PowerPoint Presentation

I. Strong points and weak points :
1. Strong points:

• attractive graphics and images.
• clear outline.
• effective application of technology.
• fix sts' level.
• appropriate content and timing.
• well-organized proceduce.
• various activities .
• group members' cooperation .

2. Weak points:

• lack of internet links.
• Not many groupwork and pairwork activities.

If possible , We would like to :

• creat a suitable webquest for beginner sts.
• give more groupwork and pairwork activities.

4 most interesting links

1. Oxford University Press
Teachers can join clubs , download resources , share ideas .. with Oxford’s books.
http://www.oup.com/

2. Pearsonlongman.Com
There are lots of ideas and free resources for learners and teachers of English language. Try fun online activities, download free support materials and get helpful tips on learning and teaching English.
http://www.pearsonlongman.com/

3. English Club.com
Students can practice English with various interactive pages such as forums, games, quizzes, chat, help and penpals.
http://www.englishclub.com/

4. Study English Today
This website supplies free online English lessons and English grammar for ESL and EFL learners, also including tests, English alphabet with pictures of animals, poetry and lyrics.
http://www.studyenglishtoday.net/

Reflective by Hoang

REFLECTIVE ON TILT
Starting from the beginning of this week (28/01/2008), my group have been burdened with a lot of new IT knowledge . I have the feeling that most of our classmates would share such similar feelings. However, I discover that all of the knowledge acquired during the week must be the tools beneficial to my profession in future time. They are the modern techniques resulting from the rapid advance of Internet and IT which will certainly facilitate language teaching magically with regards to all the activities in class such as lesson planning, exercise preparation, examination.
The first day we learned how to link to useful webpages on language teaching and language learning to search and find out information, huge and potential resource that help language teachers in their teaching and enable them to communicate with their peers all over the world. Teachers who do not know IT or do not know how to exploit these kinds of resourse will certainly be at a disadvantage to those who know and exploit them.
The second day we also learned how to create our own blogs , our own webpagegs to link to relevant subjects, save our lesson plans and our daily logs as well as exchanging teaching experience with our colleagues on large scale.
The innumerable webpages and blogs focussing on language teaching and learning that I browsed have made me wonder why I have not known this earlier so as to relieve the laborious days involved with my teaching activities .
Thanks to the advance of technology, we, teachers of English all over the world have been together and have had universal tools to be able to share our experiences and be virtually closer .

Hot Potatoes

We found it interesting to learn about Hot Potatoes .Thank to the technology , Our teaching process will be improved .We appreciated what we learned today .
Hot Potatoes
Overview
+ The program Hot Potatoes, currently produced by Half-Baked Software, Inc., was designed to allow teachers to make interactive, Web-based exercises that can be accessed by students at any Internetcapable computer terminal with a standard Web browser.
+ Hot Potatoes can create six different types of Web-based exercises which can stand alone or be linked to other exercises to form a sequence of tasks. Students can correct their own work based on the clues and feedback set up in advance by the teacher.
+ Hot Potatoes also allows the teacher to specify an email address to which scores are sent.
The Six Modules to Make Exercises in Hot Potatoes
1. JBC -(multiple-choice quiz )
2. JQuiz text - entry quiz (type in words, phrases or even sentences)
3. Jmix –( jumbled-word exercise)
4. Jcross -(crossword )
5. Jcloze -(fill-in-the-blank exercise)
6. Jmatch- ( matching exercise )
Evaluation
+Hot Potatoes exercises are very benificial when accessed by students remotely as supplementary classroom work. Moreover, the exercises can be shared with teachers worldwide, as long as they have access to the Web.
+ Hot Potatoes exercises could form the basis of task-based activities that focus on meaning, provide a communication problem to solve, have a relationship to real-world activities, and are not concerned with language display .
+ Hot Potatoes is a tool, and, like even the best of tools, its value depends on the knowledge and creativity of the user.
+ We found the six modules of Hot Potatoes logical and easy to use. They do not require programming knowledge, yet they still offer flexibility for teachers who have more advanced knowledge. To familiarize ourselves with the modules, we first read the Hot Potatoes tutorial offered with the program, which took about 30 minutes, and then created a basic, sample exercise with one of the modules in about an hour.Because all modules are similar in design and share basic features, learning one of the Hot Potatoes modules makes it easy to learn the other five.
(Paula Winke & David MacGregor - Review of Hot Potatoes - Language Learning & Technology 30 )

Tet is coming

Tet , Tet , Tet , Tet .....
I love our Tet holiday . I wish it would come quicker .
Here is the atmosphere of Tet.

Evaluate WebQuest

Evaluate WebQuest
Imagination Voyages: http://www.iei.uiuc.edu/travelsim/

WEBQUEST

1. What is a WebQuest?
A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented online tool for learning, says workshop expert Bernie Dodge 1. This means it is a classroom-based lesson in which most or all of the information that students explore and evaluate comes from the World Wide Web. Beyond that, WebQuests:
can be as short as a single class period or as long as a month-long unit;
usually (though not always) involve group work, with division of labor among students who take on specific roles or perspectives;
are built around resources that are preselected by the teacher. Students spend their time USING information, not LOOKING for it.
(Source: http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index.html)

2. What are the essential components of a WebQuest?
There are six critical components in a WebQuest:
Introduction:
The introduction section provides background information and motivational scenarios like giving students roles to play: "You are an underwater research scientist," or "You are an astronaut planning a trip to the moon." It also provides an overview of the learning goals to students.
Task:The task is a formal description of what students will have accomplished by the end of the WebQuest.

Process:This is a description of the steps learners should go through in accomplishing the task, with links embedded in each step.

Resources:This section of the WebQuest consists of a list of the resources (bookmarked Web sites, print resources, etc.) that your students will need to complete the task.

Evaluation:Each WebQuest needs a rubric 1 for evaluating students' work. The standards should be fair, clear, consistent, and specific to the tasks set. Many of the theories of assessment, standards, and constructivism apply to WebQuests: clear goals, matching assessments to specific tasks, and involving the learners in the process of evaluation are all concepts from earlier workshops that apply here.
Conclusion:This step allows for reflection by the students and summation by the teacher. Setting aside time for discussion of possible extensions and applications of the lesson honors the constructivist principle: "We learn by doing -- but we learn even better by talking about what we did." During the concluding section of a WebQuest, you can encourage your students to suggest ways of doing things differently to improve the lesson.

Source: (http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index.html)

3. What do short-term and long-term WebQuest focus?

Short Term WebQuests

The instructional goal of a short term WebQuest is knowledge acquisition and integration, described as Dimension 2 in Marzano's (1992) Dimensions of Thinking model. At the end of a short term WebQuest, a learner will have grappled with a significant amount of new information and made sense of it.

Longer Term WebQuest

The instructional goal of a longer term WebQuest is what Marzano calls Dimension 3: extending and refining knowledge.A longer term WebQuest will typically take between one week and a month in a classroom setting.

(Some Thoughts About WebQuests
Bernie Dodge, San Diego State University )
( http://webquest.sdsu.edu/about_webquests.html )

4. What are the benefits of the WebQuest?

When predictions are made about life and work for the coming decades, there are a few points on which there is nearly universal agreement:
Tomorrow's workers will need to be able to work in teams.
Individuals will move through several careers in the course of a lifetime.
The issues facing citizens will become more and more complex, and societal problems will resist easy fixes or black-and-white categorization.
The amount of information available to everyone will grow at an accelerating pace; much of it will come directly from a growing number of sources without filtering or verification.
What this means is that tomorrow's workers and citizens will need to be able to grapple with ambiguity. They will need to commit themselves to a lifelong process of learning, honoring multiple perspectives and evaluating information before acting on it. Tomorrow's workers and citizens are sitting in our classrooms today.
Using WebQuests in our classrooms can help build a solid foundation that prepares them for the future.
(http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index_sub1.html )

5. How to create WebQuest?

Here are the recommended steps:

1. The first stage for a teacher in learning to be a WebQuest designer is to become familiar with the resources available on-line in their own content area. Toward that end, we've prepared a Catalog of Catalogs of Web Sites for Teachers. This provides short list of starting points for exploration broken down by subject matter discipline.
2. The next step is to organize one's knowledge of what's out there. Spending a few hours on Non-WebQuest 3 will guide the teacher in organizing the resources in their discipline into categories like searchable database, reference material, project ideas, etc.
3. Following that, teachers should identify topics that fit in with their curriculum and for which there are appropriate materials on-line.
4. A template is available that guides the teacher through the process of creating a short-term, single discipline WebQuest.
(Some Thoughts About WebQuests
Bernie Dodge, San Diego State University )
(http://webquest.sdsu.edu/about_webquests.html)