How can technology help teachers to create
online lessons and resources and also encourage learner autonomy?
Technology can be our best teacher’s aide
because there are many technology tools that can help us create online lessons,
assess our students’ performance, monitor and feedback our students’ progress
and also share and reflect on different topics on line. Therefore, the internet
and these technology tools can make our lives simpler and our classes more
interesting and meaningful to our students because we can use authentic and
interactive materials and resources. There is only one thing that we should
keep in mind, technology can help us a lot in the classroom, but it is the
teacher’s responsibility to learn and get familiar with the use of these tools
and also choose the most adequate technology tools according to the students’
needs and also have an emergency plan in case of technology failures.
Technology tools for creating a class, a survey or a class blog:
1) Nicenet http://www.nicenet.org/
2) A class blog: Blogger (http://www.blogger.com)
WordPress (http://wordpress.com/)
3) A survey using Google Docs (Using Google Forms to make a survey)
4) A class website or wiki on Google Sites (https://sites.google.com/site/ortesolwiki/)
Technology tools for creating exercises and tests
1) Tools for educators (http://www.toolsforeducators.com/)
2) Lanternfish (http://bogglesworldesl.com/)
3) Easy Test Maker (http://www.easytestmaker.com/default.aspx)
4) Hot Potatoes (http://hotpot.uvic.ca/) (technically-interesting-hot-potatoes-pages)
5) Crossword Puzzle Games (http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html)
6) Web Poster Wizard (http://poster.4teachers.org/)
8) Language Resource Centers (http://www.nflrc.org/?id=862)
Articles related to technology tools
Dear Juan,
ReplyDeleteIt is pleasure to comment on your blog. It is great. Your reflection on online tools for enhancing learning can be helpful even for the one who is naïve to ANVILL. Your description of ANVIL is vivid and graphic. I am happy to share with you that I have also created account in ANVILL and have recorded about how to write business letter. It’s amazing. There are so many things to explore in ANVILL, I hope I will be experimenting with them in the days yet to come. As you mentioned, ANVILL will be an effective tool for EFL teachers like us to enhance the oral and aural skills of our students. Through the tutorial and the post of Jeff I am excited to implement them in my class. I hope the voice board, group chats, quizzes, surveys, forums and blog will definitely transform our class from traditional to modern, from teacher centered to students centered and finally from dependent learning to independent learning.
In your reflection, you have encapsulated almost all the tools we have come to know in webskills course. Reading both your reflections, I can’t wait but to say “Webskills have given us veritable gems, we are lucky to be accoutered with them, we can now win the battle of teaching and learning.
Sitaram