom, but it can be a good speaking and writing prompt. I created a lot of crazy images during the course and most of them are CC licenced, so if you find them useful, go ahead. There are some nice ones here and here. The Creative Commons poster from this post can be used to explain the CC concept to students. My Autobiography Cover could be developed into a nice speaking activity. Similar to this are Alternative Book Covers and the post already contains instructions for EFL teachers. In Wrapping Up Loose Ends there are three digital stories, but for use in the classroom I particularly recommend Mood Inversion. The Sound Effect Story  is accompanied by instructions for EFL teachers. Taking Back Spam was one of my favourite DS106 activities and it too has an application in an EFL classroom.

Once the holiday was over, I was preparing for the next school year. Activities for the First Class contains some nice warmers.

In 2012 I attended a Coursera course on modern poetry. It was a life-changing experience and you can read about it here.

If I try to summarise 2012, I would say that I had to step out of my comfort zone a lot. I attended a couple of courses that were not created for EFL teachers exclusively, I blogged about matters that were not TEFL-related, I created new blogs. It was a useful and refreshing experience.

I will finish with one of my DS106 movies. It is appropriate for this occasion because it is about number 5.

Thank you for being a part of my PLN in 2012.

Time to Fess Up

Photo Credit: timailius via Compfight cc

It is that time of the year again and we are nearing the end of the first week of EVO sessions. Every year I sign up for too many and then I have to do a lot of juggling. You might be wondering how many I have signed up for.

OK, there's Neuroscience in Education , an exciting new course with Carla Arena and her team. It promises to be very interactive and fun and, on top of everything, we will learn a lot about the brain and learning. Then there's Developing Mentoring Skills. There's MachinEVO, a very challenging course on how to create educational videos in Second Life. My Second Life skills are a bit rusty (though they never were great), but the course looks very interesting. Oh, my poor neglected avatar!



There are two courses which I have done before - Multiliteracies and BaW. When it comes to BaW, I have signed up to catch up with old friends and meet new people (after all, this is their 10th anniversary). I will probably not be able to do much more in this session. I am keen on Multiliteracies. In fact I need Multiliteracies in order to organise my learning.

I will try to explain. I am not sure my juggling metaphor from the beginning is correct. In connected learning, the five balls would not be seen as five separate online courses. Rather, forming connections among them would be what would keep all of them in the air. I am sure there will be a lot in common among the five sessions. I especially expect parallels between Multiliteracies and Neuroscience in Education. As Carla Arena explains in this post, it is important to make connections both within our brain and with other participants.

I will be using this blog as my eportfolio for these courses. Rather than look at each session separately, I will try to condense my 5-workshop experience within a single weekly post.

Ahem. I haven't told you everything. I am also doing OLDS MOOC, which is a MOOC on learning design. I'd signed up a long time ago and I didn't intend to participate when it started, but it looked so interesting. And it is. The workload is scary, but I don't have to do everything. Do I? I know next to nothing about learning design. Surely after the course is over I will know more than I do now? Also, I have an idea about a learning design project for English teachers and it is going to happen right here, in this blog. Stay tuned.

P.S. I am also doing a workshop on how to teach writing on SEETA.

Technorati Tags: #evomlit, #mmooc13, #BaW13, #2013evo, ##machinEVO, #brainelt

Welcome, Readers Old and New

Photo Credit: Sukanto Debnath via Compfight cc

At the moment I am attending a couple of EVO sessions, so there is a possibility that some of my EVO classmates have followed the link to my blog and found themselves here.

If you are reading this blog for the first time, welcome. You can find out more about me here. Or visit my e-portfolio here.

Or, if you have a couple of minutes, you can find out more about me by watching this:

Share

|

Tweet

ModPo is over, long live Modpo

I have caught the Coursera virus. In fact, Coursera is one of the reasons why I haven't been updating this blog for a while. As I browse among many subjects I could learn about (that I never even dreamed I would ever be learning about), from Gamification to World Music to Computer Science 101, I feel my mind grow and expand in different directions. And I am grateful.

Coursera is based on a very simple model. Every course comes with a set of  lectures broken into small chunks and rendered as short videos. The videos are followed by quizzes/exercises and sometimes by essays. If you do all the quizzes and the essays, you will get a certificate of attendance. Each course includes forums as well, but those are optional, an add-on. In most of the courses I attended before ModPo, I never bothered to participate in the forums. More often than not, I didn't even bother to do the minimum I needed for the certificate. I was mostly happy to just watch the videos.

Maybe this was my fault. Coursera can't be blamed for my decision to lurk. Yet I lurked because I could. And then ModPo happened to me.

ModPo is short for Modern and Contemporary American Poetry. The course was run by Professor Al Filreis and his gang from Penn. The course was a MOOC if I had ever seen one. It was certainly the most massive online course I had ever attended. We are talking about 35,000 people here.

If you have read my blog before, you will know that I am addicted to online learning. You will also know that I have been a part of Moocs and online communities since 2008 - think no further than Electronic Village Online sessions and DS106. As for communities, just look at that Proud to be a Webhead badge in my sidebar. Or read this.

But I need to tell the story about this particular course from the beginning.

As the date for the beginning of ModPo approached, it was becoming clear that it was going to be a different kind of course from the ones I had got used to on Coursera. Yes, there were going to be videos, but these videos were going to be different. Here's the introductory video that appeared a few days before the course started (and I don't expect you to watch the whole thing, but at least look at the first minute or two):

Here you can see Professor Al surrounded by his TAs (or "Al and the gang", as they were later known). The way they taught poetry was to sit in front of the camera and discuss each poem round table style. They disagreed occasionally and sometimes made mistakes. They drank coffee and laughed. They were human and approachable. And that's exactly the way they were in the forums as well. What they modeled in these videos was what they expected us to do. Here forum discussions were central to the course. They were one of the requirements for the certificate and the main learning tool.

"Al and the gang" went an extra mile for us. There was a Twitter feed and a Facebook group. And there were live webcasts on YouTube accompanied by Twitter chats. Everybody had an open invitation to Kelly Writer's House. As the course progressed, people started showing up on their doorstep at the time live webcasts were being filmed. Personal stories were exchanged. And, bit by bit, the ModPo virtual community was coming to life.

As I write this, I feel doubly blessed. First I was lucky enough to find my Webhead family. Now I have found one more online family - the ModPoers. We are no longer 35,000, but we are numerous. There are various things to do within the community. We still share and read poems together. Some of us write poetry and I am glad to say that my poetry blog Summer Blues is once again live.

I know I have neglected this blog. During the 10 weeks of ModPo there was little time for anything else. And now there is this new community to cultivate and care for. It is still young and we are all a little afraid that it will just disappear overnight if we are not there to watch and protect it.

Technorati Tags: MOOC, MOOCs, ModPo, Coursera, WiA, webheads, poetry

Activities for the First Class

Photo on Flickr by Night Owl City

For me, classes start tomorrow. I will meet several groups of new students for the first time. That's why I have decided to republish some of my last year's warmers and first class activities.

I find those first classes very important for the rest of the course. Ideally, by the end of the first two weeks, everybody should get to know everybody else. The students should get to know each other and some sort of group spirit should emerge. The teacher should get to know the students and adapt the course to their interests and learning styles. Last but not least, the students should get to know the teacher. Students will relate better to your subject if they get to know the real you.

In no particular order, I am going to share some of the activities I use during the first two weeks.

When I attended CRELL three years ago I learnt the following two warmers that I have been using ever since:

THE NAME GAME

Here is the original description of the activity from the CRELL lesson plan:

1. Tell students they are going to introduce themselves by sharing something about their first, middle, or last name. If you have a large group, you may want to have students work in small groups to share the story of their names. Begin the activity by modeling it and sharing something about your first, middle, or last name.

2. After each student has shared with the group, lead a whole class discussion using some or all of the following questions.

This is what I shared in the CRELL forum:

"My name is Natasa. The name was derived from Latin “Dies Natalis”, which means Christmas Day. It is really strange, but my maiden name, Bozic, means exactly the same thing, only in Serbian. So my name and my surname are synonyms. I like the idea of being protected by these Nativity symbols. I was named after my maternal grandmother. Her name was Natalia, but my parents shortened it to Natasa, which was more popular at the time. When I was a little girl, I didn’t like my name (I guess that’s usual for little girls), but now I am glad I was called after my grandmother. She died when I was nine and she was an important figure in my childhood. She was a truly good person. When I got married, I added my husband’s surname to my maiden name. I wanted to keep “Christmas” with me and I felt that by that time the surname was a part of who I was. I also did it because I am an only child and my father was no longer alive. My married name is very rare – I have never met anyone outside my husband’s family called Grojic. We believe that somebody made a mistake at the Registry Office a long time ago and wrote Grojic instead of the very common Grujic. I always have to spell it to people and they usually get it wrong – they write u instead of o. My husband says that with time I’ll stop paying attention and let them write whatever they want."

I always share this story with the students first before I ask them to do the same. It helps them understand what I want them to do. It is a great way for everybody to learn everybody else's name.

DRAW YOUR OWN SYMBOL

Here is what the CRELL lesson plan says:

"In this activity we would like you to think of a way to represent yourself to the other participants in our session by drawing a symbol. You can use Word Drawing or another program to draw your symbol. You can also hand draw your symbol and scan your picture, then download it to the correct folder. Please create an original drawing instead of downloading clip art or a photo. Below your symbol, please provide a brief explanation of how this symbol represents you."

This is what I did:



"I chose the candle as my symbol. When I was a student, I used to draw candlesticks on the margin of my books. Maybe it had something to do with burning midnight oil, or maybe (and I prefer this second explanation) it had something to do with the quest for knowledge. Candle represents light, as opposed to darkness. It represents knowledge and wisdom. It shows us directions when we are lost and, if we leave a candle in the window, our dear ones will find us. We light candles to remember both the living and the dead. Our lives might be “like candles in the wind”, but if we live them with passion and if we bring some light into the lives of others, we will live forever. The flame is eternal."

Again, I would share the story with the students first, maybe even try to draw my symbol on the board. Then I would ask them to do the same. I teach adults so I usually wouldn't ask them to draw their own symbol in one of our first classes (they are scared enough even without me asking them to draw). I usually share a ready-made lesson plan instead. It is a lovely little lesson plan from the Inside Out website and it is called You In Pictures. A whole collection of these plans can be found here and You In Pictures is the first one. Please allow the time for the booklet to download.

SPEED DATING

I learnt this activity from my colleague Zorana who teaches German at my school. Students sit opposite each other in pairs and they have five minutes to talk to each other. After the time is up, everybody moves one seat to their left, so that they talk to somebody else. The goal is similar to speed dating - to find out as much as possible about their partner. Before the students start talking to each other, I ask them to write down five or six questions that they are going to ask everybody in the class, although, of course, improvising additional questions on the spot is most welcome. At the end of the activity, I ask each student to share the most interesting question they were asked.

WHAT MAKES YOU TICK

Photo on Flickr by Rocket Ship

Students are given some time to prepare a one-minute talk about something they are passionate about. It can be a hobby or simply a topic they are very interested in. After each student has delivered the speech, others ask follow-up questions. At least three questions should be asked.

PLEASE DON'T ASK ME THAT

In pairs, students talk about what sort of questions they hate being asked, then they share the questions with the rest of the class and they explain why they hate talking about the topic. Those can be typical 'taboo questions' like asking about somebody's weight, or simply the questions the students find boring or intrusive. Very useful feedback for the teacher.

TWITTER BIOGRAPHIES

This is a writing exercise. Students are asked to write something about themselves in 150 words. I would share my own Twitter bio (mother, wife, EFL teacher, Webhead, blogger, writer lifelong learner, daydreamer, geek, insomniac) as an example.

ELEVATOR PITCH

I borrowed this from a blogging challenge I participated in. Here is my original post on what an elevator pitch is. An elevator pitch is similar to a Twitter bio, but it should be delivered orally. Students should introduce themselves to others in no more than 150 words.

I like to do this as a mingle activity. Students circle around, delivering their elevator pitches to each other. They should listen to other elevator pitches carefully, but they shouldn't write anything down. Afterwards, I ask them to recall anything they can remember about the people they talked to.

One of my favourite photocopiables is Group Work Intermediate. Activity 2 (Get to know your group) contains 64 great icebreaker questions that can be exploited in different ways. I often use those during the first two or three weeks of the course.

Please let me know what you think. Your opinion is, as always, very important to me.

TEFL lessonplans warmers

Movies by Numbers - Number 5

For my third video assignment this week, I chose Movies by Numbers. My task is to artistically present a single number through visuals and relevant music. There is to be no narration and only the visuals and the music should tell the story.

I used Compfight to search for CC licenced images that have the word "five" among their tags. The music I chose is Take Five by Dave Brubeck. I used Animoto once again, so I added Animoto's own videos to my story. Animoto lets you determine the beginning and/or the end of each video, so I stopped the countdown videos immediately after number 5 and I did the same with the clock.

Here is my video.

The most complicated thing in this assignment was creating a full list of images used so that I could give attribution where it is due. Here it is:


Creative Commons images used:
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Tabsinthe: http://flickr.com/photos/tabsinthe/4820084267/ cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by woodleywonderworks: http://flickr.com/photos/wwworks/3196112134/ cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by Lst1984: http://flickr.com/photos/lst1984/493522912/ cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Pink Sherbet Photography: http://flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/2001899627/ cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by Javier Volcan: http://flickr.com/photos/jdvolcan/5456792325/
http://flickr.com/photos/neychurluvr/3369607260/
cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo by Jon Matthies: http://flickr.com/photos/jmatthies/7181077141/
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Michael | Ruiz: http://flickr.com/photos/simax/3390895249/
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by Amrit...: http://flickr.com/photos/aksphotography/367363319/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by ncracker (Boyan Syarov): http://flickr.com/photos/syarov/4534118874/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by christing-O-: http://flickr.com/photos/christing/2457051794/
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by { pranav }: http://flickr.com/photos/neychurluvr/3369607260/
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo by ginnerobot: http://flickr.com/photos/ginnerobot/4552277923/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by flyzipper: http://flickr.com/photos/flyzipper/432622379/
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by Pandiyan: http://flickr.com/photos/pandiyan/75545427/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by Leo Reynolds: http://flickr.com/photos/lwr/101655312/
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by jenny downing: http://flickr.com/photos/jenny-pics/2681981423/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by bara-koukoug: http://flickr.com/photos/bara-koukoug/6941685781/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by YanivG: http://flickr.com/photos/yanivg/96918791/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by gonzalo_ar: http://flickr.com/photos/gonzalo_ar/644154294/
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by bitzi ☂ ion-bogdan dumitrescu: http://flickr.com/photos/bitzi/230188091/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by bobbygreg: http://flickr.com/photos/bobbygreg/168206195/
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo by marfis75: http://flickr.com/photos/marfis75/5780056202/
cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by voyageAnatolia.blogspot.com: http://flickr.com/photos/fotogezi/3511876129/
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by tochis: http://flickr.com/photos/tochis/3124403063/