11 mai 2015

One more MOOC platform

Hello! I've just discovered the Coursera MOOC platform which is also extremely interesting: a wide and varied range of courses, quite a few literature MOOCs including an excellent one about Shakespeare. Here is the website link.
I warmly recommend it! I'm looking forward to your comments if you know any other useful MOOCs!

01 mai 2015

MOOCs, online learning and collaboration

A short post about MOOCS generally speaking and about my favourite MOOCs for language teachers. MOOCs stands for Massive Open Online Course. Here is Wikipedia’s definition. A MOOC is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive user forums to support community interactions between students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs). Learning with colleagues, sharing, collaborating and getting to know like-minded colleagues from all over the world are some of the numerous benefits of taking part in a MOOC. I recommend three in particular:
- The Electronic Village Online which takes place once a year in January and February. I have followed numerous EVO workshops (about Podcasting, gamification, the flipped classroom, how to teach vocabulary, creating eTextbooks, Educators and Copyright, and so on) and all have been excellent.
- Future Learn, the Open University's MOOC: I have just registered and love the course about starting writing.
- The European Schoolnet Academy: I loved the Future Classroom course and am currently enjoying the creative use of tablets in the classroom workshop. These are only three among thousands of MOOCs! I hope you find this post useful! Feel free to post a comment if you have any questions. You can also share your favourite MOOCs in the comments!!!:)

21 avril 2015

OIB presentation

Article about my OIB literature class -- Collaborating with an American author and becoming one!

Eric Price, award-winning fantasy writer, has agreed to be interviewed twice by my students and they are currently re-writing the third chapter of his novel, Unveiling the Wizard's Shroud. This collaboration has been fantastic and is still ongoing as Eric and I have new plans for the coming school year! Here is the first article. (published by the Café Pédagogique). Here is the second one published on Eric's author website. Here is the Padlet I'm using to share flipped resources with my class. And here is the first student version of chapter 3. Eric and I will soon give a webinar together about the whole project (on September 10, 2015.) Feel free to comment upon it and to share your feelings with the students!