Welcome to the
"EFL Blogging School for Moldovan Teachers"
Project!
The project aims to train 25 Moldovan EFL teachers from the regions to integrate blogs in their teaching practice.
Quotes from Project Participants Ludmila Raciula “The EFL Blogging School Project gave me the possibility to look at things differently, to detach from the coursebook and bring more exciting things into the classroom. I think it is a very useful project, as it allows teachers to be updated with everything new that happens in the world of methodology. It teaches us how to reach out to our students and interest them. At the same time, it offers us the possibility to learn continuously and to feel students again. I love this feeling of being a student!”. Natalia Rață: ”The EFL Blogging School was a really useful and interesting project, as I learned to work in team. I understood that what was doing till then as a teacher was just a small part of what I could do. I understood that it is never too late to learn and to begin to be more active as an educator, which is why I started participating in other projects related to teaching English. To make students speak or read their thoughts online was very interesting. At the beginning they were scared and didn't want to post their digital essays, but then they liked it and some of them improved their communication skills while using these online tools.” Viorica Gaidar: ”This project inspired me for more achievements. I have learned that teaching is not making students learn, but sharing with them what you want them to know. This project opened new horizons for me as a teacher. My students liked the idea of using a class blog and even enjoyed every online assignment.” Voroniuc Nicoleta: “It is a wonderful and useful project. It improved my teaching and learning skills. When asking students for feedback, they mentioned that with class blogs the material could be covered more intensively and that blogs encouraged them to learn the topic before the lecture and build their own opinion first.” Emma Matreniuc: “For me the EFL Blogging School was a very profound learning experience. The flow of the entire course was very intense and rigorous, with everyday challenges and attractive activities. In addition to the online tools and methods we learned, another very important and memorable aspect was my personal admiration for the atmosphere of study created by the instructors, their tremendous professionalism and depth of knowledge, vivid and bright minds with such a high level of nobility, respect and intelligence every single moment was filled with. These factors actually made participants feel both needed and important, comfortable, eager to learn and continue this extremely difficult path of studying. The teaching methods used in the EFL Blogging School were extremely creative and involved a wide range of approaches, giving teachers the possibility to experiment with new things along with using the traditional ones. Students were generally happy, because of the novelty of proposed activities and the way of presenting the new material; they finally started to feel they worked in a team with their teacher. The introduced online tasks helped them to advance and be challenged every time they started “to interact” with English language. ” Cazacu Oxana: ”Being one of the EFL Blogging School participants was a a great experience, I liked it very much! I've learned how to turn from a traditional, boring, old fashioned teacher into a modern, active and flexible one. I learned about new methods of teaching, new ways to communicate, assess, evaluate, involve and motivate students to learn English interactively. My students were very curious when I introduced them to our class blog, though also a little frustrated about being appreciated by other visitors of the blog who could also see their online assignments. Despite this, they quickly got accustomed to using the class blog and started liking it.” Borta Natalia: ”Participating in the EFL Blogging School was time consuming but super!!! Everything included in the course syllabus was new for me. Each assignment was interesting and challenging. I learned a lot about online tools and how to use them at my lessons and the most important thing - I learned practical, hands on things. It motivated me more to continue teaching English. Some tasks seemed to be difficult to accomplish, but once you accomplished them, even after many attempts, it was so interesting and useful! My students were very happy to see something non traditional.They were waiting for me to post something new,and they were curious.” Aculov Rodica: ”I enjoyed working in this project as I have acquired a lot of useful information to enhance my way of teaching. I have learned how to motivate my students,how to be an up to date teacher and how to use online tools to develop student speaking, writing and reading skills in English. This project had a huge impact on my way of teaching. Now I can post something on my blog and then discuss it in my class. The blogging experience helped me see the results of flipped instruction, which was a new concept for me.” Veronica Cazacu: “The EFL Blogging School Project was a chance to improve my teaching abilities. I feel confident about integrating online tools into our curriculum. I learned so many important things. First of all I learned how to create a blog and how to make it friendly to my pupils. I know how to embed videos or other things that will motivate my students to study English. I came across such interesting facts like Project Based Learning or Flipped Classroom. I have the feeling that I can change the world now. My students were so proud to be the first in our school to work on a class blog.” Ecaterina Camenschi: “I think this project was very useful and it offered us the possibility to learn continuously and improve as language teachers. I have learnt how to use blogs and many interesting online tools in the process of teaching English and I consider that this project improved my teaching skills. Each week had something special to learn. I really liked to work with Voicethread, Movenote, Glogster, Padlet, Vocaroo, Voki. My pupils generally liked the idea, they were very curious and interested to work with blog and complete online assignments.” Victoria Craciun: “When I joined the EFL Blogging School Project, everything was new for me and I've learned all the online tools with the greatest interest and pleasure. Now I feel more empowered as a teacher as I can use a lot of web sources and resources in creating lesson plans and evaluating my pupils. Each tool we learned had something special. To me, the most important is that I was able to integrate all the new online platforms in my teaching practice. My students were very curious and interested at the beginning of our blogging adventure. They enjoyed working with online dictionaries, word clouds, and online platforms for creating video-presentations.” |
Course description
The project will equip Moldovan regional teachers with the necessary skills to use online tools such as blogs to enhance their English language teaching experience. Participants will learn how to engage students in online projects and raise up their interest in studying English using online tools. By the end of the project, participants will have experimented with creating a class or school blog, inviting members, posting and editing entries and commenting on other blogs. In addition to that, participants will have looked into comment management, template personalization and will learn how to enhance their class or school blog using other online tools, such as Voki, Animoto, Pow Toon, Google Polls, free online dictionaries, DVolver, Listy and many more.
Course objectives
By the end of the project, participants will have:
¨ created a class or school blog
¨ posted and edited entries
¨ commented on other blogs
¨ tried team blogging (inviting members)
¨ explored options for comment management
¨ compared different blog hosts
¨ grasped the concept of syndication (RSS)
¨ compared aggregators and other syndication tools
¨ discussed the potential of blogging as a teaching tool in the English lesson and as a tool for professional development
Month 1: October 2014 EFL blogging basics
During the first month of the course, participants will:
· exchange introductions and become familiar with the group environments
· try tools for synchronous communication to be used during the project
· answer a survey to determine their previous experience with blogging
· add themselves to the group map
· visit the group blog
· discuss the concept of blog (and distinguish it from "website" and "wiki"
· analyze various EFL blogs and the ways these are used to enhance EFL teaching and learning
· get to understand blog jargon
· plan their own blog (defining its purpose and target audience)
· choose a platform, a theme and a name for their blog
Month 2: November 2014 Creating an EFL class/school blog and involving students
¨ Online dictionaries: MWvisual, thefreedictionary, visuwords
¨ Polls: Monkey Survey, Google Polls
¨ Video Teaching Tools: UTube, Teacher Tube, Jenny ESL
Month 3: December 2014: Month 3: Video production for EFL blogging and involving students
¨ Video Production Tools: Movie maker, Voicethread, Voki
¨ Writing Production Tools: Dvolver, Tagxedo, Fodey
¨ Graphic Production: Glogster, Pininterest
Month 4: January 2015 Enhancing the blog as a teaching tool. Blogging: Off we go!
January is dedicated to:
· turning the blog into a teaching tool
· enhancing the blog with tools for EFL teaching and learning
· integrating the blog into daily teaching practice
· adjusting the blog to school curricula
· combining classroom teaching with online teaching
· actively involving students in posting on the blog (complete tasks, post comments, submit homework etc.)
January 2015 Preparing your blog for the final event
In January your blog will:
· be prepared to be presented in public at the project final event,
· reflect everything you learned during the project,
· include your teaching portfolio, students sample work, lesson plans, teaching advice, bibliography for students etc.
Month 5: February 2015 Presenting your Blog and sharing from your experience
In February each participant will:
· present his/her blog during the project closing event in Chisinau,
· be in charge of organizing a 25-45 min workshop to share from his / her experience on the project,
· organize a training for 10-15 teachers and educators in his/her home region.
The project will equip Moldovan regional teachers with the necessary skills to use online tools such as blogs to enhance their English language teaching experience. Participants will learn how to engage students in online projects and raise up their interest in studying English using online tools. By the end of the project, participants will have experimented with creating a class or school blog, inviting members, posting and editing entries and commenting on other blogs. In addition to that, participants will have looked into comment management, template personalization and will learn how to enhance their class or school blog using other online tools, such as Voki, Animoto, Pow Toon, Google Polls, free online dictionaries, DVolver, Listy and many more.
Course objectives
By the end of the project, participants will have:
¨ created a class or school blog
¨ posted and edited entries
¨ commented on other blogs
¨ tried team blogging (inviting members)
¨ explored options for comment management
¨ compared different blog hosts
¨ grasped the concept of syndication (RSS)
¨ compared aggregators and other syndication tools
¨ discussed the potential of blogging as a teaching tool in the English lesson and as a tool for professional development
Month 1: October 2014 EFL blogging basics
During the first month of the course, participants will:
· exchange introductions and become familiar with the group environments
· try tools for synchronous communication to be used during the project
· answer a survey to determine their previous experience with blogging
· add themselves to the group map
· visit the group blog
· discuss the concept of blog (and distinguish it from "website" and "wiki"
· analyze various EFL blogs and the ways these are used to enhance EFL teaching and learning
· get to understand blog jargon
· plan their own blog (defining its purpose and target audience)
· choose a platform, a theme and a name for their blog
Month 2: November 2014 Creating an EFL class/school blog and involving students
¨ Online dictionaries: MWvisual, thefreedictionary, visuwords
¨ Polls: Monkey Survey, Google Polls
¨ Video Teaching Tools: UTube, Teacher Tube, Jenny ESL
Month 3: December 2014: Month 3: Video production for EFL blogging and involving students
¨ Video Production Tools: Movie maker, Voicethread, Voki
¨ Writing Production Tools: Dvolver, Tagxedo, Fodey
¨ Graphic Production: Glogster, Pininterest
Month 4: January 2015 Enhancing the blog as a teaching tool. Blogging: Off we go!
January is dedicated to:
· turning the blog into a teaching tool
· enhancing the blog with tools for EFL teaching and learning
· integrating the blog into daily teaching practice
· adjusting the blog to school curricula
· combining classroom teaching with online teaching
· actively involving students in posting on the blog (complete tasks, post comments, submit homework etc.)
January 2015 Preparing your blog for the final event
In January your blog will:
· be prepared to be presented in public at the project final event,
· reflect everything you learned during the project,
· include your teaching portfolio, students sample work, lesson plans, teaching advice, bibliography for students etc.
Month 5: February 2015 Presenting your Blog and sharing from your experience
In February each participant will:
· present his/her blog during the project closing event in Chisinau,
· be in charge of organizing a 25-45 min workshop to share from his / her experience on the project,
· organize a training for 10-15 teachers and educators in his/her home region.