My reflections on ED-554

     This has been a hectic semester for me. Besides course ED-554, I have two more courses, and one of which is definitely not a walk in the park. Although I have invested a considerable amount of time and energy doing assignments for this class, this has been by far the most entertaining, fun, and enriching experience I have ever had since I started my graduate program. I realize now that doing something you love and enjoy is the key to success, and that is how I feel about technology and this course in particular. The integration of technology in the classroom is a MUST nowadays and not a choice, and it would be highly embarrassing for any teacher to be ignorant in this regard. Sadly, I have been fairly ignorant until I took this rich and powerful class with dr. Langran and learned all those diverse and fun tools to make lesson instruction in the classroom accessible, meaningful, and enjoyable for each and every student.
       Nevertheless, the journey in this course hasn't been all lilies and daisies, for there were times I have experienced feelings of frustration and helplessness, and that was the time we had to tackle the copy write issue. Never mind how long it takes you as a teacher to create ideas for your lessons, search for resources, arrange your thoughts and plans, you will always be hand-tied when it comes to using the web treasures. Fortunately, I won't be facing the same difficulty back home simply because copy write in my country is not that big of a deal as it is here in the States, at least it wasn't around the time I left the country three years ago.
   More creative and fun tools for lesson creation and delivery could be added to the content of this course to make it more comprehensive and inclusive of all possible resources in technology and media world. Another suggestion is to assign more classes as online sessions considering the fact that most of our work is done at home and not in the classroom.
   Thank you ED-554 and Dr. Langran for creating a fairly beginner technology expert out of me and helping me brag about my new talent in front of my two teenage technology-addict kids. 

update on my favorite blog "Fun to Teach ESL"

      Every Tuesday, Lori the author of the This blog shares two of her favorite structured language practice activities with the readers. This past Tuesday Oct. 22 her  first activity was the "Talking Chips", which encourages ESL learners to speak and participate with the whole class. The idea here is to pass out the same number of chips to every student, present a topic for discussion along with sentence frames, vocabulary, and prompts, and ask whoever wishes to speak to give back a chip until all students have used all their chips. This way all students participate in the discussion without having some speak more than the others.
The second tip for this week is doing the same activity using numbers in a hat. Students are divided into two groups, the teacher or the students themselves suggest a fun topic to discuss, each students is assigned a number, and every time that number is drawn that student used the prompts from the teacher to contribute to the discussion.
Even though some of these tips are familiar to me, I find it important to keep reminding myself to use them with my students in the classroom. By creating a list of teaching tips like these, teachers will end up having a good source of ideas and activities to use with their ESL learners, a thing that would make their instruction diverse, up to date, and engaging to the different students.
Comment already posted on the blog.
http://esleld.blogspot.com/2013/10/favorite-structured-language-practice_22.html?showComment=1382994519204#c6645719987688068954

ED 554 digital story Mona Alammar

This 3 mins and 47 seconds clip represents some of the factors about animals, and answers some of the requirements of my chosen SOL. The whole ideas is about six different animal species representing my six animal groups gathering in a baby shower. Going through the process of preparing for the baby shower I tried to point out certain factors related to those animals' physical characteristics, habitat, and reproduction. As for the inquiry part, students can go from here to investigate more attributes and characteristics of these animals and add more names to the different six groups. This clip is a teaching aid that answers the different learning styles, in which visual learners look at the pictures of the different animals, those who are auditory listen to me describing those animals in an indirect way, those with logical or mathematical learning style can draw conclusions and inferences about the animals throughout the whole story, and those who are kinesthetic can touch and explore models of those animals shown in the pictures. 

Director, Author and photographer: Mona Alammar

Music retrieved from: http://freeplaymusic.com/search.aspx?q=happy

Music piece: "Serenade me" by composer Dan Pasternak

Inquiry-based Learning

      Throughout all my school years I have never been given the chance to think for my self, come up with a solution for a problem, or question my textbooks. The classrooms back home have always been teacher centered where there is always the textbook, the teacher who feeds the students the content of that textbook, and the students who have to memorize the information if they wish to pass the tests. Therefore, and because I have had no knowledge or experience whatsoever with inquiry-based learning as a student, I have never used it with my students simply because I have never heard of it during my teaching career.
     Learning about this teaching strategy through this course made me think how great it would have been applying it in my classroom. As an English teacher, I doubt if I could have used it in earlier grades, simply because students at this level didn't have enough language to help them. Nevertheless, it could have been applicable in higher grades where topics like pollution, obesity, fashion and shopping, and famous literature pieces could have been tailored for the purpose of research and discovery.
     Introducing this strategy to the classrooms back home would be a considerable positive change in the school system and how classes are being run. Teachers' role will be the facilitators channelling students into the desired directions instead of being overwhelmingly responsible for delivering the content throughout every class period. Students, on the other hand, will get the chance to think for themselves, enhance their critical thinking and problem-solving skills, be responsible for their own learning instead of relying solely on the teacher to feed them the knowledge. If this dream comes true, both teachers and students will have their negative attitudes towards school and the teaching and learning processes changed into something positive and productive for both parties.
  

Webquest

1-  http://questgarden.com/24/31/2/060502113437/ 
Animal Classification and Animal Habitat by Marcia Kish, Wilson Hill
In this webQuest students are expected to search for and compare different animal groups, their classifications, and habitats. They will then reflect on the most or least enjoyable part of their search, the things they have learned in this experience, and what they have contributed to the group work. 

2-http://questgarden.com/133/76/1/111021173227                                                                                 All About My Animals by Lani Iemma, Chamberlain
In this webQuest students are expected to work in pairs, choose one animal each, exchange information with partner, and finally, write a page for a class book about their findings.

URL address for my three day old baby website.
https://sites.google.com/a/marymount.edu/mona-s-ed-554-site/podcast

Map of UDL