NewMediaReflections

it's getting to an end

2006-07-20T03:08:00.000-07:00

Well, hard to believe, but the semester is almost over. That went so fast!

Last session we got done with the evaluation of our webquests. Nassim and I also presented our webquest about the bonfire. Working with the evaluation sheet took a really long time. It's was quite hard to really read through all the webquests and see whether they achieved the different aims of the categories or not.

Later on we decided to just go through the last webquests really fast that we had time to learn about the Mind Manager Program, with which you can make mind maps on the computer very easily. I thought it was a very good program.

webquest evaluation

2006-07-11T05:32:00.000-07:00

Today we went on with the presentations of our webquests. Group2, 3 and 4 presented.

Group 2 had a webquest for a 5th grade about going to the zoo and finding out information about animals living in the zoo. I really liked this webquest because it was a nice layout with nice colours and pictures, but it had also good tasks which were appropriate for that age group.

Group 3 had a webquest about planing a trip to London for a 7th grade. There were good tasks for which the class was divided into groups.

Group 4 had a webquest about Hollywood for an 8th grade. I must confess that I don't quite remember what the students had to do. :) The evaluation took a long time, after the three groups presented the time was already over.

technical difficulties

2006-07-08T03:46:00.000-07:00

In the last session we were actually supposed to present our webquests. Nassim and I were asked to present ours at first, but we soon discovered that we hadn't saved our webquest as a html file and also that our links weren't working well.

So we got back to work and tried to find out how to solve our problems with the technical terms. And we still have problems with our links to get back on top of the page when pressing the button "top". Well, I hope we can figure it out somehow. Next tuesday we will again have a chance to present our webquests.

Another group presented their webquest about aborigines and we each got an evaluation sheet with which we had to evaluate the webquest of that group. Getting through the sheet I saw all the mistakes we had made in our webquest and all the weaknesses. It would have been good to know about all those things beforehand.

webquests, the third

2006-06-28T06:08:00.000-07:00

On tuesday Nassim and I went on with our webquest. Our webquest will be for a sixth grade and they will have to find out about bonfires and their traditions and will have to plan and organize a bonfire in which the other sixth graders will be invited in.
We didn't do any thing else besides preparing our webquest.

going on with Webquests

2006-06-22T03:13:00.000-07:00

In the previous class we learned more about webquests and then we started working on our own webquests. Nassim and I were in one team and we decided to make a webquests for a 6th grade about bonfires.
In this Webquests the students will have to plan a bonfire night for all the sixth graders of their school. They are supposed to find out what the history of bonfires is and for what kind of events it is done in the US and the UK.

WEBQUESTS

2006-06-13T03:33:00.000-07:00

Today we learned about webquests. First there were question marks all over our heads.... I think... at least that goes for me. But then Mr. Raith told us more about it and when we started to work on a webquest task, the ??? went away.

It was interesting to be in the group and work on the task in your specific role, which everyone got. The opinions about the webquests at which we looked were quite different but it was good to get to know other perspectives.

Today's session

2006-05-30T05:21:00.000-07:00

This morning we learned that today we would have our last chat with our croation partners. But before chatting with our partners Mr. Raith gave us a presentation on e-mail projects in school. He told us what kind of topics could be discussed in e-mail projects and where to find partners for such a project.

There are several websites which concentrate on e-mail projects and offer an amount of other schools or classes who would like to get in contact via e-mail with another school or class. We heard about the coordination which is necessary for starting an e-mail project. The teacher who wants to do such a project needs to be prepared very well and needs to be in contact with the other teacher before starting.

We then talked about the different phases within an e-mail project. The phases are:

- Preparation: coordination between the partner teachers, schedule, tasks
- Phase 1: Introduction, exchange of personal information, photos
- Phase 2: First exchange of information concerning the topic, questions, research
- Phase 3: Detailed exchange based on research, negotiating attitudes, otherness
- Phase 4: Comparison, further questions and answers, negotiating meaning, processing information
- Phase 5: Analysis, summary of results, working on product, farewell letters

We also compared them to our experiences through the project with our croation partners.

Later on Nassim and I had our last chat with Matija. It seemed like we were all in a hurry and we really got a lot of information about our lesson plans across. And today there weren't any bad misunderstandings or so. I thought it was a really good chat.

e-mail projects

2006-05-29T03:42:00.000-07:00

Reading the assigned arctiles remind me of two things:

1. my english classes at school

2. a paper which I wrote about Medienkompetenz im Deutschunterricht

During my school time I had good and not so good english teachers. Most of the timewe learned boring grammar, read texts, had homework to do, even with the "good" teachers . In the upper classes I often felt like not able to understand the texts we had to read and couldn't really participate in the conversations. However I got to like the english language maybe more because of my sister living in the States and because I visit her and got to know American people.

When I started to study at the PH I was happy to learn that we were supposed to go to an english speaking country. I went to Mesa, Arizona and had a great time. Since I returned home I kept being in e-mail contact with my host family. That helped me a lot to improve my english, not only in writing but also in new vocab and just getting to know my host family and their habits and through that american culture.

Back to the texts we read, I think e-mail projects are great for students to get familiar with the langugae but also with the countries the language is from. Out of my own experiences I know that you learn a language the best when you have the chance to meet native speakers and talk in all day conversational english. An e-mail project is a simple and good way to get to know another culture even if the partners are not "really" present.

When I wrote my paper on media in the german language classroom I also learned a lot, but I don't want to bore the reader of this post with more detail of that paper.

Brother and Sister

2006-05-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

Today's session: We first worked with our local teams and worked on our lesson plan on the fairy tale "The Rosemary Bush". Nassim and I had met last week to work on the task, so we didn't have to do too much during this first phase.

Later on we met with Matija and discussed whether to use a power point presentation for presenting the fairy tale "Brother and Sister" or not. It took us quite a while until we understood each other right. I must confess I had some trouble understanding what Matija meant with his suggestions, but finally we agreed.

Time goes by pretty fast once you start chatting. Because of our little understanding problem we couldn't get too much into detail for the "brother and sister" discussion.

the simpsons

2006-05-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

As I searched for some pictures I found this one.

I had searched for "big family".

the next one

2006-05-16T06:10:00.000-07:00

What did we do today?? Again Nassim and I had a lot of fun chatting with our croation partner. And this time we really got some information a cross! Well, it hadn't been that bad the last two times... but I think today we really hold a good conversation.

Nassim, Matija and I agreed that the difference between croatian and german fairy tales are the characters in a way. In german fairy tales you often find women as the evil ones, the bad witches or stepmothers. In the croation one the servants were the bad once. Maybe you can't really generalize it, but if you hear the words "Once upon a time..." you always think of fairy tales even though not all of them start with those words (as "Brother and Sister").

We also agreed that fairy tales probably do affect us, but maybe in a way we don't really recognize. Nassim said before, that we liked the happy endings of the fairy tales and didn't pay too much attention to the cruelty in them. That probably did affect us in a way, that we are searching for good and right in our lifes and also want the good to be at the end. If you just look at a simple arguement of two people; somehow - if they care for each other - they want to forgive each other at the end. That's at least when I have an arguement. I don't know, but maybe that's how fairy tales could have affected me. As we found out before fairy tales always have a moral. Those morals are always little "wordly wisdoms" which are good to remember in your life.

Teaching in school, I think it's good to tell fairy tales. Even though the teacher should know his class well and see what kind of fairy tale would be good to read to them, and which not.

Third Session: Fairy Tales

2006-05-10T02:34:00.000-07:00

What can you remember from your childhood? How did fairy tales influence you?

When I was a child, I remember that my grandma liked to read to us fairy tales from the Brother Grimms, but she also read to us the stories of the "Struwwelpeter" (which are today not very liked, from a pedagogic perspective) and the stories of Wilhelm Busch. Especially the stories from the last two mentioned, are often very cruel and sometimes I thought that too, as a child. But I knew that there were just stories and weren't true. That's also what my grandma told me. Sometimes my dad would make some jokes about those stories like if I don't eat my soup I'll end up as the "Suppenkasper", but I knew that he didn't mean it.
I liked the Grimm's fairy tales from listening to cassettes or from the Walt Disney movies. Then I always just listened to those fairy tales, which weren't too cruel. Watching the movies I wouldn't look at the "bad parts", so it never affected me in a negative way.
I don't really know how the fairy tales influenced me, but I think I remembered that the good always wins at the end. I think that the stories probably did influence me a lot, but only in good ways.

What did your partners tell you about these issues? Compare your experiences - find similarities and differences.

Well, our partner didn't remember too many fairy tales. Especially not croatian ones. We didn't really find out a lot about his experiences with fairy tales. But he remembered "John and Mary" from Anderson. He liked that, but I don't know this one. "The girl with the matches" was another one he mentioned and he thought it was a really sad one. And it affected him a lot. But it was nice for him, that the girl is went to heaven at the end. In our chat group nobody knew the croatian fairy tale, but we were quite familiar with the classic Grimm's ones.

I thought it was a good session. We found out more things about our partner even though it was sometimes quite hard to communicate with him :) .

NBLT

2006-05-08T03:26:00.000-07:00

After reading the text I made the mistake by taking a look on the other posts about this text before writing my own post. (At least from those who had written a post on the text already. ) I read through good summaries of the text and now I'm kind of stucked and don't know how to start this.

I think it's helpful to have the written out versions of the abbrevations (I hope I'm using this word right. I like to use new words, but sometimes don't know if they fit right... so please tell me):

NBLT: Network-Based-Language-Teaching

CALL: Computer-Assisted-Language-Teaching

As I'm understanding this right, CALL means that people are learning a language through the computer. They have their teacher and classmates with whom they are interacting. And as it is said in the word, it's computer assisted. Through the years of the consisting of CALL, it changed and different form developed (such as the cognitive and sciosognitive approaches).

NBLT also says through its name what it is. Students learn a language based on a network in which they can communicate. It can be used for intercultural learning, which could be like the e-mail project we started last week.

Second session part2

2006-05-02T05:33:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful day today. The sun is shining AND it is warm. How nice. This morning I had a little hard time getting up and also had a little headage. Well, it got better soon. ... stop why I am writing about that?!
More to our session today:
Mr. Raith had asked us to prepare an introductory letter and put it into our stud.IP profil. Okay, that wasn't a big deal. But then it got more exciting, when we started contacting our group members in Croatia. Nassim and I were in one group, as I told before. We had to wait a little time for our partner, because he had a little trouble getting into stud.IP, but finally he made it and we had a lot of fun chatting with HIM. .... Nassim and I had a hard time to figure out if it was a guy or girl who was writing to us... :)
I think it was really a lot of fun and I wish more seminars at the PH were like that. And you also learn from it. I think it would be a great project for students in school to do an e-mail project. They then can learn about students their ages, about their culture and school system but also about personal things. Moreover students learn to deal with the technology of chatting, e-mailing and finding a way through the world of the internet... :) I think it can be a lot of fun for students. If you don't have a class from another country, you could also start the e-mail project within the school or even class.
I'm excited to learn more about New Media and how to use it in the foreign classroom.

second session

2006-05-02T00:15:00.000-07:00

It's a fun session today. We started with our e-mail project today and were supposed to write little introductory letters into our profils. Unfortunatly our partner came a little late to the chat and we hadn't to much time to talk. Nassim and I were in one group. We had a lot of fun. I'll write more later. ...

2006-04-30T05:38:00.000-07:00

That's me. I didn't know how to put a picture on the "about me" site, so I just thought I can put it here. In the background you can see Michelstadt, "the heart of the Odenwald", as it is often called. That's where I come from. Beautiful piece on earth! :)

first week of studies

2006-04-30T04:05:00.000-07:00

The first week is done. I never like the first week of the semester. It's sometimes hard to get the schedule all together and it's always a lot of new information which you get. The last three days I participated in a special seminar for those who do the english practicum this semester. It's was actually very intersting and helpful for teaching later on the the english classroom, but it wasn't too nice to be at the PH friday and saturday. Oh well, the first week is done and luckily we'll have monday off!

2006-04-25T06:28:00.000-07:00

Well. What are my expectations?? That's something to think about first. ... last semester I was joining a seminar in which we were working with langugae in media as well. Mr.Ulrich was the teacher and told us about how to use the internet for teaching a foreign language. I really liked that seminar and this was a reason for me to join another seminar dealing with computers and language.
I hope to learn more about how to teach english and use media at the same time. Kids growing up today already know a lot about computers and often like to play computer games or do other things on the computer, so I think it's important to use the computer in school as well to help students find out what else they can do with computers.
In Mr. Ulrich's class we had a chance to look at those same journals which Mr.Raith showed us, but we didn't have the chance to learn ourselves how to create a weblog. I'm glad we do that now. I'm really a person who learns better in doing it. This morning when we asked each other the questions Mr.Raith gave us, the word "weblog" sounded familiar to me, and now I remember where I heard that before.... :) I'm excited to learn more about new media in the foreign classroom.