Task 3 - WWW Lesson Plan

Form: 1

Level: Advanced

Time: 2 periods

Theme: Health

Topic: Cooking From Scratch

Language Content: Grammar – Sequence Connectors

Educational Emphasis: ICT Skills, Learning How to Learn Skills, Multiple Intelligences

Previous Knowledge: Students have been taught on types of sequence connectors

General Objective: Students will learn how to utilize sequence connectors in writing.

Aims/Specific Objectives/Intended Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:
2.2(c) Process information by following sequence of ideas
2.3(a) Present information to different audiences by writing directions, instructions, recounts, announcements, using appropriate format and conventions.

Instructional Aids/Technical Requirements: Computer (one per student or two students), internet connection, web browser, macromedia flash player.

Preparation:
1. Search for an appropriate online cooking flash games.
2. Browse through and tryout the games available to check the difficulty and flow of the games.
3. Prepare a suitable worksheet to be handed out to the students.

Website: http://www.y3.com/search-results/202739/cooking

Teaching Procedure:

Set Induction:
1. Teacher greets the students.
2. Teacher asks students what they know about healthy cooking.
3. Teacher explains briefly about healthy cooking.
4. Teacher briefly explains the activity prepared.
5. Teacher recaps the previous lesson on types of sequence connectors.

Development:

(Task 1)
1. Teacher asks students to get into pairs per computer.
2. Teacher asks students to open the internet browser and go to http://www.y3.com/.

3. Teacher asks students to type ‘cooking’ in the ‘search’ box and click the ‘search’ button.
4. Teacher explains the outcome results of the search.

5. Teacher tells the students to play any cooking game of their choice from the ‘Cooking Show’ variety available and be familiar with the cooking procedures. Teacher tells students that they can replay the game as many times needed by clicking the 'restart' button.

(Task 2)

6. Teacher asks each pair to select a game from the ‘Cooking Show’ type of games.

7. Teacher hands out an activity worksheet for each pair.

8. Teacher tells students to fill out the worksheet with the recipe and the cooking procedures of the cooking game they had selected. The students are allowed to replay the cooking game they had selected in order to fill out the worksheet.
9. Teacher reminds students to use the sequence connectors when writing out the recipe.

Closure:
1. Teacher asks students what they have learnt.
2. Teacher recaps the lesson on sequence connectors and healthy cooking and eating.

Follow-Up Activity: Teacher asks students to list down the available healthy resources and benefits (vitamins, iron, effect on health etc.) of their selected recipe.

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Personal Note:

The idea for this lesson plan was derived from my own personal hobby of playing video games. I am an avid video game player (when I need some time out from all the work) and I figured that a game-based lesson plan would be interesting for the students. I own a Nintendo DS Lite and my favourite game of all time is Cooking Mama. The game may be simple, but the simplicity is what makes it so addictive. Thus I was excited to find that there is an online flash version available. However, it is not exactly the same game, but the gameplay is similar. You are led to cooking a dish step by step interactively like chopping and slicing up vegetables, baking, mixing ingredients and much more. You can easily say that this lesson plan is a tribute to my favourite game rom.

Blog Task - Creating Hypertext & Hypermedia

Ikebana

Ikebana ("arranged flower") is the Japanese art of flower arrangement, also known as kadō ("way of flowers").

More than simply putting flowers in a container, ikebana is a disciplined art form in which nature and humanity are brought together. Contrary to the idea of floral arrangement as a collection of particolored or multicolored arrangement of blooms, ikebana often emphasizes other areas of the plant, such as its stems and leaves, and draws emphasis toward shape, line, form. Though ikebana is a creative expression, it has certain rules governing its form. The main rule is that all the elements used in construction must be organic, be they branches, leaves, grasses, or flowers. The artist's intention behind each arrangement is shown through a piece's color combinations, natural shapes, graceful lines, and the usually implied meaning of the arrangement.

Another aspect present in ikebana is its employment of minimalism. That is, an arrangement may consist of only a minimal number of blooms interspersed among stalks and leaves. The structure of a Japanese flower arrangement is based on a scalene triangle delineated by three main points, usually twigs, considered in some schools to symbolize heaven, earth, and man and in others sun, moon, love and earth. The container is a key element of the composition, and various styles of pottery may be used in their construction.

Task 2

Task:
1. Choose a journal article on the use of technology in second or foreign language teaching and learning preferably an online article. The article must be from the year 2002 onwards.
2. Write a review on the article you have chosen and post it on your blog.

Title: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Computer Technology in Second Language Acquisition

Journal: National Journal for Publishing and Mentoring Doctoral Student Research

Volume: Volume 3 Number 1

Year: 2006

Author(s):

• Cheng-Chieh Lai - PhD Student in Educational Leadership, Prairie View A&M University, College of Education
• William Allan Kritsonis - PhD Professor, PhD Program in Educational Leadership, Prairie View A&M University, Member of the Texas A&M University System

Link: Derived from HERE.

Summary

The major ideas that the author wants to point out is pretty clear as stated in the title of the article; that there are advantages and disadvantages when it comes to using computer technology in the second language classroom. Some of the major advantages comprises of the fact that currently computer technology can provide a lot of fun games and communicative activities, reduce the learning stresses and anxieties, and provide repeated lessons as often as necessary. Those abilities will promote second language learners’ learning motivation. Another important point of advantage of computer technology is that through various communicative and interactive activities, computer technology can help second language learners strengthen their linguistic skills, affect their learning attitude, and build their self-instruction strategies and self-confidence.

The disadvantages on the other hand comprised of four major points as stated in the article. First, it will increase educational costs and harm the equity of education. This will cause unfair educational conditions for those poor schools and students. Second, most teachers today do not have sufficient technological training to guide their students exploring computer and its assisted language learning programs. Therefore, how will the teachers be able to educate the students appropriately if the teachers themselves are not aware of what they have to do? Third, the software of computer assisted language learning programs is still imperfect as most of the coursewares today deal with reading, listening, and writing skills. Fourth, computers cannot handle unexpected situations. This is due to the limitations of computer’s artificial intelligence, computer technology is unable to deal with learners’ unexpected learning problems and response to learners’ question immediately as teachers do.


Personal Reaction

In my opinion, I do overall agree with the author's views of the advantages and disadvantages aspects of using technology in the SLA classroom. The world is moving fast-forward to a technology-savvy era where children and teenagers nowadays are familiar with gadgets and the World Wide Web. I myself experience these type of teenagers during my practicum. Everyday, I will be able to hear them talking about their MySpaces, their blogs and their handphones. It seems so long ago the days that students would just sit around gossiping behind their teacher's backs. It is not really surprising as we face technology everyday. However, it is a sad fact that to incorporate technology into today's teaching is not that easy as pointed out by the disadvantages mentioned in the article.

I have experienced first-hand the trouble of going through the process of implementing technology in my teaching during my practicum where I wanted to utilize a courseware to teach literature to my students. Some of the problems I faced were the fact that the Computer Room needed to be booked as early as possible, without the guarantee that the computers are all functioning well. This led me to use the science labs where each lab was equipped with a projector for me to show the students the content of the courseware. However, this was not a first hand experience for them as they only sat there to watch and listen. It would have been more interesting for them if they were to play around with the courseware on their own. Coursewares like so would be very interesting for students and would motivate them to learn in a fun way. This is due to the fact that it would be a nice break from the usual chalk-and-talk teaching method that they usually face. Appropriate coursewares are highly recommended for teaching but should be assisted with proper guidance by the teacher just in case they may face any problems.

CALL Blog Entry 1

1. Why do you think evaluation of CALL courseware, websites, materials etc important?

I believe that such evaluation are important because it helps us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the coursewares, websites, materials etc. This is important especially for those who will be professionally involved in teaching one day as such items should be evaluated thoroughly before being utilized or presented in the classroom before their students.

If such items are not evaluated thoroughly, it may lead to improper conduct by the students, or the content may be misleading or inappropriate for the student's level of proficiency. The content may also be too mature or immature for whatever age the students you are targeting on utilizing the items on.

The authenticity of the items also play a major role as to avoid the items to cause onfusion or misunderstanding among the students. The authenticity can only be verified once you thoroughly evaluate the items. Therefore, for these reasons, it is understandable why evaluation of coursewares, websites, materials etc are important.


2. How do you think Hot Potatoes JCloze may help your students learn English?

I first learnt of Hot Potatoes during this semester, and I wished how I have found out more about it earlier as in before my practicum. There are a lot of things in this semester I wish I had known earlier.

Well, firstly, JCloze is a gap-filling exercise where the students will have to fill in the blanks of a passage which have random blanks. I have always approved of gap-filling exercises because I believed that it helps to generate creative and critical thinking skills among the students. Sometimes the gap could have multiple answers so it provides students an opportunity to think up a variety of correct answers for the gaps.

However, in the prospect of Hot Potatoes, I believe that this software helps to make it even more interesting, fun, and challenging for the students. The benefit of Hot Potatoes is that you can provide hints for them to facilitate the students in figuring out the answers. I find this a very appealing aspect of it. And no doubt, students are always excited in using computers, no matter for what reason they are using it for, especially when it comes to learning as it gives them a change of the usual scenario of sitting in the classroom facing the whiteboard one whole day.

I like how for Hot Potatoes's JCloze, you can customize the cloze passage to make it lok more appealing to the students and o suit the topic or theme you are focusing on. This can help to increase the students' interests in completing the exercise.

Electronic Worksheet (In Class Task 2)

I have designed an electronic worksheet on English Language Grammar where the students have to categorize the jumble of words into Nouns, Adjectives and Verbs by cutting and pasting the words into the boxes.

Click Photo for Larger view

Introduction

My name is Najwa Hanani Kopli and I am from U8B in Bacherlor’s Degree TESL. I was born on 14th March 1987 and hail from the land of hornbills; Kuching, Sarawak.

My knowledge in computers are adequate enough for me to understand certain problem areas of computers, so I would say thatg I am quite a computer savvy person. I am rarely offline and is constantly up to something in the world wide web. I like being up to date with the current softwares (especially the free ones and computer protection programs) and also media sharing/downloads. I am a blogger (though there will be rare updates now that the semester has started) and is constantly updating my layout and widgets, so I have meddled with some html stuff before. It took a lot of practice and trial and error, but I did learn a lot from it. Most of the editing are learnt online, through google search and blogger help.

For my knowledge on computer software, I am not that efficient in that particular area as most of my software are free. Though i do choose the softwares that I use based on user reviews. Softwares that I download are usually for photo editing as I am really into photography and need good softwares for photo-editing. I am not a huge fan of Photoshop as the software is quite heavy and lags my laptop so I have a few free softwares that does the job for me juat as impressive as Photoshop. I am also quite a gamer so I do have computer games that keep me entertained but I have purchased a handheld game console last year as I want to reduce my usage of my computer for playing games. For hardware, i know that certain hardwares would improve my computer; for example, i updated my computer RAM from 512MB to 1GB to improve the speed. I also have purchased an external harddisk to compensate my massive downloads.

Online learning, as mentioned before, I experienced when I did some massive editing on my blogger template's html, thus being quite an amateur in the html-editing area, I went online to search for tips on editing html. For proper education, no, not really.

I did try to incorporate technology into my practicum by teaching 'The Sound Machine' via showing a video that I found from YouTube, acted by American students. The students found it entertaining and was new to the prospect of learning that way. They were able to identify and differentiate between the movie and the short story. In my opinion it was quite a hit with my students.

In my opinion, computer/technology should be incorporated in language teaching. Nowadays students have higher expectation when they walk into the classroom. The students todays are quite literate when it comes to computers and the world wide web. I remember how the students would be discussing about their blogs, their MySpaces and Facebooks. I remember my students asking me on the last day whether I had a blog or MySpace. When I told them that I used Facebook, apparently, the younge generation don't use Facebook. They use MySpace, because it is more hip, and you can edit the layout. Thus, I think that teachers nowadays should not only be inplemented good teaching skills, but also adequate knowledge of computer skills to enhance teaching.

My expectations from this course would be to gain more knowledge on computer usage, especially in terms of web designing skills and html editing. The last time we learnt about web designing was in Computer Literacy class in semester 1 if I'm not mistaken, and I enjoyed it very much. However since that was my first and last time using Microsoft Frontpage, I have become rusty and forgotten the tricks and trade of web designing. So I am hoping that i can refresh my knowledge on the area and gain more tipson the subject matter.