Note To Self 3

Cough, cough ... check in advance what dates "scheduled ... upgrades" are going to take place when using an on-line course management system.

Note To Self 2

Don't assign homework to your students that you don't have time to grade. (There goes another weekend!)

Note To Self

Note to self: don't think you can use a publisher's on-line content management system just because you know your way around some web 2.0 apps. In other words ... you're not above needing to watch the video tutorial. (not all things in life are as intuitive as your Apple products;)

webinars

Last year (or maybe the year before) I participated in my very first webinar. What's a webinar you ask? A seminar on the web.(Duh!) Well, in my desire for professional development I thought it would be great to participate. I had all the required technology: a computer with internet access and a phone. Oh, and an hour ... preferably without interruptions like crying babies, etc. I was very excited.

When the day came, I logged on early, turned off my cell phone, used the speaker phone of my land line and there I was - one of the participants of this live meeting. I was impressed by how 15 or so people can meet in a virtual environment and discuss, somewhat substantively, a professional issue and actually get something out of it. Although you're just watching someone's powerpoint presentation and participating in a giant conference call, it's still a good thing for anyone who teaches Toefl. It helps reassure you that what you're doing in class is correct while exposing you to new approaches or ideas.

When ETS first launched the new iBT Toefl, I had attended their workshop, which was very organized and extremely useful. This was sort of a refresher and a chance to ask more questions. ETS also sends you a follow-up e-mail with links to other resources based on the conversation that unfolds during the webinar. I thought the best part of the webinar was ideas for lesson plans and list of additional resources.

The first time I only signed up for the speaking section because that was the section I was teaching. This time I joined all four sections in hopes of getting a better grasp on the entire test. So far I've only done two; I missed one because of a scheduling conflict. (I also love that you can actually get up and walk around while you're listening - although that's both a blessing and a curse).

I was happy and mildly disappointed to see that the webinars hadn't changed. Happy because it was something familiar, and I could navigate (post messages, raise my hand) more confidently, and kind of a let down because no new ideas on how to help students improve their test scores were given. But what did I expect? The test hasn't changed - why should the webinar?

I'm baaaackk!

As it's the first of the month, I thought I should share how I've made the conscience decision to be a more active blogger. That probably won't take much effort since my last post was more than a year ago.

No, really. I'm going to keep this blog more updated because I'm going to start using it as a platform for my action research experiment. More later.

Students say the funniest things.

A (slightly) repentant advanced student who missed the deadline for his essay assignment wrote:

"I know you gave me the chan[c]e to earn the points but I blew up my points."

Obviously he wasn't paying complete attention the semester before, or whenever it was that his previous teacher reviewed the idiom "I blew it".  Oh well, at least he tried.