Week 3 Reflection

The tasks of week three are...

1. Joining Delicious.com and sharing the delicious page.
2. Reading an article about CALL for listening, speaking and pronunciation and share opinions about website to enhance the skills.
3. Describing a project report and discuss thoughts about the report.
4. Writing reflective journal on Blog.com


1.
Before I learned about Delicious.com, I used Google+ to share the websites I used, and Blendspace.com to collect resources for my class. One good thing about Delicious.com is that I can put a small button on my explorer in order to easily add the webpage on Delicious.com. Usually when I used Google+ and Blendspace.com I had to copy the web URL and paste the address on the website, but by using Delicious, I did not have to worry about wasting my time. Also, when I add a website on Delicious, the small message pops up and tells me how many people added this website previously, so I could see that there are many people who found the website interesting. When I click other people who added the webpage, I could also see other resources of people who share the similar preferences. Also, when adding the webpage, Delicious.com suggests possible tags to categorize the webpage. For example, if I add Randall's ESL webpage, a message also pops up and shows some words like ESL, Learning, Language, English, Teaching, etc. I think this is time-saving for saving, using in the future, and browsing the pages. However, I think it would have been better if I could create folders to organize the pages aside from the tags.


2. Secondly, I read an article about CALL and looked through several websites. I could learn many websites that I didn't know, and I would like to use them in my class in the future. A website which interested me most was Winkball.com. People can create and watch video interviews about things they love. If I used this website in my class, I would give students some interview tasks such as interviewing people who have students' dream jobs. Also, students may make a self-videoclip about what they found out about their dream jobs through interviews. Even though teachers may use this website to give students' interview format, I think this website can be useful more for students' actual use rather than preparation of the teacher.I also think that this website could help students to be exposed to realistic English by showing a real-life interview videoclips.

3. I also left some comments on a project report written by previous attendee of this program working in a high school in Bulgaria. The setting and educational background of the school of this report was similar to mine, so I chose to read this report. The course was about using technology while enhancing students' speaking and writing skills, and the content was about Olympic games. By using WebQuest, students were able to ask and answer the question and eventually to write a research paper about the games. Having experienced that teenagers are difficult to motivate in class, I think the content 'Olympic games' was a good topic to use in class.