Internet in the Classroom

My name is Aaron and I am excited to be pursuing my Master of Education in Instructional Systems — Educational Technology.

Here is a picture of me at the beach in Greece: Me at a beach in Greece.

I am interested in the integration of educational technology into second language classrooms (both in-person classrooms, as well as virtual classrooms). Within this, I am interested in how communities form and work with learning. In addition, I am currently studying digital stories in EFL (as inspired by a class from PSU).

I currently live in Brno, Czech Republic, where I teach at the Faculty of Education of Masaryk University. Brno is a nice city: not too big and not too small. The public transportation is great and gets me everywhere I need to go, and they have some nice theaters and sports and such.

At the Faculty of Education, I am a foreign lecturer (though I only teach seminars) and also the Head of the Practical Language Section. I teach classes on English (the practical language part), both in-person and online. We have a rather large department for the faculty, and one online course we teach has reached up to 3,500 students in a single semester. Most of the day students we teach are college-aged (19 - 25), but we also teach extension programs for adults. The main program is 3 years for a bachelor's degree plus 2 more for a master's.

In addition to practical language classes, I teach writing and drama courses. In the drama course we write a play one semester and perform it the second. In most of the courses I teach, I try to incorporate a variety of formats, though more and more seems to be shifting online with more projects, both group and individual. So some classes are entirely online, while half of the practical language classes are taught in a room with computers for each student (even though this is usually a very bad layout for a language class, because the computers interrupt the ability to talk) and the other half have one computer connected to the Internet and with a projector.

For my computing needs, I generally prefer open source solutions, so I have Ubuntu Linux installed on this computer. Unfortunately, the computer I have is not as open as I would like, and I have some problems with Ubuntu, so I use Windows just as often (and it is what I use at work).

Below you will see a list of other assignments from this course.

Classification Scheme

A picture of my category system

Here is my category scheme, the picture of which was created using the Visual Understanding Environment. It might seem a bit complicated, but I think this works for my way of thinking. The two main categories of Topic and Use are at the top along with the additional topic of Working. Topic will be specific with each individual link. Use is further specified to four sub-categories: Professional Development, which includes Tools (Open Source and not), Networking, and Research (journal articles, etc.); Resources, such as images, sounds, video, and reading texts; Independent Activities; and Ideas for Lessons. The last two are divided based on my Learning Elements, which I've started to grow used to.

Instructional Blueprint - Limericks

Topic Limericks/Stress and Rhythm
Subject Area Practical Language
Audience/Grade Level Upper Intermediate and above university students
Purpose To try to familiarize students with stress and rhythm in English by using limericks and meter in poetry
Objectives Students will be able to identify stressed syllables. Students will be able to create their own limericks.
Learning Element Activity Description Method Used Web Resources
Frame Clear, Measurable Objectives Start by stating the objectives to students in a clear way - trying to work with stress and rhythm in English by identifying it in poetry. Present
Motivation Ask students to look at the first 10 poems with pictures and work together to identify similar characteristics between the poems. The pictures and nonsense rhymes serve to capture interest. Present, Collaborative http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/BoN/bon010.html
Shown Connections to Previously Learned Material Elicit from students structures of poems that they have studied in Introduction to Literature class. Focus of the differences between meter in Czech poems and English poems (e.g., based on syllables and stress. Active Learning, Guide
Elicit from students known rhymes. Focus on problematic sounds (e.g., ones that sound the same if read in a Czech way, but not in English). Active Learning, Guide
Shown Connections to Students' Lives Emphasize the use of stress and rhythm in English speach. Focus on reading poems out loud and over-stressing the stressed syllables to show how they appear. Present, Guide
Inform Content Presented in a Clear, Structured Manner After students have come up with their ideas of what makes the poems similar, ask them to share it as a class. Together come up with a list of what makes a limerick a limerick. Active Learning, Collaborative
After students have an understanding of the rules that go into limericks, have them visit the website to see how different words can be replaced for other phrases. They then share their ideas of what makes the phrases the same. Active Learning, Collaborative http://www.learner.org/teacherslab/math/patterns/limerick/limerick_acttxt.html
Clear Demonstrations/Modelling Ask students to browse through websites to find their favorite limericks, which they will then share with the rest of the class. Guide, Present http://www.math.fsu.edu/~mesterto/Unscramble/limericks.html
Have students visit the section of the website called Scrambled Limericks and put the limericks into the proper order Guide http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_lesson20.htm
Explore Guide the Students Together as a class try to use the elicited rhyming words to form a limerick. Guide, Collaborative
Inform Review What Was Learned Remind students of the important parts of limericks - stress, rhythm, syllables. Present
Try Allow Students to Perform Independently For homework (or if time in class), assign each student to create their own limericks. Problem Based, Active Learning

Instructional Blueprint - Narrative Tenses

Topic Using Past Tenses in Storytelling
Subject Area Practical Language
Audience/Grade Level Upper Intermediate and above university students
Purpose To get students completely familiar with the uses of past tenses in storytelling
Objectives Students will be able to use all tenses properly in telling a story. Students will be able to structure a story properly.
Learning Element Activity Description Method Used Web Resources
Frame Clear, Measurable Objectives Start by stating the objectives to students in a clear way - working with different tenses to form stories. Present
Motivation Tell a personal story to the class with vivid detail. Emphasize the use of various tenses. Present
Shown Connections to Previously Learned Material Elicit from students the various tenses and how they might be used. Guide
Shown Connections to Students' Lives Ask students to work in pairs and describe an interesting story that happened to them in the recent past. Collaborative
Inform Content Presented in a Clear, Structured Manner Have students go through the website reviewing the various uses of the tenses and conjunctions. Draw timelines on the board and ask students to fill them in. Guide, Active Learning http://www.vivquarry.com/wkshts/narrative.html
Have students go through the website and fill in the gaps with the correct tenses of the verbs.. Present, Active Learning http://vivquarry.com/wkshts/narrex1.html
Clear Demonstrations/Modelling Give students short stories to read with the tenses. They then memorize their story and do a similar activity as the Telephone Game, where they tell the story to a partner, who tells it to another, and so on. Active Learning
Explore Guide the Students Divide students into groups. Give each group 5 phrases that they must hide in a written story. As students write, circulate and try to assist with an emphasis on tenses. After finished, students read stories out loud and others try to guess what the phrases were. Collaborative, Role-Play
Have students go through the website and think about how to create a structured story. Present, Active Learning http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/course/course1/unit/shortstory.shtml
Inform Review What Was Learned Review timelines on board and other things learned in class. Present
Try Allow Students to Perform Independently For homework, assign each student to create their own stories. Problem Based, Active Learning

Policy Brief

The parts of the policy brief that will become an entire policy brief in the end.

Policy Brief 1 - Access, the Digital Divide, and Special Populations

Access to the Internet is an important issue to consider as a part of our departmental policy. Knowing that different students will have different abilities to access the Internet should affect how we go about designing out courses and department.

In order to make sure that our students are given equal opportunities in our courses, we must ensure that they are given equal access to the learning. There are a few considerations we need to take into account:

  • People of varying socioeconomic status will have varying access to the Internet;
  • Distance students will require more constant access to the Internet than full-time students;
  • Distance students are more likely to be working full time and thus have less time to access our classes;
  • Literacy has a different meaning with online materials and physical access alone isn't enough to compensate source;
  • Students will have varying experience with computers;
  • Our adult distance students will not be "digital natives" and so may feel less comfortable using computers and the Internet to learn;
  • Varying access will make it hard to require identical participation in classes.

In order to address these concerns, we should adopt a department-wide policy on what we require from our students in terms of Internet access. We should address how often they must be able to have access and for how many hours every week. We should standardize an idea of what will routinely be expected of them. We must provide support for those who are not as familiar with computers and may be lacking in digital literacy.

In sum, we must make clear our expectations of students, while providing necessary support to enable them to meet those expectations.