1. CALL material evaluation is important to make sure that it is effective and suitable for the target learners.
There is no one method that is effective for all students. The same goes to CALL materials. A courseware that is intended to teach Grammar for Form4 students may be effective for class 4A, the more proficient student, but it may not be appropriate for the less proficient once in 4D. This is one of the reasons why courseware evaluation is important. To determine for which level of proficiency the software is appropriate.
2. I should've learned to use JCloze much sooner. There were some occasions when I was able to use the ICT room during practicum, and using JCloze to teach and test grammar would've been much more fun. And fun can be very important.
As for the teacher, JCloze makes it much easier to create a cloze-passage exercise. It practically does everything for you. Well, not everything, but it makes preparing the exercise easier. You can get authentic materials online and get the software to turn it into a cloze-passage.
For the students, being an electronic exercise is exciting enough. For kids these days, computers are usually associated with games, this would definitely attract the students' attention.
By using JCloze, the students are able to answer and receive feedback immediately. The students will be informed when they've made mistakes and the score shows the students how much they've improved compared to their previous tries. The clues help the students recall they're knowledge on grammar rather than make guesses.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Walking Through Technology...
Ahh.. Computers.. There's no way in heck I'd live without one..
My Name is Ahmad Nazri B. Jelani and I am tech savvy.
I'm definintely no expert. I have no idea how to hack into a computer or create state of the art softwares, but I definitely know how to use the internet and explore the capabilities of my computer.
One of my hobbies on a computer is playing with Photoshop, editting pictures, drawing cartoon characters and other photoshop-ish things.
I even know how to make a website. In fact, I had my own Dragonball Z fan site when I was 12 years old where I would upload images and video clips from the show. But I had to stop because I couldn't pay for the webspace that hosted my website. Today I just write blogs because it's the easiest way to have a website of my own.
Other than that, quite a light gamer. I play quite a number of games per year. But I've only started two years ago. I don't know how to create my own game, but I've had an experience making one once before. I used a software call "Cookie" if I'm not mistaken. However, I never developed from there. I mostly like to with hardware like the graphiccards and upgrading my PC to be able to support much heavier games with more detailed graphics.
I use to live in the USA and I went to a Charter school. It's call the Centre Learning Community (CLC) charter school. This school fully utilizes the internet in their curriculum instructions. I remember that while I was there, I did a lot of mathematics exercises using a software. You'll only advance to the next topic if you are able to achieve above a certain score. Not only that, for other subjects as well, we posted all of our assignments on the internet.
During my practicum, I rarely got to use technology in the class. The school didn't have the sufficient facilities. However, I did manage to get a chance to use technology once or twice and gave a powerpoint presentation. The presentation was definitely a success because it got the students attention. I also played several video clips to get the students thinking process started.
I believe that using technology in language teaching is very affective. Children nowadays are so used to technology such as the television. Because their already familiar with technology, they can easily use it to learn language. However, isolated language learning is never affective. The students must be able to use the language in the real world. That's where the teacher comes into effect. By letting the students use the language through games in class, they can further gain more input and improve their proficiency in the tartget language. There may be a day when an advanced AI is created to perfectly achieve this so the students won't need to meet actual people to acquire the language.
My Name is Ahmad Nazri B. Jelani and I am tech savvy.
I'm definintely no expert. I have no idea how to hack into a computer or create state of the art softwares, but I definitely know how to use the internet and explore the capabilities of my computer.
One of my hobbies on a computer is playing with Photoshop, editting pictures, drawing cartoon characters and other photoshop-ish things.
I even know how to make a website. In fact, I had my own Dragonball Z fan site when I was 12 years old where I would upload images and video clips from the show. But I had to stop because I couldn't pay for the webspace that hosted my website. Today I just write blogs because it's the easiest way to have a website of my own.
Other than that, quite a light gamer. I play quite a number of games per year. But I've only started two years ago. I don't know how to create my own game, but I've had an experience making one once before. I used a software call "Cookie" if I'm not mistaken. However, I never developed from there. I mostly like to with hardware like the graphiccards and upgrading my PC to be able to support much heavier games with more detailed graphics.
I use to live in the USA and I went to a Charter school. It's call the Centre Learning Community (CLC) charter school. This school fully utilizes the internet in their curriculum instructions. I remember that while I was there, I did a lot of mathematics exercises using a software. You'll only advance to the next topic if you are able to achieve above a certain score. Not only that, for other subjects as well, we posted all of our assignments on the internet.
During my practicum, I rarely got to use technology in the class. The school didn't have the sufficient facilities. However, I did manage to get a chance to use technology once or twice and gave a powerpoint presentation. The presentation was definitely a success because it got the students attention. I also played several video clips to get the students thinking process started.
I believe that using technology in language teaching is very affective. Children nowadays are so used to technology such as the television. Because their already familiar with technology, they can easily use it to learn language. However, isolated language learning is never affective. The students must be able to use the language in the real world. That's where the teacher comes into effect. By letting the students use the language through games in class, they can further gain more input and improve their proficiency in the tartget language. There may be a day when an advanced AI is created to perfectly achieve this so the students won't need to meet actual people to acquire the language.
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