Week 4: My Reflection

What a wonderful course! Every day of the each week, I am learning new things, I mean, getting new links, from the vast ocean of the Internet, which seem to be almost impossible and very difficult to find out from the "Google search" .

The discussion thread on "nicenet.org" this week related to reading, writing and vocabulary is another powerful stuff to recharge a teacher with new skills. I am still collecting the useful links provided by the respected tutor and classmates. I have used some pages from the links which, I believe, was more effective for my class especially teaching grammar and listening skills. I am planning to use other links soon. The following links and search engines provided by our course tutor, Ms. Courtney, are really excellent pages for the English language teachers:

http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/

http://legacy.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html

http://a4esl.org/

http://www.manythings.org/

I read some articles from the links provided us. I have prepared a lesson plan With technology this week which is a new experience for me , and it will be a good model lesson plan in English teaching in the future, because the world is in information technology and IT is growing instantly in every field including education field.  I have learnt to upload the lesson plan document in "docs.google.com" where, I think, it will be stored for long term and the tutor and other classmates can observe, comment and edit it.

I hope I will get more and more in the next week which I am eagerly waiting for.

My Reflection: Week - 2

Now our course is at the end of third weeks. By now I have learned that "Blog" can be a very effective tool for (language) learning. It can be created at "blogger.com", too. We can make it more attractive going into the setting, we just need some time for it. The teacher can give tasks to the students there and the students can submit their assignment there.

From the first week discussion thread we collected the address of so useful search engines, links, and websites. ABCD model objectives is really new thing for me, I want to use this in my plan. Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is a mandatory thing for the teachers of 21^st century, so let's try it in our real classroom, too. The sites I got from classmates in this discussion thread are really precious for my teaching, thanks a lot my classmates for the contribution. "Delicious.com" is really an unforgettable flavor; it can be used to bookmark the important favorites at a single page online.

I hope we will certainly get some more valuable thing in next week.

Batuk Lal Tamang

Week 2 Web Search2 (List of links recommended by classmates)

From the beginning day of this discussion thread, I was reading thoroughly all classmates' posts and by now what I expected really came near about truth. I was expecting some useful links for me and my students to learn English language and get some other information. I believe now I have got some genuine and valuable websites and links that will support my purpose. Here's the list of the links the classmates and our respected course tutor have provided in this thread for each other's kind information. I visited some of the links, but couldn't visit all, so I think the collection of the links will certainly help us in our further study. I would like to thank all for the valuable contribution.

Courtney Cunningham, the course tutor writes:
1. www.noodletools.com

1. Bernadette Lingani, a participant writes:
1. www.iseek.com
2. education.iseek.com (useful for students, teachers, lesson plans, activities, school subjects, ...)
3. www.slideshare.net
4. www.harcourtschool.com
5. www.gleancomparisonsearch.org (useful for writing skills)
6. www.wordcentral.com (English course)
7. www.readwritethink.org
8. www.bbc.co.uk/learning/
9. www.findsounds.com/types.html

2. Tika Subedi, a participant from Nepal adds:
1. pages.uoregon.edu
2. www.intute.ac.uk
3. infomine.ucr.edu
4. www.academicinfo.net
5. education.yahoo.com/reference/encyclopedia/

3. Akbar Shomurodov, a participant from Tajikistan adds:
1. yandex.ru
2. www.ya.ru
3. www.google.ru
4. www.dis.tj
5. www.qsi.org/schoolpages/tjk/home/
6. ips.tj/eng

4. Waseem Zuhra adds:
1. www.teachthought.com/technology/464-digital-learning-tools-tools-to-sift-through-on-a-rainy-day/
2. www.ebizmba.com/articles/search-engines
3. www.mahalo.com
4. info.com (for best images, webs and videos search at once)
5. maktoob.yahoo.com
6. blekko.com
7. search.lycos.com
8. www.aol.com
9. www.infospace.com
10. www.search.com
11. www.excite.com
12. www.goodsearch.com
13. http://websites4teachers.com/ (news books tools progs materials and even jobs for teachers)
14. http://www.sitesforteachers.com/index.html (plans crafts worksheets and resources)
15. http://www.wisemantech.com/25sites/ (tools new programs for teaching activities for kids)
16. http://www.educationoasis.com/resources/sitesforteachers.htm bullet in board art curricula
17. http://teachers.net/ chatrooms for teachers plans projects 
18. http://www.teachingexpertise.com/ management and teaching
19. http://www.educationcorner.com/college-university-planning.html college teachers
20. http://www.educational-freeware.com/ kids progs games and education
21. http://www.pre-kpages.com/ kg only
22. http://www.ala.org/aasl/standards-guidelines/best-websites/2013 best tools and programs used to teach on line or with tech
23. http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/08/great-teacher-websites.html various webs for teachers
24. http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/25-best-websites-teachers 2 thumbs up for teachers teaching English or others 
25. http://www.funbrain.com/ for kids
26. http://www.gse.harvard.edu/library/educator_resources.html leads to webs of education
27. http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/06/top-11-educational-video-websites-for.html
28. http://www.abcteach.com/directory/educational-links-teacher-sites-1389-2-1
29. http://topsites.primarygames.com/ kids games education awesome webs for education 

5. Kyi Tha Wai, a participant from ... adds:
1. www.wikipedia.org
2. www.quoteland.com (for quotations)
3. www.thesearchenginelist.com

6. Inesa Zubrylina, a participant from ... adds:
1. www.brainyquote.com (for quotations)
2. quotations.about.com (for quotations)
3. www.learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org
4. www.mes-english.com
5. www.english-4kids.com
6. www.multimedia-english.com
7. www.english-online.org.uk
8. learnrealenglish.com
9. www.eleaston.com

7. Baraat Alsmadi, a participant from ... writes:
1. www.wikihow.com
2. www.ezinearticles.com/?Englishwriting-skill
3. audioboo.com

8. Diana Alui Daniel, a participant from Malaysia writes:
1. www.cari.com.my

9. Ahmed Hamzi, a participant from ... writes:
1. www.google.com (search engine)
2. www.yahoo.com (search engine)
3. www.bing.com (search engine)
4. www.ask.com (search engine)
5. www.sweetsearch.com (for practical English dialogues)

10. Jennifer Ramdonee, a participant from ... writes:
1. www.freetech4teachers.com
2. www.ascilite.org.au
3. enotes.com
4. WorldCat.org
5. Idea Portal
6. Sweet Search

11. Paramita Chaudhuri, a participant from India writes:
1. www.docsouth.unc.edu/classroom/lessonplans/ RAFT.html
2. www.shapingenglish.ning.com

12. Johan Lopez, a participant from ... writes:
1. nsdl.org/search/results/ (for mathematics and technology)
2. www.kidsclick.org/ (kids content)
3. www.biography.com/people (for history class, biography of 7000+ people)
4. www.exalead.com/search/ (Advanced internet teachers)
5. www.schoology.com

13. Sanjiv Alay, a participant from Bhutan writes:
1. www.youtube.com

14. Darshan Lal Sharma, a participant from India adds:
1. www.philb.com/webse.htm
2. www.dogpile.com (search engine)
3. www.duckduckgo.com (search engine)

15. Ewa Prokopowicz, a participants from ... writes:
1. lookahead.surfwax.com (seach engine)
2. quoteland.com
3. merriam-webster.com

16. (Me) Batuk Lal Tamang, a participant from Nepal writes:
1. www.20search.com (a search engine)
2. www.engvid.com (a website for English teaching videos)
3. www.khanacademy.org (information of different subjects)
4. pustakalaya.org (online e-library with 5,000+ books)
5. moecdc.gov.np (Nepal government 's website for curriculum and textbooks)
6. www.slideworld.com (for readymade power point slides on different topics)

17. Nagei Abdel-aal Ahmed Mohamed, a participant from writes:
1. www.ncsall.net (for computer assisted language learning)
2. www.readingrockets.org
3. hakia.com
4. www.really-learn-english.com

18. Domingo Cadima adds:
1. www.manythings.org/hmf/
2. www.esl-lab.com/index.htm

19. Paula Mattila informs:
1. searcheuropa.eu
2. www.norden.org/en/theme/mr-u2
3. linkkiapaja.edu.fi/oph/search.html
4. http://www.openeducationeuropa.eu (great stuff on MOOCs) and 
5. http://www.etwinning.net/ (wait and see, if not eTwinning is to serve as a basic edu MOOC platform)

20. Sira Diop writes:
1. https.//dosmaterialsdevelopment.adobe 
2. http.//shapingenglish.ning.com
3. http.//www.nicenet.org
4. buusu.com
5. onestopenglish.com
6. http.//www.carla.umn.edu/cobaltt/modules/curriculum/textanalysis/communicative academic functions.pdf
7. communicativelanguage teaching .linguistic theory and classroom practice sandrj.savignon http'//yale.edu/excerpts0300091567-1.pdf

21. Muhammad Tariq adds:
1. http://www.bl.uk/
2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish
3. www.alison.com/speaking-English 
4. www.britishcouncil.com.pk 
5. www.altavista.com
6. www.jstor.org

22. Keong-sub Yeon writes:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurisangja

23. Faatu Touray writes:
1. www.colorelt.org
2. http:how to study.org/resources
3. www.English class.com
4. http://englishclip.com/ftp.englishclip.com

Week 2 ABCD Model Objectives

Description of a Class I Teach:
One of the classes I teach is grade 10. It is the second year of high school level in my country. There are 44 students in the class. All the subject teachers go to the class one after another for the 40 minutes' period for each class as per the time-table. This is quite different from the system that I have heard somewhere in American schools. (I mean I heard in some American schools the subject teacher has her/his own classroom where the students of different grades come one after another.) The students sit on the sitting desk attached to the desk for writing in the group of 4 or 5 in a row with 2 or 3 columns. There are white board and the teachers use board markers. The rooms are not so spacious, so it's difficult to conduct any mingle activities for language practice. However it's well ventilated.
Since English is foreign language, out of 8 subjects only English is taught in English medium and even in the class of English language the teachers (have to) speak the native language (Nepali), the proficiency of students' English language is very low due to the lack of English language exposure. So it's a big problem and challenge for the teachers to improve their English language proficiency.

Sharing a Learning Objective:
Normally whenever I take any class for this grade, I prepare the objectives of the class in this way:
At the end of the class, the students will be able to:
(a) tell the story of "The Thirsty Crow",
(b) write the story of "The Thirsty Crow".

But when I read the link (http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/) provided by our tutor and some other websites, (www.mdfaconline.org/presentations/ABCDmodel.doc), (http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/),
(www.missouristate.edu/.../Writing_Student_Learning_Objective_12-06-...?), as well as the other classmates' posts, I came to know that the objectives that I use have some lacking. 
In the above mentioned objectives: 
(A) The audience is the students, 
(B) The behavior is telling and writing the story. I think they are observable and measurable. I mean they can be heard and seen.
(C) I think the condition is not so strong in my objectives because I couldn't mention the context or circumstances of learning clearly here.
(D) I think the degree is not mentioned in my objectives, as I didn't state the level of mastery of the content.

I feel after reading the information from different sources as mentioned above, I could try my objectives in a different way, something like this:
(C)With the help of the picture story and clues words, (A) the students (B) will be able to:
(i) tell the story of "The Thirsty Crow" (D) in past tense for two minutes,
(ii) write the story of "The Thirsty Crow" (D) in past tense in about 150 words.

Reference:
(Adapted from: http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/

The A.B.C.D. Method

The ABCD method of writing objectives is an excellent starting point for writing objectives (Heinich, et al., 1996). In this system, "A" is for audience, "B" is for behavior, "C" for conditions and "D" for degree of mastery needed.

1.            Audience (A) – Who? Who are your learners?

2.            Behavior (B) – What? What do you expect them to be able to do? This should be an overt, observable behavior, even if the actual behavior is covert or mental in nature. If you can't see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or smell it, you can't be sure your audience really learned it.

3.            Condition (C) – How? Under what circumstances or context will the learning occur? What will the student be given or already be expected to know to accomplish the learning?

Degree (D) – How much? How much will be accomplished, how well will the behavior need to be performed, and to what level? Do you want total mastery (100%), do you want them to respond correctly 80% of the time, etc. A common (and totally non-scientific) setting is 80% of the time.)

Week 2 Web Searching

Dear all,
I use most often "Google" as the search engine. Today from this discussion thread I came to know that there are so many search engines that may be helpful for our need online. I have searched something from this search engine:
1. www.20seach.com
Some other websites I usually visit are as follows:
2. www.engvid.com (a good website for good English teaching videos by different teachers on various topics)
3. www.khanacademy.org (a good website for the information of different disciplines)
4. pustakalaya.org (an e-library contained the softcopies of more than 5000 books.
5. moecdc.gov.np (an authentic web of Curriculum Development Centre Nepal, a government authority, responsible to design curriculum and textbook the Nepal)
6. www.slideworld.com (for ready-made power point slides on different topics)

Week 1 - Introduction "Batuk"

Finally I created it. I am not used to creating new blog at "blogger.com", so it was a bit difficult for me to manage it. I think creating a blog at "wordpress.com" is easier than doing it on this site.
I am Batuk Lal Tamang from Nepal which is in south Asia located between India and China. I have been teaching English for grade 10 students in a government school where I work as an assistant head teacher as well. In the morning shift I teach English Education to the students of Bachelor's Degree. In the past I used to teach primary level children, too. I have an experience of teaching all grades' students, i.e. from grade one to 12. I sometimes work as teacher trainer as well.
I have been working in a voluntary social organization of English language teachers in Nepal (named "Nepal English Language Teachers' Association/ NELTA). It has more than forty branches throughout the nation (Nepal). I am the chairperson in one of those branches (NELTA Chitwan Branch). NELTA has its own website - "nelta.org.np".
I am very much happy and excited to work and learn online with so many experienced scholars from the different parts of the globe.