Glogster is a free membership service that allows to you create posters and then share them online!

Just trying to create my own poster..hold on a …month

Definition:

“Worlde is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.” (-> www.worlde.net)
]]> http://stavroula86.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/wordle/feed/ 0 stavroula86 wordle http://stavroula86.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/moodle/ http://stavroula86.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/moodle/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:37:45 +0000 stavroula86 http://stavroula86.wordpress.com/?p=93 ]]> Definition/Function of “Moodle”:

• free online-learning  platform
• having class without meeting in a room
• Teachers:

1. create online courses by uploading material
2. create databases
3. start discussions among the students concerning relevant topics
4. control/observe what the students are doing
5. give tasks
6. possibility of teaching without meeting with class

• Students:

1. can find all the material relevant for the course
2. communicate both with the teacher and the other learners
3. open new discussion topics and share material
4. leave comments about other posts

In my opinion, the most functions of moodle can be replaced by a typicial blog. The only thing is, that discussions can´t be lead easily through a blog. Furthermore, it is more helpful to discuss in reality to practise the English speaking skills.

Does this article support our concept of learning?

It fits as far as the following points are concerned:

• You can content to people and ideas and conversations.
• On the internet you can learn anything, anywhere and anytime.
• Internet faciliates to easily consume other people’s ideas, share your own in return, and communicate with other educators around the world from whom yua can learn every day.
• There is no linear curriculum to learning, no formal structure other than the tools you use to connect to the people and sources that point you to what you need to know and learn.
• Internet creates active contributors who are communicating online, IMing, gaming, participating, producing…

BUT

• you are also a continuous learner in a quickly changing world of information that is challenging many of the traditional structures of education. The traditional school model does not fit into this new learning scenario.

Conclusion:
We as future teachers can teach our students how to make the connections themselves, to find the sources and resources they need when they need them, instead of depending on us to provide them.

…when you are interested in the topic or/and transfer it to personal knowledge

…when you deal with it intensively

…when you are able to reconstruct it

…when you use it for new material.

Today, there is a sensational new way of recording and listening to audio tracks… podcasts are a creation of media data like radio broadcast,  newscasting , speech practices, audio data like Mp3 and i-tunes  who are published in the world wide web.

Recently, my friend told me that instead of listening to the  news on television or on the radio he uploads the world news from i-tunes to his i- pod every day and then listens to the podcasts news while driving to the university in the train every day. This sounds to me ultramodern and astonishing. Especially, when I remember myself listening to tapes with my walkman!

As a future teacher it is my task to think about the usage of podcasts or podcasting in English lessons. Since almost every school is equipped with computers,  audio players and microphones it is possible to use podcasting for pronunciation practises, listening comprehensions, singing songs, making interviews available for the class and so on..

I assume that, if teachers more often istructed their pupils to work on their English skills by making podcasts and listening to podcasts the speaking and listening skills would be improved. By making their own podcasts on class blogs they can hear their voice and their mistakes and correct themselves in a better way. Moreover, by listening to other podcasts they would get used to the English language sound and learn from others.

I definitly plan to work with podcasts as a teacher in some years after my studies

It is my task to work out a research question within this issue and create a poster session on it. In the following text I demonstrate my line of thoughts and the argumentation of the research question I have developed, as well describe the contributions to the discussion. Moreover, I will expound my intended operationalisation and further activities I would like to accomplish. I have also included a list of the bibliographical references I used for my research.

The first question which came into my mind when I thought about an interesting and meaningful research matter queries in a general way: “The comparison (advantages and disadvantages) between traditional and web 2.0 based didactic methods”. This question represents the chief subject of the seminar but does not go further into the question.

“How useful are podcastings/podcasts to practise and improve the English pronunciation?” reflects the second idea in my line of thoughts. At this, it seems necessary to establish a comparison and analysis of podcasting and traditional audio techniques and afterwards interview both teachers and learners to evolve a general answer to that research question.

However, the next question presents the one I have chosen to work on: “To what Extent do Blogs Support the Learning Process? A Research on English Teaching Methods at German High Schools.” In my opinion, this interrogation presents the most interesting and meaningful one. On one hand, it is a question which also appears within the “Web 2.0 based lessons” seminar and therefore fulfils the subject area given in the task. On the other hand, this question has actuality at command due to the fact that more and more lessons in school are taught based on the internet by creating learners and teachers blogs. In the course of this it is needful to demonstrate in which way blogs are used by learners as well as by teachers in school lessons at German high schools. Important questions are: ‘How are the blogs constructed?’, ‘What do they contain?’, ‘How does the communication between learners and teachers function?’ and ‘How is this system controlled?’ Above all, it should be exhibited if and to what extend this system of didactics supports the learning process and possibly if it displaces the traditional way of education. On that account, it should be provided a comparison between the usual way of teaching and learning with books etc. and on the other side the new strategy of didactics with the World Wide Web.

Thereby, I plan to examine several teachers and learners blogs to get an overview how educational blogs are constructed. Furthermore, I would like to interview teachers and learners of high schools who work with blogs to ascertain how effective the system is effective and how the learning process functions to reach a realistic conclusion. For this purpose, I need to construct questionnaires for teachers as well as for the learners group. I will interview as many learners depending on how many teachers I will be allowed to ask for help on the questionnaires. The aim is to analyse if blogs produce a learning process and if they do to what extent they support the learning process.

Hereafter I propound the information I have already summarized to answer my question:

In general, blogs are useful for exchanging news and messages in a quick and easy way. Using blogs, the teachers can communicate with the students easier. They do not need to have particular web skills. Information, tasks and web-links can be published via a post in a blog. In addition, if students each set up their own blog they also can communicate with each other, help each other, comment on others statements and get inspired by these statements. If courses of different schools create blogs, the communication group raises and information circulates easier. The blog of a teacher is used for lesson control and organization, whereas the blog of a pupil presents a proof of learning and accomplishment by, for instance, keeping a learning diary.