Calendar

Hello there,

I believe we should come up with a list of activities and set the deadlines for the students to do them. How can we do such a thing? I thought of giving students 1 week or maybe a week and a half to do each one of the tasks. Among these tasks, we can include their introductions, cultural aspects, projects and sharing of discoveries.

I believe we could start with their introduction, which could be done (in my opinion) through a Glogster, a voicethread, a Youtube video, or a blog post. What do you think? We can ask students to make comments on someone's wall from a different country on the NING as well.

After this stage, we can move on to the cultural discussions (one or two weeks per topic). We can ask students to choose two or three different countries and create a presentation (or simply write about these differences) and share it with everybody else.

What do you guys think of this?

Henrick

Mary: Hi Henrick! This plan looks great to me but I'm a bit concerned about deadlines. I'm not sure we'll be able to meet them since my colleagues and sts are not that much into technology. It'll take some time to get them into the project. Do you think we could have some flexibility with deadlines? Besides, I was wondering how we're going to get around the "problem" of being in different parts of the world, with different schedules. In my case, for example, we haven't started the school year yet. Sorry if this issue has already been tackled!

Bea (my name seems to be monolingual again): It's alright, Mary, the issue has been tackled but not solved. I think we all agree that the real aim for the deadlines is to have a framework but some flexibility is expected (on my part at least). I also think it's something we'll need to discuss further. (I think we touched on the subject in the Issues page). I talked to Brian today and he told me about "wallwisher", which seems to me a nice way to handle preliminary introductions (I'll add the link to the Diigo group). Has anyone used it? What do you think? Mary: love the idea of wallwisher! It sounds ideal for introductions. Also, we could have another with links to whatever artifacts sts produce. Here's a link to Nick Peachey's post: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2009/04/using-online-sticky-noticeboards.html (Thanks for the link!!) Henrick: I like the idea of wallwisher, but I'd rather give students at least 2 options to choose from as recommended tools - in my view, they should feel free to use anything they might want to. Perhaps we could have this introduction with Wallwisher, Glogster and Voki. What do you think? (Also, check out this voicethread from @http://eflclassroom.ning.com/ (I've asked permission to the creator to show it only a few minutes ago but basically it's listening and repeating, for your name, location, etc (short&sweet). Maybe we could have a couple of these in different languages so we can all have a go at a foreign language and get to know some basic info about everyone?) Regarding deadlines and, in particular, breaking the work up into semesters, Soaad suggested something I like very much, which is calling it a workshop -the same structure we were thinking, but with a name that has a different ring. I think Brian was OK with it too. What do you think?  Mary: Nice!  Henrick: It seems to me that's a good solution to have it as an ongoing project. :) As for the deadlines, I still believe they're important to motivate learners to do things they are supposed to do. It's much better to tell them "you have 2 weeks to finish this" than simply telling them "do what you can, when you can, and then we'll move on".

I think this is something we could discuss more in depth when we meet, together with what each of us pictures when we say tasks, instructions and questions.

Here's a list of topics for us to get students to discuss. Now we have to come up with the right questions to engage our learners.


 * 1) Food Some ideas: What are the typical dishes of your country? Where/ What time do you usually have your meals? Do you eat a lot of junk food? I like the ideas! How do you see them implemented? As questions in a discussion, prompts for a Glogster or some other aritfact...? I was also thinking of a guessing game where we show parts of typical food & drink and sts need to guess what and where from . You got me thinking Bea :-) I'm not sure about this, but perhaps we could use a combination of what you suggest, because we need to appeal to different age groups. What do you think? About what sts can do, I've just remembered this publishing tool: http://issuu.com/ I once used it to showcase sts' writing and they loved it . Issu is a nice tool indeed, but that could be used as a tool for students to display everything they've done by the time they're leaving the project. I think we can use the TASKS tab on the Ning to ask them the questions, make the suggestions of which tools to use, and then see how it goes. They'd have freedom to choose what they want to use and we can monitor and help. (I'm moving this to the discussion section because I think we might be getting close to cluttering the page and lose track of comments. I hope it's OK -although it's kind of nice to have such a colourful page, too!! :-)
 * 2) Music
 * TV
 * 1) Internet usage
 * 2) Popular Travelling destinations
 * 3) Celebrations and holidays
 * 4) Sports
 * 5) Hobbies
 * 6) School
 * 7) Pets
 * 8) Dreams for the future
 * 9) Fashion
 * 10) Weather / Climate
 * 11) Favorite movie or book ( let them tell us about it, for intermediate levels or upper)
 * 12) Education
 * 13) Technology ( cell phones, Satellite, Internet ) in your country
 * 14) Superstitions
 * 15) Transportation - soaad (Love the topics -thanks! -Bea)
 * 16) Traditional food -Svetlana (yes!!!! Bea)

Each topic could be discussed over a period of one week and students could be taught how to use certain tools during each week. For the first 2 weeks, we could get students to introduce themselves (week 1) and greet someone from a different country (week 2).

Bea: One of the features of the Ning is the Events tab, and Soaad suggested having live sessions sometimes, which I think is a great idea (I'll add a list of virtual classrooms to the Diigo group). Brian added that perhaps we could also have recorded ones made especially for the project. Svetlana had an idea I like a lot and I think would make a very nice product to have at the end of the workshop, which is an ABC of (cultural) realia. It could be prepared during the workshop and then at the end, each class/student would have a copy of their multicultural ABC. (I hope I've explained it well, Svetlana -just delete it or amend it if not). Do you think this is something that would work with your students? Svetlana: Hello, everyone. Hope I'm in the right place at last. Thank you, Bea, for introducing the ABC project. The idea with the ABC may be used as a framework for the final project outcome. As I see it, each letter entry can contain a text, powerpoint, video, audio, etc. connected with the realia which starts with this letter. What do you say? I agree that sts should be given timeframe. And I like the idea of the Showcase where they can embed their works and comment on them.

Bea: Hi Svetlana!! Good to see you here at last too! I love the ideas for the entries. Look forward to the meeting tomorrow