Week 8: New Tools

It's Friday evening and the week is almost over. Time does fly so fast and it seems only yesterday that we had started this course. It's been so intense and busy, that this blog in a way helps me look back on all the things that had been learned, tested and done.

Although usually with a schedule that involves reading materials followed by a discussion and specific tools-exploring tasks, the week was marked by the first draft of the final project report. I started working on the project 3 weeks ago, as noted here in the blog, and this week my students were to finish it. I am in the process of evaluating the assignments, but also trying to analyze the whole process and think about possible setbacks and manners how they could be corrected and/or what alternatives could be used.

I had trouble with my home internet connection at the end of the week due to the bad weather and snow. In school there were too many things again to be done, so I couldn't really do much there. What troubled me the most was my logging in this great toolbox for teachers introduced called ANVILL (A National Virtual Language Lab). It is designed for simple and straightforward creating media-rich lessons. I was able just to get familiar with it through posts and detailed explanations by Jeff Magoto, the director of the Yamada Language Center at the University of  Oregon, and developer of  this fantastic web tool. His presence in the course has created an additional value to the course, and once again I am grateful and honored to be in the E-Teacher Program.

To give a better insight into ANVILL here's the author himself giving a brief description of the work of Voiceboards (VB) that is ANVILL's most popular tool which adds spoken language to discussions, audio journals, pronunciation exercises, and other forms of oral language practice:

In one of my first posts in this blog I talked about a student exchange program that we have in school, and I was wondering how it would be to use this tool in order to add another dimension to the exchange, just like the high schools from the Eugen, Oregon and Lyon, France.

Practical tasks we had to do this week were related to creating online course using tools such as Blogger.com, Google Sites or sites for creating activities such as exercises to print out or use online and/or offline from Easy-Test-Maker or Hot Potatoes. I tried out CrosswordPuzzleGames.com in order to create a vocabulary and spelling revision exercise for my upper-intermediate class.

In addition, I have been exploring the Hot Potatoes software and I created an open cloze exercise called Can Honey Heal.

 What I really like about this software is that it gives you a possibility of creating different types of exercises - open cloze, crossword puzzle, quiz, matching exercises and combined - all as one tool.

It looks like just the right tool I might be using to 'feed the hungry minds'. :)