Week 6: The Roller Coaster Ride Through Assignments and Tasks

My journey through the interactive web has led me to this week’s roller coaster. These seven days have been filled with activities and things I was learning about and trying out on the go. But let’s start from the beginning.

The readings we covered this week were about Engaging Students and Technology Aids. I dedicated a special attention to a website that listed and explained many resources that can help to keep students actively engaged and minimize the time teachers spend grading, effectively and efficiently. 

I faced similar challenge with my upper-intermediate student essays that were sent through Edmodo. I still think that Edmodo did help me to instruct my students how to do the essay and how their essays will be evaluated. However, with all the work in my webskills class, the reading assignments and tasks, and completing the work for WebQuest I really had such a trouble finding time to read all the essays, grade them, and send the reports and feedback in Edmodo to my students. 

In order to engage students more in learning I think that Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) would work well with in my class. It  is a brilliant method to improve student learning and increase in-class teaching efficiency and effectiveness. "A key to successful JiTT implementation is developing a set of effective questions that will be posted online for students to answer before the next class. JiTT questions are generally open-ended and require students to do something - read a textbook chapter or article, analyze a video, complete a simulation, or analyze data - related to material that will be addressed during the next class period." Again, something to explore in Edmodo.

Another effective tool to engage students in learning introduced this week is Powerpoint Presentation (PPT). I have used it before, but I must admit that I have never paid special attention to so many interactive features it offers. I created one as quite a simple and short vocabulary quiz. I tried to experiment both with using hyperlinks and text-adding interactive options. The quiz is designed as a warm-up activity in which students will be able to revise some airport vocabulary and airport procedures previously covered in one of the intermediate classes. I wanted to use hyperlinks in order to guide my students to the correct answers until they finally get them even if they hadn't studied prior to the quiz.

a slide screenshot of my PPT presentation

As the week was coming to an end, my work was nearly done. I had worked hard  to complete my  my WebQuest and introduce it to the students.  But I’d better dedicate another post to this.