Week 06-3: Creating Students-centered Classes and Interactive PowerPoint

Project task: Begin the change

Practically, there are many problems to apply new ways of learning which I learned from this course in my school situation this year, so I decided to modify my project for teaching in next year. Doing so, I hope I can make my plan more organized before starting my project from the beginning of the semester.

Passing through several weeks, I’ve got enormous useful information about building teaching skills through the interactive web and my learning process is ongoing. Using the information, I would like to add more details on my project. They are as follows:

Target Learners
13 years old, 6th graders in EFL situation, advanced

Main problems of my class
1) One-computer class in EFL situation
2) How to improve students’ writing skill

Potential solution
1) Mind map online: bubbl.us (https://bubbl.us/)
- Brainstorming and expanding vocabulary before writing as a pre-writing activity
2) Interactive PowerPoint
- Making PowerPoint interactive including tasks, questions, quizzes, video, audio, pictures, and so on
3) Project-based learning
- Making writing tasks corresponded to each learning topic
- Using cooperative learning when appropriate
- Using WebQuest
- There are some learning topics suitable for project-based learning. Here is an example.
Topic: Introduce yourself or another person including nationality
Writing Task: Choose your favorite entertainer around the world (movie star, cartoon character, actor) and write a paragraph about him/her for introducing with at least 5 or 6 sentences long.
4) Class Blog
- For review or homework, students post about what they learned. For example, after learning about the past tense, students make one or two sentences using verbs of past tense and post them on the class blog.

Resources
1) Zunal WebQuest Maker - http://www.zunal.com/
2) bubbl.us - https://bubbl.us/
3) Blogger - www.blogger.com
4) Lauri’s ESL Website - http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~lfried/
5) RubiStar - http://rubistar.4teachers.org/

Reference
1) Project-based learning activity about project-based learning
http://www.sun-associates.com/lynn/pbl/pbl.html
2) Less Teaching and More Learning" by Susan Gaer
http://www.ncsall.net/?id=385
3) The "Student Projects Sampler," by Susan Gaer
http://susangaer.com/studentprojects/
4) Zunal WebQuest Maker
http://www.zunal.com/
5) Alternative learning; alternative assessment
http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/assessing/alternative.htm
6) Teaching large classes
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/largeclasses.html
7) Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students from Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw
http://umbc.uoregon.edu/eteacher/webskills/material/engaging_students_handout.pdf
8) PowerPoint Best Practices
http://tep.uoregon.edu/technology/powerpoint/docs/presenting.pdf
9) Top Ten Slide Tips
http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html
10) Cooperative Learning
http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/index.html

Now I’m thinking about rubrics, assessment, and follow-up activities.
It is very difficult for me to make my own project using techniques which I’ve never used before. I’m not sure I’m on the right track. However, others are the same and I know, for advancing one step more, I should try more than before.