Chat with the Croatian Students

Last session we had terrible news, that the croatian student's leave us forever. I was interested to see how it would work chating with people from an another country in class. They had some problems and they can't go on with the project, that's sad. I think it is not really working as I imagine. Sometimes it doesn't work as we expect.Because the truth is, that I didn't recieve answer from my correspondent croatian student. I had to share the same with Christine and to her she wrote. I also didn't recieve feedback from my colleagues.

Lesson Plans

When we did the lesson plans, I couldn't think of creative stuff to do and was always thinking that it would be to hard for them to understand. But we have to think that nowadays everything is different as we learn it. Young people now already more as we do. So why should we underestimate them? I think if we give them difficult tasks it is a challenge for them, of course it depends on the class. But when I saw other lesson plans they had so good ideas, that i would definitley use in class but I would put in other order. How could we use moddle for the lesson plans?

Tadpole's Promise

I found it really interesting working directly with a story in class and discussing it. I don't have the possibility to do this kind of media course in my country, so I think it is very important for me. But there are so may tasks for one lesson that I don't follow so good. In the future, I will analyse good the stories that I choose and think about several tasks that we could do with it.

Different possibilities of using blogs

The three different possibilities of using blogs in the TEFL classroom are: the tutor, the learner and class blog.
The Tutor blog that is run by the tutor for the learners that means with his supervision. The learners can read it every day, to see English websites and to comment the weblogs from others to encourage them to write more or to ask simple questions each other. In this blog the tutor can also put some extra information about homeworks and links for self-study.
The Learners blog are run by individual learners themselves or by small collaborative groups of learners. They can post thoughts and comment posts from others or even finding links in English. The important thing is that they practice the writing skills.
The class blog as the name impliesis that an entire class is involved, by posting thoughts, messages, images, links. This blog can also be a conversation-based classes, facilities project-based language learning and also as a virtual space for an international classroom language exchange for reading and writing classes.

Which of these functions do you consider relevant for your future teaching environment and why?
As we know all these functions are very important, so all are relevant for my future teaching environment, because new media is becoming essential to the daily routine and you learn to deal with it earlier and earlier. Personally, I am not very experienced with blogs, as you see. Therefore I had no idea what were the different possibilities to use blogs in class. I think the most relevant function would depend what class I would be teaching. But maybe I would use more the class blog type, because the entire class is involved and it is like a free-form board for learners to post messages, images and links related to classroom discussion topics. It also develop research and writing skills by being asked to create an online resource for others and the most interesting is the blog as a virtual space for an international classroom language exchange. If I would teach the primary school I would use the tutor blog type to be a more daily reading practice for the learners.

What (additional) ideas do you have for the use of blogs in TEFL classroom?
First I would suggest using it a way to know each other better, by introducing themselves and then using it like an online portfolio. I thought also about the using the blog as a class journal, where everyone would write a part for a comical text, replacing the words for images draw by them selves. This could be also done with the primary.

Experiences with new media

My school experience with new media was really poor. In school i really don't remember anything that we did with the computer, but in the university the teacher used to show movies and power point presentations. My expectations of this seminar are to get plenty of ideas on how new media can be used in the classroom but before I want to become more confident in terms of using new media. I think the teacher from today should be aware of the students interests. I didn't had the chance to deal with new media in my school when I learnt, so I think that the use of new media makes foreign language classroom and lessons in general more interesting, motivating and fun for both parts students and teacher.

Myself

Hello,
My name is Melanie and I'm from Portugal, but I'm here with the ERASMUS - Programm for one Semester. I'm studying English and German to became a Teacher. This is not my first time doing ERASMUS, I was already once in Germany (Bochum) one year and England (Manchester)one semester. I think it is important to learn more about the languages that you will teach in the future and what's better then living there for a while?That's why I can say I travel a lot, I like to know different cultures, places and people. That's why I studied in Germany and England to improve the language. I don't want to be teacher in Portugal, because there aren't anymore job for us. Maybe travelling around, my next country would be Spain and try there my luck.
It is always hard to say what kind of hobbies I have, because I don't do sports regulary and I don't play an instrument. I love to collect Postcards and I already have more than 1000. I like to go to the cinema, hanging around with some friends, going to the beach, shopping, learning new languages and travel. My aim is to visit every German speaking country and English speaking country, but there are so many, so at least USA.