Catharina Schmitt's Blog

Lesson Plan – Isle of Wight

catharinaschmitt — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:46:37 +0000

Time	Course of the class (phase/content)	Activity	Media / Material	Objectives
5 min	Introduction	Listen to podcast	computer, headphones, podcast	Introducing the topic, getting pupils interested
5 min	Getting an overview, working on the topic	Fill in the gaps	computer, headphones, podcast, worksheet	Listening exercise
20 min	gather information	Research on the topic and creating poster	computer, internet access, printer	Deepening of knowledge
15 min	Presentation of results	Short presentation of posters	poster	Getting class on the same level, saving results

Blog Task 6 – “Dream Project”

catharinaschmitt — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:29:49 +0000

As there are hardly any restrictions to my “dream project” I would really like to do a project which combines many factors. It is a combination of using the new media, doing “traditional” lessons and going on an exchange. From my point of view it is essential to not only learn the language itself, but to get to know the people, the country and the culture. In this case this would be England. Cultural differences are very often considered at school and I think that there is no way around learning it from native speakers. So I decided that my English class has a partner class in an English school near London. This class learns German as a third language and although they are not as advanced as my students are (they should not be younger than grade 9), an intercultural communication is definitely possible.

As a preparation I would do some exercises on the county, the landscape and the british way of life. So there will be a “Rally through England” including Englands’ most important places. Pupils work together in small groups and on every station there is already some material provided, but nevertheless, pupils are engaged to find information on the internet as well. Each group has the task to create a short presentation. Afterwards they get to know the pupils from England. Each student gets a partner with whom they should stay in contact via Skype or an other social network (this is a long-lasting homework). Additional to that there would be a teachers’ Blog, which is run by both teachers. All pupils have to create and update an own Blog in order to introduce themselves and on which all the assignments have to be submitted. After submitting a piece of work, the pupils from Germany in English and the pupils from England in German, the students should comment on the submitted piece of work and give hints to each other, also in terms of error correction or grammatical mistakes.

After the people getting to knwo each other, there will be interlinked lessons via a huge webcam or some kind of “video conference”. By this use of the new media different things can be achieved. The pupils on both sides can listen to native speakers – some parts of the lessons will be in German, others in English – and you have some kind of bilingual lessons, not only with you as a teacher, but with native speakers, who are just at the same age. In these combined lessons (there will be some without the other class) the students will give their presentations with comments or experiences from the English pupils and they will find out about each others daily life and will hopefully find out that clichees need not to be true. This way of teaching will not only improve pupils’ English, because they are provided with a nearly “natural” environment/input, this will also help in understanding each others culture and will possibly avoid prejudices against other cultures. At the end of this project, there is of course a real exchange, with the pupils from England visiting Germany and the other way around.

Blog Task 5.2 – Answers to questions for the field trip

catharinaschmitt — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:37:07 +0000

Unfortunately I could not make it to go to Kirchhain, so I slightly modified my questions. They were answered by two 16 year old boys (10th Grade), attending a Gymnasium.

Question 1) Are you really more motivated by using the new media in the classroom?

The pupils said that they were definitely more motivated by using the new media in the classroom. They really like going to the computer pool. They use the computer for drawing graphs in maths or physics, they analyse data in politics and do some research for various subjects. Nevertheless, they only use the computer pool once or twice a month, which is, according to them, a pity. They would really like to do it more often, because they like the “easy atmosphere” and they say that it is more fun. They like being able to talk to their neighbours and especially the change from “traditional lessons” in which they do not have to copy things from the black board. But besides these advantages, they also admitted that the chance of doing things they are not supposed to do. The distraction in these lessons in the computer pool is quite high.

Question 2) What kind of new media do you use/do your teachers use in the classroom?

The pupils themselves only use a computer in the computer pool, a data projector for PowerPoint presentations and sometimes their computer at home for doing homework. It is nearly the same for the teachers. They use the data projector (but only in sciences) and the computer in the computer pool. They do not include the new media any further. The only exception to this are two rooms in biology and physics. In these rooms, there are smartboards, but they are only rarely used by teachers. The pupils are not allowed to work with them.

Blog Task 5.1 – Questions for the field trip

catharinaschmitt — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:11:42 +0000

Question 1: Are the pupils really more motivated by using the new media in the classroom?

Question 2: Concerning the amount of preparation for a lesson: Is it more or less time-consuming to prepare a lesson in which the new media are used than a “normal” lesson?

Blog Task 4 – Teaching Project with New Media

catharinaschmitt — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:29:35 +0000

A teaching project I really liked was the idea of creating an “online pupil magazine”. This is of course not a special teaching project relating only to one subject, it also includes aspects from everyday life. There a various examples of such a project in the www, for example 360° Triberg – Die Schülerzeitung. These websites are are mostly run by pupils, but there is also a teacher observing the project and some people with professional knowledge. Nevertheless pupils get an insight into HTML-practice and become familiar with creating a website. Furthermore, there are not only texts about what is going on at school or what is interesting for pupils, there is also a section for downloads, where there are handouts, presentations and video sequences. Very interesting is the so called “shout box” where you can just add short comments. In the gallery there are also many pictures of class events and so on. Quite important is that not everybody can just contribute to this website, but you have to log in to get access to special features and the main articles are published by some pupils being the editors.

I really like this kind of project including the new media. Pupils will be very willing to take part in it, because they are familiar with surfing in the internet and getting there information there. In this case the information are very personal and contrastive to the ones of the official school website. They get to know HTML and they can create something on their own. Additionally it does not only involve the pupil who run the website, but it can include the whole school community.

Blog Task 3 – Analysing learning software

catharinaschmitt — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:39:01 +0000

In the session on the 26th of May I analysed two learning softwares with my partner. We took a closer look at “Englisch II (Klasse 11-13) and “Englisch Klasse 5 und 6″. Both of these learning softwares were published in, or at least around, 2001, so they were rather old and therefore also looked quite outdated. In terms of their appropriateness for students, I think they were all right. There was a great difference between the one designed for younger students and for older students.

The one for older students welcomed the learner in a virtual library in which you could choose a topic, such as film, sports, culture and so on. To each topic there was an introduction (short film) followed by several units with different grammatical aspects. I liked that there were some sound samples and an error correction. Concerning the error correction it was a bit disappointing that it only provided a right/wrong feedback and did not give the right answer or any personal feedback. The second software was a bit simpler, but it contained a more interactive part. You could choose between different houses, each house standing for a team. Inside the house you had to decide which activity you wanted to do. Again there was an error correction, but also only saying whether it was right or wrong.

To finally compare these two programmes, it is to say that they were very appropriate for the age of pupils for which they were designed. They were colourful and the tasks were practicable, but both were rather old-fashioned. There was not much multimedia included, the handling was not always that easy and the interactivity and the feedback was very limited. Both learning softwares tried to address more than one learning type, but they both belong to the “drill & practice”-software.

The evaluation sheet helped us to analyse much more details than we probably would have considered without it. We had to take a look at General Aspects, Design Aspects, Contextual Aspects and Didactical Aspects. Furthermore there was an Finals Examination. Especially the last point helped me to get a final overall opinion about the software. It concluded all the detailed aspects and facilitated the evaluation. This last sheet was definitely necessary to sum the whole thing up. The questions before were very precise, sometimes even too precise, and made the analysis a bitoring. The provided possible answers were also a bit too closed. More possibilities in answering would have been great.

Unfortunately I have to say that I would not recommend any of these softwares to my fellow students or later colleagues. They were okay, but far too old-fashioned and I also missed the interactivity and maybe the connection to e. g. vocabulary games. I would not use them, or any other software, in class either. For pupils studying at home they are quite useful, but I would not replace the “normal” lessons by sitting in front of the computer. Lessons should be used to communicate with each other and not with a computer.

Blog Task 2 – Comment on Group 2 – Task 2

catharinaschmitt — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:25:52 +0000

For this Blog Task I chose the Poster of Task 2 from Group 2.

The task was, to answer the question and visualize it in form of a poster. This one is a very interesting one. Of course the question is answered and there is a list of pro and contra arguments, but there is no colour used at all. This makes it quite hard to get an eye catching aspect. The statements might be good, but in not visualizing or emphasizing any aspect, it is rather boring to look at it. The content contains so many interesting points and good arguments that should have been highlighted much more. For example at least the conclusion could have been written in another colour in order to make it clearer that this is a conclusion.

There also must be a reason for this lack of colour. It is possible that this is due to the fact, that the question more asks for a list of personal opinions than for facts which were just collected from a text. Choosing a table for grouping the arguments is okay, but there are other ways of presenting the content.

To sum it up I have to say, that the poster contains great arguments, but it did not take the chance of presenting them in an attractive way. It is a pity that it looks like a page in a students book and not like a poster that is eager to convey its content.

Blog Task 1 – “Why use the new media in foreign language education?”

catharinaschmitt — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:23:31 +0000

When I was at school, I never really got in contact with new media during the lessons, especially not in English or French lessons. I had to acquire nearly everything I know about new media on my own. This was probably due to my teachers who were rather old and not “up to date”. They were afraid of using new media in class, partly because they did not know how to handle it, partly because they knew that the pupils had a wider knowledge than they themselves.

Looking at it from today, this should not be the case. No teacher should be afraid of using the new media today in class. There are so many chances provided by new media. One of the most important points is that nearly every pupil has his or her own computer and they know how to handle it. Of course it is also important that they are extremely interested in the whole field of internet an social network. So with including it into (foreign language) education you can make sure that they will follow your class with a lot more interest than without it and I think that it is always a good thing to rely on pupils interests.

For example the internet is such a big chance for classes. You should show them how to use search engines properly and how to decide whether a source is reliable or not. Together you could encounter online dictionaries such as leo.org and read newspaper articles in the foreign language. Since the use of the internet is not only limited to this, you could also use some kinds of social network. A blog would be a good way of combining homework and new media. As in this course pupils do not have to write their texts by hand and bring them to class, they could “hand it in” online and they can write comments to each others homework. although he danger of just copying things increases.

Using social networks such as schuelervz is a bit more difficult. On the one hand it is quite hard to include it into your lesson plan and you cannot really control what the pupils are doing there. This should be a part of their free time. On the other hand you could explain the risks of publishing too many details or facts about themselves. So this is more an educational aspect. The same is with using chat rooms. A problem is that they mostly do not use full sentences and only communicate in abbreviations. A good thing would be to use chat rooms for communication in the foreign language with other pupils, for example from England. This is a major chance of the new media. You could get or stay in contact with exchange pupils. Also a web cam would be great, because you could also practice the foreign language in a rather “natural” way.

As a last point to mention there are PowerPoint and data projectors. You could easily include them into your lessons and you could combine things as audio stuff, videos and pictures into a presentation. Nevertheless, the advantages of new media should not lead to a total reduction of “normal” in-class-lessons or even replace it, but definitely no one should be afraid of using it, because the positive aspects over weigh the negative ones such as the not always working technique a lot.

Hello world!

catharinaschmitt — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:09:28 +0000

Hello everyone!

This is my first blog.

I hope I’ll learn some things in this course which are helpful for my future as teacher…

Take care