Saturday, February 26, 2011

project draft

Web skills final project plan

The webskill course is coming to an end, we have to prepare the final project plan, here is sketchy piece of it. 
Objectives: incorporating technology (PowerPoint presentation, multimedia, softwares, etc..) in classroom could solve many problems.
Environment: the class is doing Bachelor in English, second year students are 40 male and female, their age is 17-19. They study a course titled" vocabulary and idiomatic expression in use" the book is written by Stuart Redman. The course is 2 hours a week.

Location: 2nd year B.A students are part of college of languages, Sudan University of Science and Technology.
The college of languages has four main branches: Arabic Department, French Department, German Department ( hasn't yet officially started and English Department. the English Department has around 40 teaching staff.
The student needs to cover many courses such as Reading, Writing, Speaking, and listening; semantics, phonology, etc...
What are the course (vocabulary and idiomatic expression in use.)
Goals: by the end of this course my students should be able to know and memorize the basic idioms in English; they should know how words are collocated in English. They must be able to know the basic rules of prefixation and suffixation.
Students should be capable of using some vocabulary learning strategies.
What are problems you expect your students may face?
Due to their least exposition to the language, my students will face some problems to recall some words they have learned. They may have some difficulties using vocabulary learning strategies.

Solutions: quizzes downloaded from the internet can help to activate passive vocab. into active vocab. English vocabulary pre-intermediate and intermediate is a software made by Oxford is an invaluable tool for learners.
Power point presentation could be arranged to help students memorize idiomatic expressions. Using photo help learners make some kind of connection with idioms. I created PPPs with photo to help students memorize idioms.



Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Week 05 PJBL and WebQuests

Hello everyone, I start this week as usual by reading the links provided by Robert the captain of the webskills ship. Reflecting on what I have learned this week, I have gone through the two websites webquest.org http://www.zunal.com/ and Zunal.com. http://www.zunal.com/  From these two websites I could be able to know a little about what is webQuest? Because this the first time I come across this term. However, I have read a PowerPoint presentation from mywebskills.blogspot.com by our colleague in this webskills course Mbarek which was very helpful and informative.
WebQuests are really unique. Learners will get a readymade materials provided to them. Their valuable time is well-considered. Students don’t have to search the search engine, but analyze and evaluate the materials provided to them. Webquest designers provide in advance the task, tools and process that learners will use to produce the target product.
PjBL Project-Based Learning not Problem-Based Learning, because I am not the only person who got confused between the two terms. I think the PjBL is putting the students in the driving seat as my colleague Palwasha said. Teacher is a facilitator and sometimes must go to the back seat and watch how the driving is made.