Goodbye "Teaching English in the 21st Century"

The semester is over and it's time to say goodbye to this course.

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Great job everyone.

Final Week

I really like the idea of using QR codes in class. I think it is a great tool for using other technology in class. It links websites to a physical piece of paper. A teacher can prepare a worksheet, a listening segment, a video, an article and more online. Then if the teacher wants to give them for homework, all she has to do is make a QR code and give that to the students. 

This is an especially good idea because kids often lose the homework given to them between the school and their home. When it's online, they can't complain that their dog ate it! Kids backpacks are often way to heavy for them. Help ease their load by giving them online homework instead of schlepping a book back and forth. 

I think giving homework online through a QR code in addition to emailing it to them is a good idea. I think that the homework given has to be short and to the point. QR codes are aimed at phones. We can't expect anyone to read an entire article on a tiny screen. For that reason, I think it's a practical idea to email the homework to the students as well. 

An example of an activity might be to introduce the upcoming lesson through a short clip. I am teaching a lesson about Martin Luther King Jr. day. If this wasn't my avdaha massit, I might have asked the students to watch the speech "I have a Dream" prior to the lesson. I would handout slips of paper with the code on it that links to the speech and ask the students to watch the clip before the next lesson.

Week 10

Research Tools

There are really so many things out there that interest me. I'm the kind of person who can go to a museum and enjoy it. Museums are great because you can see the artifacts right in front of you and it makes the topic you are learning about much more tangible. The downside is that going to a museum is a whole ordeal, takes up a lot of time and in some cases not easy to get to if it's in another country.

Sweet Search  gives me a lot of what seems to be reliable information on any subject. It's a search engine with informative results but at the same time not academic.

The CIA (The Centeral Intelligence Agency) publishes a Wold Fact Book. For each country they write about everything, From the geography and the history,all the way to how many miles of paved runways there are. The information is organized well. I think this would be a great tool in researching the topic of countries aroung the world.

I think it can be interesting to have students compare modern coutries found in the link above with underdeveloped countries. UNPO (Unrepresented Nations and People Organization) can teach kids about those contries.  Aside from giving you the basc facts, and the history of the country, the website also writes about the current ssues that that specific contr is dealing with. I think it might give the students a broader view of the world when they see the two types of countries.