I'm looking forward to this short break. Students have handed in their articles. I can already see some which are direct machine translations of a web site. One problem is that the people who attend the classes and read the blog and the materials wouldn't dream of using a machine translation. It's the ones who don't turn up that do.

But there are also some wonderful looking articles, where people have included very professional looking layouts and pictures. I would like to do more multi-modal design work with the students. What I need is a project in which they can choose a selection of different modes for presenting it i.e. a presentation, an article, a poster, a webpage, a blog, slides, a video etc.

Category: Reflections
Tags: academicliteracies, multimodaldesign

A reference I got from two students in their article:

http://www.google.com

And a majority of students cited as a source for information about their themes: http://www.companyname.com

One group challenged me when I said that I couldn't take "Portugal Telecom" as their primary source of information about innovation in Portugal.

One more thing to include in the course next semester.

Category: Reflections
Tags: academicliteracies

I have been suprised at how many students didn't make the connection between the plan that they spent so long preparing and the writing of the final text. A significant number (most?) seemed to start writing their text as if the plan had nothing to do with it. It was as if the plan and the text were two different "excercises". I must be more attentive to that next time.

Categories: Reflections
Tags: academicliteracies

When I write emails to my students or messages to the Yahoo Discussion Group I always sign off by saying:

Cheers,
Beverly

It is such a coloquial expression. Now we are nearly at the end of the semester I find that when students send me e-mails or when they send messages to the Yahoo Discussion Group they also sign off by saying "Cheers".

It brings me a smile every time.

Category: Reflections

Leio muitos blogues, o maior parte em inglês. Mas o melhor blogue para mi, em termos de conteudo e em termos de design, é o blog (Apontamentos) de João Vasconcelos Costa no seu site "Reformar a Educação Superior".

Ele é professor universitário com bastante experiência e peso. Por isso os seus perspectivas e apontamentos bem informados e críticos - além dos seus práticas em termos de design do site - tem ainda mais valor.

Catgories: Reflections
Tags: ensinosuperior, apontamentos

Artigo no DE: UNESCO e OCDE exigem novas regras no ensino internacional

Numero três dos três princípios que todos os responsáveis governamentais e órgãos ligados à educação devem respeitar:

3) reconhecimento do papel que o ensino universitário desempenha como forma de expansão da diversidade cultural e linguística, contribuindo também para o desenvolvimento económico e para a coesão social.

Category: Artifacts
Tags: ensinosuperior

I have done a lot of collaborative writing in my life. Twice, once recently, I have been suprised to find that the person I am "collaborating" with thinks that writing collaboratively means dividing up the writing task. I, on the other hand, see it as reworking a constantly evolving version of the same piece of writing. I guess that's why I have adapted so easily to Wikis.

I also see my students having difficulty in understanding the paradigm of reworking one version of a shared piece of writing. They view a piece of writing as a product not a process, so once there is a version on paper (or in this case on a Wiki) they don't feel that they can "mexer" with it.

I had to get all their separate texts and put them in the same Wiki and tell them to choose the best text. Only then did they ask if they could remix the texts to create "a better one" - getting the idea of what it means to Wiki. They were still surprised that I wanted them to delete the now-redundant text as they felt like they were deleting someone else's work, they didn't see that they had merely created a next version of all the texts.

Categories: Reflections
Tags: wikiwriting, collaborativewriting

Students have little idea about:
* writing paragraphs;
* citing other people's work;
* the difference between qutoing form commercial sites, educational or organisational sites and academic books or journals.

But they, or let's say a number of them, seem hungry to learn. I encourage them to write and re-write and re-re-write. Each time they write something they get suggestions and comments about how they could turn it into something that will get them a better mark. Some of them think that's cheating!

Categories: Reflections
Tags: academicliteracies

D'Arcy Norman Dot Net's thoughts on eportfolios:

* ePortfolio as a slice across all of a person’s online works
o blog
o Flickr
o del.icio.us
o …

* use an “eportfolio” tag in all of these tools, and use something like SuprGlu to gather pieces together - Small Pieces Loosely Joined

* foster collaboration/review/reflection

* professional development vs. compliance

o ePortflio as a tool/process - a verb, not a noun. journey, not destination. process, not product
o should be an optional activitiy - force people to do it, and it becomes meaningless
o must be flexible - structure, content, design
o able to opt-out, but you would then lose benefits of community/culture of professional development (but that should be a decision made by the individual)

* ePortfolio as theoretical process
o critical thinking about what best represents you
o pedagogical design/showcase
o can’t be represented by a simple fill-in-the-blanks “template” ePortfolio

* ePortfolio review
o by peers
o to foster discussion/reflection
o how about an “ePortfolio club” where students get together to critique ePortfolios (what goes into them, design, etc…)

* “Mass Amateurization” - where an amateur is able to easily reach ~80% of the quality of a professional, due to increased effectiveness of tools.



Category: Artifacts
Tags: eportfolio, edublog

Existe uma noção que o significado das palavras (técnicas) existe nos signos das letras; como se o significado das palavras residiu nestes mesmos signos. Assim, a tarefa de um professor de inglês será para transmitir estes signos aos alunos - com explicações, definições actividades e exercícios- claro!

Mas o significado de linguagem (a semiose?) não pode ser separado da comunidade (técnica, profissional ou académica) que os usam. O sentido está num processo constante de (re-)negociação. Os alunos, membros na periferia destas comunidades, estão num processo de observar e participar nestes comunidades em que este linguagem faz sentido. Por isso é errado pensar que o "inglês técnico" pode ser visto como uma disciplina das linguagens dissociada das comunidades e os valores e os géneros destas comunidades.

Por agora (até o dia em que Chinês tornar a língua franca) inglês é diferente das outros línguas. Mesmo uma pessoa que nunca sai fora de Portugal vai ter que interagir em inglês (presencialmente e online) com pessoas (e textos) das suas comunidades profissionais e académicos. Estes comunidades vão consistir em pessoas que não são inglesas mas que partilham e negociam um discurso e valores em vários línguas, principalmente numa língua inglesa.

Eu acho uma disresponsabilidade não preparar os alunos para participar nestes comunidades internacionais. Também acho é reducionista pensar que o ensino de inglês empresarial é só o ensino das palavras, ou linguagens, técnicas.

No meu ver isto é um factor contribuinte para as desigualdades em Portugal (e no mundo). Os alunos dos pais que viajam ou que fazem parte de um clique internacional vão ter uma grande vantagem no mundo internacional. E como o mundo está numa mudança tão rápida estas vantagens vão crescer e contribuir para disproporcionilização da participação numa sociedade de conhecimento. O resto dos alunos não vão perceber a sua desvantagem até que seja tarde demais.

Category: Reflections
Tags: identity, inglesparafinsespecíficos, comunicaçãointernacional

Hmmm ...I just included my del.icio.us cloud tag in my blog. These are a visual representation of my links, so they give an indication of my areas of interest. Now ... do I see Inglês Empresarial in my cloud tag? No - and nothing related. I do see a HUGE cloud tag for Communities of Practice.

Categories: Reflections

This is the second year we have been using a Yahoo Discussion Group for the discipline. I post all the discipline materials there and also the student marks. There is a summary of the system of evaluation in the database. I used to post a summary of each lesson there but now I use it for posting information and tips and Frequently Asked Questions. Students use it to "tirar duvidas" and sometimes to pass on jokes and links.

Category: Productions

During the last seven years my academic and professional identity has become quite separate from my Institution and role there. I wonder if and how that will change by keeping a portfolio blog.

Category: Reflections
Tags: eportfolio, identity, weblogs

I'm trying to get my students to write paragraphs. It's something they seem to have difficulty with. I've prepared a worksheet so that they have already thought about the function and topic sentence and key words of each paragraph before they ask me to look at their work.

Category: Productions
Tags: academicliteracies

Interesting post from Konrad Glogowski on the blog of proximal development. He talks about how his students missed the interactions that took place"with their texts and with each other through texts".

He finishes with this neat line: "I believe that learning is tools interiorized and thoughts made visible. I believe that blogging classrooms are helping us get there." This has added water to an idea that's incubating.

Category: Reflections
Tags: academicliteracies

For the first time I have evaluated students on their preparation for the two major pieces of work they have to do. The two major pieces of work are an Oral Presentation (OP) and "Timed Written Assignment" (TWA). I am giving them five percent of their final mark for an introduction to the theme and main points of the final OP; and I'm giving them another five percent of their final mark was for a plan of their TWA.

I was expecting resistance for two reasons: one is that students are not accustomed to formative evaluation which is what this is i.e. they got feedback (in the form of a nota and comments and suggestions); the other is that we are not supposed to have so many moments of evaluation. But not one student complained.

Many of them got very low marks (e.g. 6/20) for their TWA plans. So when I gave the plans back I invited them to improve their plan in the following week with a chance of improving their grade. Most of them did it. I think some of them thought I was giving them an opportunity to cheat! Maybe some of them realised that I was giving them an opportunity to improve (i.e. learn) and an opportunity to take an even greater learning step when they write their final TWA.

Category: Reflections
Tags: formativeevaluation

I value and appreciate positive feedback from students. But I would very much like to hear the voice of someone who was feeling lost of uncomfortable with the English classes. I would especially like to see that voice on the blog. Having it on the blog would turn it into an opportunity for learning - for me and for the students. But it would be VERY difficult, even impossible to get a student to genuinely speak their thoughts, if they thought it might jeapordise their marks. I couldn't even suggest for the blog that they write anonymously because I would have to invite them to be co-author. Not unless they set up an anonymous email account first. But I suspect that if someone had the initiative to do all that, then they wouldn't be struggling with the classes in the first place!

Category: Reflections

Following on from a previous comment, Eduardo also said this in a later post:

"Like Teacher Beverly said, nothing is ever done. Well, I have to complete my previous post, and when I've said "no more exercises" I wanted to mean those exercises like we are used to do. Not those we are doing at our classes! If my memory is right, we haven't done twice the same tipe of exercise, wich means that we have always a different way to learn. Not only english, because the same strategies that I've learn in the IE classes I use to understand Italian texts. It works!

I hope that my colleagues don't misunderstood my posts with "graxa", because the ideia here is to share my point of view about the classes, and if I'm enjoying them, I can only say good things about it. Maybe others could give their oppinion too - two persons can go to the cinema and get out with different oppinions. By the way, what should be the english word for "graxa"?"

Category: Testimonies

Eduardo, the student who is co-authoring the blog wrote this entry last week:

"In the beguinning I thought that Inglês Empresarial would use the same method as all the English Classes I had before: exercises, reading texts and doing homeworks. It was very boring and not practical for nowadays. Instead of that, we are having a new method wich helps not only to develop our English, but also to do things we haven't done in other school subjects yet: small presentation for an oral presentation, single oral presentation, TWA plan, an article for a journal...
We also have a mailing list to share ideas and doubts, a wiki page with lots of usefull expressions, and a blog to comment about our classes. For me, is a revolutionary method that is beyond all exercises we can do."

Category: Testimonies

I keep a blog for my students of Inglês Empresarial. The main idea of it is for me to have a space for thinking aloud about the disciplina of Inglês Empresarial so that students can accompany some of my reflections.

The blog also has links that will be useful for their oral presentations and Timed Written Assignment (about a theme of business interest that we cover during the semester). It also has links to sites where they can do language excercies and games. Every time someone shows any interest in something I put up a link for it. I also keep a monthly calendar there for tests or aulas extras etc.

Importantly there is also one student who writes on the blog. He regulalry posts in our Inglês Empresarial Yahoo Discussion Group and I invited him to be a co-author of the blog. I would like to have more co-authors, including students who have a different experience than that of Eduardo in the English classes.

Category: Productions

Category: Artifacts

Ainda não sei se vou escrever em inglês ou português. I still don't know if I'm going to write this in Portuguese or English - or both.

Mas quero já começar com o meu portfólio - e escolho fazer na forma de um blog. My portfolio is going to be written as a public blog as it might help give ideas to my colleagues. Podia estimular ideais para os meus colegas.

Estamos a começar um projecto piloto dos portfólios para professores no Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal. We're starting a pilot project of portfolios in the five schools at the Polytechnic of Setúbal.

Vou organizar o meu portfólio em cinco categorias. I'm going to organise my portfolio in four categories:

1. Artifacts/Artefactos - texts, materials, articles, syllabi, activities, film etc. produced by someone else/textos, materiás, artigos, programas, actividades, fotografias ... produzido por outro pessoa;
2. Productions/Produções - texts, materials, articles, syllabi, activities produced by me/textos, materiás, artigos, programas, actividades produzidos por mi próprio;
3. Testimonies/Testemunhos - feedback, comments, criticism, praise by students, colleagues or anyone; feedback, comentários, criticas, eulogias feito por estudantes, colegas ou ...
4. Reflections/Reflexões - my reflections and meta-reflections on my own practice; reflexões e meta-reflexões nas minhas próprias práticas.

No fim do ano academico vou fazer uma meta-reflexão sobre todos as entradas no meu portfolio. At the end of the academic year I'll do a meta-reflection of the whole thing.

Category: Reflections
Tags: eportfolios, weblogs