Student Responsibility

As you are probably aware, I am doing my ESL courses as blended courses this semester. It is going better than it might but it hasn't been real easy getting the students to this point.

One thing that I have really noticed is that this is forcing students to be more responsible. It has allowed me to see how I held their hands for way too long, I think. Now, they complete the assignments or they don't. It isn't like they can come to class and fake it; the forum post is there or it isn't. Also, they have to manage their time themselves. I am not doling the work out in bite-sized chunks -- although it is in bite-sized chunks on Moodle. But there are lots of different chunks out there at the same time. It is helping them learn to prioritize and juggle a number of tasks at once.

I hadn't really thought about this aspect of blended courses, but I am real happy about it.

Provocative Teaching

A friend of mine likes to say that teachers must be seductive. She means it in only the best way, of course: that we must draw our students into the subject matter, into learning itself. So when I read Kathy Sierra today, I understood where she was coming from when she said we should Be Provocative.

Kathy, as always, has some great ideas. If we want to be provocative, she thinks we should:

* Be Visual
* Be Different--Break Patterns and Expectations
* Change Things Regularly
* Inspire Curiosity
* Pose a Challenge
* Be Fun

There is nothing really shocking or new on the list. It actually just sounds like good teaching practice, to me. But how often do I really do these things? Something to think about...

A neat little tool

Thanks to Darren, I discovered Folder Marker. It's a nifty little program that lets you change to color of your folder or your folder icons. Now, that may not seem like much, but I have a tendency to have a million folders in My Documents, and this really makes it easier for me to see at a glance what I have where.

If you are a pack rat like me, you might want to check it out!

Up and running wirelessly in Ubuntu

After installing Ubuntu a few weeks ago, I have had nothing but problems computer-wise. They had nothing to do with Ubuntu - just bad luck on my part. I ended up having to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows (where the problem occurred) a week ago. I decided to reinstall Ubuntu today, and I made up my mind I would get the wireless running. Well, to make a long story short, I am working in Ubuntu and am connected wirelessly. Hurrah! I was beginning to doubt it would ever happen, but it did. So now I can explore Ubuntu more and, hopefully, get to the point where I can get rid of Windows entirely. But for now, I am happy just to be where I am!

Off and running again

Well, the semester is off and running again, and I hope my blogging is, too.

I am teaching two courses half online and half face-to-face this semester. They account for a total of 16 hours of instruction each week. It has been interesting to see the students adapt to this new structure. They think they are working twice as hard because of all the things to do on Moodle, but they don't see that they have 4 hours of "class time" to do it in! Guess that means they are normal students, doesn't it? There is going to be a period of adjustment, but I think this is going to end up being a better way to do the courses. We'll see, though.

In addition to teaching three courses and sitting in on a math class my advanced students are taking, I am also taking a course this semester. It is on language and literacy. We just read a book by Mike Rose called Lives on the Boundary. Rose believes strongly in the importance of the individual, of the human being in the educational process. It's an excellent book and an easy read.

Well, I think anyone who reads this for their patience. I hope to be around a lot more regularly again!

Alive and well and swamped

In case anyone noticed, I have been a little more absent than usual lately. Call it the last minute push to get ready for the semester, teaching courses I have taught before but with materials that were brand new to me. Then imagine, the day before classes are to start, discovering you have to scrap most of that and start all over again. That has been the story of the last couple weeks of my life.

I will be back once I am more than a couple days ahead of the students!

Writely is open again!

Thanks to a post over at Assorted Stuff, I learned that Writely is open for new users again. A quick glance at it didn't show up anything that looked different from its pre-Google days. If you haven't' checked Writely out before, now would be a good time!

Fall, 2006

At the present time I am not planning to have my students blog this semester. I have mixed feelings about it. I think it would be cool to have a successful blogging project with my students, but I don't know that I have really had one.

I know a lot of it is that I never quite got the blogging assignments right. For this semester I think I have decent assignments. One is even "stolen" from The Year of the Hangman Book Blog. So why not do it as a blog myself? I don't know.

This semester I am focusing on using Moodle more. What would have been blog assignments will be discussion forum assignments. I hope that once my students become more accustomed to writing online on a regular basis and get the idea of commenting on each others' posts to the forum, they will have an easier transition to blogging. I also want them to take their online writing more seriously and do a better job of it.

Am I giving up too soon? Making excuses? Making a mistake?

I think that I am in some ways. And I am disappointed in myself.

Switching to Ubuntu

My husband has used Linux for a number of years and Ubuntu for the last couple. I have always said I wanted to do the same, but there was always some restriction on that -- like, I'll do it when the warranty on my computer runs out or when the semester is over or something. Well, I finally took the leap last weekend. Actually, I am dual booting Ubuntu and Windows until I get my wireless card working in Ubuntu. (I have one of those cards that doesn't like to work with Linux, but many people have gotten it to work, so it is just a question of time before I get it going.)

So what? Why post about this at all? This morning I was reading Miguel Guhlin's blog this morning and came across this post. Richard Stallman's comment, which forms the basis of Miguel's post, really made me think.

I have a long way to go before I reach that level of putting my money where my mouth is, I'm afraid. These little reminders are good for me!

Remember Pearlington

The Blogathon for Pearlington is underway. Check it out!

As we approach the one year anniversary of Katrina, there is much to be grateful for but also much to regret. Our 87 year old friend finally was able to move back into her condo 10 days ago. In the 11 months since the storm, she had lived in Illinois, Florida, 2 apartments in the New Orleans area, and her daughter's house here in St. Tammany Parish after she gave notice at her last apartment and then found she couldn't move into the condo yet -- despite promises to the contrary. She is one of the lucky ones; she has financial resources. Others are in much less pleasant circumstances.

If you haven't yet, please donate money or time or effort for Pearlington or anywhere else along the Gulf Coast that was hit by and still struggles with the effects of Katrina.

Test your personality

Haven't done any online tests lately, so when I ran across a couple on Miguel's site, I had to try them. I won't tell you which President I am most like because I refuse to believe it. But my personality came up just as I expected it to: I am a Nurturer.

You Are An ISFJ

The Nurturer You have a strong need to belong, and you very loyal. A good listener, you excell at helping others in practical ways. In your spare time, you enjoy engaging your senses through art, cooking, and music. You find it easy to be devoted to one person, who you do special things for. You would make a good interior designer, chef, or child psychologist.

What's Your Personality Type?

Actually, this is interesting because last semester I sat in on a Psychology class with my students, and we did official personality tests and I came up with the same type.

Advice on wikis, please!

I am going to be using a wiki this fall. It is a new venture for me. It seems like it will be easy, but I am afraid I might be kidding myself. I want to use the wiki well, and I am not sure what I need to know or remember. Any suggestions?

In one class students will be reading a variety of material about the Civil War. I want them to post it to the wiki so the information that each gathers from individual reading will be available to all. In this case I guess I am using it for notetaking. Students will be able to get information from it to complete their final project: a "magazine" about the Civil War from the point of view of either the North or the South, depending on which group they are in. While students will be put in North/South groups about halfway through the unit, they will do initial readings about both the North and the South.

In another class, a writing class, we are going to be looking at famous documents and speeches from US history and then writing about them. I am basing this course loosely on an MIT Open Courseware course called American Classics. I am not exactly sure how I will be using the wiki with this class, but I imagine it will be for notetaking, too.

I am excited about this, but I am not sure how it is going to work. My initial blogging attempts were less than successful, and I hope to do better with wikis. I appreciate any help anyone might be able and willing to offer.

Blogathon for Katrina Relief

Joanna and Sharon have a great idea for raising money to help Pearlington, Mississippi recover from Katrina. They are going to be blogging for 24 hours. And you are invited to help by blogging or donating money or both. Check it out here.

Choosing literature for ESL

I am in the process of getting ready to write the final paper for a course I am taking this summer on young adult literature. I think I want to write it on evaluating YA lit for use in college level ESL classes. So I am sending out a plea to those of you who teach ESL at the college level or teach adults in other settings: Have you ever used YA lit with your adult students? How did you decide which books to use? How were the books received by the students? What books would you recommend and why?

If you don't teach adults but are an adult yourself, have you ever read YA literature? Why? What was your reaction to the book?

If you teach young adults, which books that you use with your students do you think would be appropriate to use with adults?

I really appreciate any insights you might be able to give me. Thanks!

The best of times and the worst of times

Seeing your name in Stephen Downes' Old Daily definitely qualifies as a high point! I was shocked, to say the least, to see that he was referencing a post by Jo McLeay about my Creative Commons license post.

But why, oh why did I forget to run spell check on the post that was going to be seen by lots more people than usual?

Writing with online word processors

I am writing an article on online word processors for my state LaTESOL newsletter, and I decided to check out some of the features of Writely that I hadn't played with before. Posting to my blog is one of them. I am anxious to see how this works.

If you have ever used Writely, ThinkFree, Zoho Writer or Writeboard, I would love to hear your experiences.

I am not really sure why I would want to write my posts in an online word processor and then post them to my blog. I am not sure I see the reason for the extra step. But for people who work and rework their posts (like Miguel) I guess I can see it.

These tools are more important to me as another way for writers to collaborate. If we're not connecting with them, what's the point?

Just a thought

Reading Stephen Downes Half an Hour, I came across this line that I just wanted to share.

You cannot incite a revolution. You have to be the revolution. There is no other way.

What else is there to say?

Copyright issues

Jim over at Blogging Pedagogy has a post about selling course materials and comments on the fact that he has added a Creative Commons license to the blog. This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. I can't believe that something I have written is copyrighted just because I have written it. But it is. I can't find the sites where I originally read about it, but Wikipedia has an article about it here.

Anyway, I decided to add a Creative Commons license to this blog. Not because I am worried about anyone stealing anything they find here but rather because I want to make a statement. I believe in Creative Commons licensing. I believe in sharing our thoughts and ideas and our words.

As far as I am concerned, this license doesn't change anything here on the blog. But I want to make it official.

Grammar with a little help from some Legos

Dennis Jerz has created a presentation unlike any I have ever thought of doing: active and passive sentences with a little help from a Lego man! Check it out here on his blog!

A cool resource

I have just been playing around with a cool resource at ESL Activities.com - a BINGO card maker for vocabulary words. You can insert up to 25 words and their definitions and it will create the cards and allow you to print the BINGO cards, print flashcards with the words and their meanings, and print a call card for the instructor to use. You can print from 1-99 BINGO cards, and the words are scrambled so they are not in the same position on all the cards.

Now, most of you may not be interested in this, but it will be really great for those of you who could use it. Check it out! They also have a crossword generator, but I haven't checked it out yet.