Week 5 Rubrics, Assessments, and PBL

This week, we are required to think about a possible solution to the problems we have with our students. As I understand that my students my have motivation problems, I believe that a technology-enhanced learning process may rouse my students’ interests in learning English. So I selected and shared the following links with my students in our listening course this week:

Mike the Writing Tutor

http://www.rong-chang.com/tutor.htm

Phonetics

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/#

Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab

http://www.esl-lab.com

Children’s Storybooks Online

http://www.magickeys.com/books/

Children’s Digital Library

http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SearchWorld?area=1&type=image&ilang=English

The purpose is to find out what may possibly grab the students’ attention and get them motivated in learning. So I didn’t emphasize any of the links but just asked my students to explore according to their own wish. Guess which one of them does my students like most? Mr. Mike! Some of my students even spent a whole class of 40 min to chat with Mike, generating information in English which could usually cost them for days to produce, written or oral.

I am very happy with the finding but also troubled by it. I am happy because I think I find a good tool to help my students express themselves. They have completely no pressure chatting with Mike, and it seems that Mike can always inspire them to talk. What troubles me is that I don’t know how could I incorporate the website into my teaching. Students may feel interested because this is a complete new experience for them, but if I don’t work out a good plan to apply the site it will not be long for my students to lose interest. I myself also have no experience of using this kind of tool before, so if anyone could give me any tip on that, I would be very grateful.