Knowing our students

Carlos Pacheco Diaz
(Elementary English teacher in Chile)

1)Description of the class background
The students belong to a low social class, most of them do not have economic resourses enough to pay for a private school, they do not have any special expectation in terms of professional training, some of them do not have interest about continuing higher level of education though (college) and work hard to do so, but they do not represent the majority.

2)Student characterization
Javier Gozalez, is one of the best students in the class,he is a very shy boy, and very respectful about the rules of the school. Nevertheless, he can not cope with those students that practice "Bullying" though, this is why some classmates take advantage of this situation and I always have to deal with problems in the classroom, at the moment I am talking to these people who behave badly, and this is going to stop soon.

Analysis
Javier is a chilean student of a semi-particular school in Quillota, in the fifth region in Chile. San Pedro Nolasco is a catholic school where there are no foreign students like in the most schools in contrast to the USA reality.Here we can find the most common environment in this kind of institution, there are few troublemaking students that bully shy pupils but they are not the most. Javier wants to have a good performance in the school geting good grades, because of that he is seen as a boring and silly person due to he spends a lot of time studying.This situation can be explained because of the envy of his classmates or the perception of being a good student. Javier will need to develop his social skills because he not only needs goods grades but also company.On the other hand, the rest of the students need to change their behavior step by step because the family plays an important role in their education.

My activity using tech

Here we have an example of my activity using a ppt presentation,

The following example gives an alternative to traditional instruction.

American schools reality in contrast to chilean ones

Schools in Bridgeport and Brewster

I found that there is a wide gap between chilean and american schools. First, it is important to point out that public education is totally free in US but in Chile you have to pay anyway according to your economic resources, also, environment classrooms are drastically different due to american teachers have the chance to have their own resources and at the same time create a source of knowledge where students can learn by themselves or assisted by a para-professional, however, chilean teachers have to face another reality because they have to change into a different room for every class, so that condition don´t let them personalize each schoolroom owing to each one is used by several teachers depending on their area of education.
I think that we need to change our performance in schools against all the factors that we can´t manage because the students lives are in our hands, because of that i consider very important our disposition to face all those problems that happen in our educational system.

Seattle trip...

I´m sure that have visited Seattle was a great experience for all of us because there are too many interesting places to know that you will never have enough time to know everything.We walked 12 hours so we could see how big Seattle is, in terms of culture and lifestyle.We could see how different people are in contrast with smaller cities.There were lots of cheap stores but the most amazing was to know the Space Needle due to you can see all the city, the ocean, and the beauty of Seattle.On the other hand, nightlife was great because you have different alternatives to have fun and enjoy dancing freely.
I woul like to come back to Seattle but with enough money to live there...(It was a joke)
Here you have some photos of this excellent experience...

Podcasting

1.Podcasts for me as a prospective teacher

Podcast Alley is the podcast lovers portal. Featuring the best Podcast Directory and the Top 10 podcasts, as voted on by the listeners.

http://www.podcastalley.com/index.php

2.Podcasts for your students

Ask questions, get answers, practice your English, all free.

http://www.betteratenglish.com/category/levels/intermediate/

3.Podcasts to learn Spanish

Trying to Learn Spanish Web Site A blog and podcast about "Trying to Learn Spanish". A discussion of many of the resources available. Comments and reviews on immersion language schools, tapes and CDs to learn Spanish, grammer books, websites, podcasts, Internet radio and more. To automatically download with your RSS downloader set feed to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TryingToLearnSpanishPodcast

4.Create a podcasts

I would like to create podcasts about computer games using English to teach to my students.

Homework

Call
Good: http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/ (Learning English Online)
Here you can find challenging tests to take in a good environment and according to the level of each student.
Bad: http://www.smic.be/smic5022/exercisesgrammar.htm(English Exercises Online)
This webpage has good exercises but doesn´t give a eye-catching presentation to children in order that they feel motivated to develop their homework.

CMC
Good: http://sharedtalk.com/ (Your language exchange network)
This is one of the best website on the net because here you can create an e-mail account,chat,voice-chat,and mainly share your interests learning a second language with lot of people around the world.
Bad: http://www.chatlanguageservices.com/
You don´t have a big amount of people to chat and several alternatives to find people with common purposes.

DRILL AND PRACTICE

Good: http://www.english-online.org.uk/ (English for everybody)
Everybody can learn english, that´s true, because of that there is a space where your purposes are pointed out to get what you want in pedagogycal terms.
Bad: http://www.englishpractice.com/newweb/html/index_home.asp (Education group)
Its a great page in terms of learning quality, however, it doesn´t have a place where children and adolescents can learn and practice english because this site is focus only on adults.

CONCERNS WITH COMPUTERIZED ADAPTIVE ORAL PROFICIENCY ASSESSMENT

A Commentary on "Comparing Examinee Attitudes Toward Computer-Assisted and Other Oral
Proficient Assessments" by Dorry Kenyon and Valerie Malabonga
John M. Norris
University of Hawai`i at Manoa

Language Learning & Technology May 2001, Vol. 5, Num. 2
http://llt.msu.edu/vol5num2/norris/default.html
pp. 99-105

Summary

The relevant advantages given by technology to our society not only in educational instruction but also in assessment show us how to improve our teaching. In this article by John Norris was developed some concerns about the computarized adaptive oral proficiency assessment and the evaluation of CBTs, Computer-Based Tests like SOPI and COPI being this last one the best evaluated according to Norris who considered important the followings characteristics:
COPI gives to the CBTs technical innovations like the change of audio formats to digital one that let us work on instant repetitions, listening parts, particular segments or the whole of a track.
It lets to examinees control their time used in planning and responding tasks to improve their oral performance.
COPI is more efficient on administration and scores because it introduces technology to catch affectiveness in the response time according to the topic .
It uses an algorithm for the selection of the test items.
Lets the examenee choose his/her level for tasks

Although it is very difficult to score speaking performances through computer-based tests because it is not clear if they do what teachers want to assess, we have to consider the improvements that they give us and focus on our specific purposes and under what circunstances we should use them to fulfil our pedagogycal expectations.


Comments

Students need to develop their skills through technology and that situation implies a better teachers preparation, because of that its is important to learn about these technological advantages that make us easier to obtain our aims. Speaking tests usually are hard to evaluate because there is not enough time to all our students, affectiveness can change the results and teachers coud be subjective according to their feelings.
Finally, teachers need to make a good use of technology because our education demands a change in our culture because of globalization in order to get a better society.