Session 3 Reflection - Google form and Hot Potatoes

We have tried out a few new things in this lesson. First of all, I have created a quiz through google form. I have tried this way to create a quiz and a survey back in college. It was very useful and easy to get the results that I wanted because many people have a google account. People could access the quizzes or surveys easily. I would like to use it in my lesson and my students can do the quiz or even create a survey for a group project. We have also tried using Hot Potatoes to create JMix and JQuiz. It was also another easy way to form quizzes or other online exercises for all students to do in the classroom. As long as each student has a tablet, they can go to the link and access the quizzes and exercises. It is a more creative and a fun way to assess students during the lesson. I would definitely try to bring these new stuff into my classroom.

Hot Potatoes

JMix
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m0c9okfn3nasjlo/ordering.htm?dl=0

JQuiz
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pwgt8ikfo9xsry1/tense.htm?dl=0

Google form

Session 2 Reflection - Useful language investigation tools

I really like the language tools that being introduced tonight in class. They are definitely very useful for helping students to improve their choice of words. As a L2 learner, I usually use the bilingual online dictionaries to look up some of the English words. In class, we have compared some online dictionaries and I found out that there are lots more other options that I can use and introduce to my students. I also like the corpus from BYU (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/). I actually used it for a few times when I was in college since I have been studying in BYU-H for about four years. It reminds me that it is a great tool to see how native speakers actually use the words. It amazed me that how different the words have been being used. Moreover, the google fight and sentence checker are also awesome and fun (https://textranch.com/sentence-checker/
http://www.googlefight.com/) I would love to use these tools and bring them into the classroom.

 Online dictionaries:

1.      1. http://www.ldoceonline.com/
2. http://dictionary.reference.com/
3. http://hk.dictionary.yahoo.com/
4. http://www.macmillandictionary.com/
5. http://www.learnersdictionary.com/ (Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary)
6. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/
7. http://www.merriam-webster.com/
8. http://www.collinsdictionary.com/
9. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/

Using a thesaurus to help students improve their choice of words

Original version:
On the first day, we met our class teacher Mr Wong, we thought he would be very strict to us. After one week, we found Mr Wong was very nice! We like this secondary school and we like to be in 1A. This is a good school and 1A is very good. The teachers in this school are very kind and nice and our classmates are also kind, friendly and nice. We like each other very much.

Revised version:

On the first day, we met our class teacher Mr Wong, we thought he would be very strict to us. After one week, we found Mr Wong was very gentle! We are happy with this secondary school and we are glad to be in 1A. This is a wonderful school and 1A is marvelous. The teachers in this school are excellent and delightful and our classmates are also helpful, friendly and great. We love each other very much.

Session 1 Reflection - Prospects and problems in using blogs as a teaching/learning tool in my work

I am not a blog person but I have set up a blog like this when I was in college. This is one of the two blogs that I made and another one is http://poyeetesoledu.weebly.com/
It was a pretty good way to share what I learned with the teacher and my classmates. Everyone can share their experiences and thoughts about teaching and look at others' works. However, my blog haven't been being used after I graduated from college. It's pretty hard for a teacher to update a blog regularly. But now, it's a great time to keep updating what I have learned to improve my teaching again. In this lesson, I am glad that each of us set up a blog and we can actually use it as a portfolio. We can reflect what we learn in class and share pictures and some teaching tools. It's an awesome way to learn from each other. I am very excited to explore more about e-learning and to know what new things I can bring into my classroom in order to improve my teaching.