Instructional Technology quizzes

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This time we are going to work with some useful Internet tools(quizzes on youthink.com, a video, a listening and a reading), which are intended to help students to get a better understanding of the topics and they also have a big chance to reinforce some skills in the target language. That is why, we have prepared 3 quizzes which contain 12 questions each, and they are designed for three different age levels: kids, teens and adults.
To continue, we will describe what each quiz is based on and then we will give you an idea on how to develop each of them.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE QUIZZES

These are multiple choice quizzes constituted by 12 statements with three possible options each. You have to go to the different links and then based on that, you have to choose the most appropriated answer. If you cannot open the links from here, you can Google them. At the end of each quiz you can check your score and see how accurate you were in your answers.

FIRST QUIZ

1)-This is an amazing quiz for kids and it is based on a very nice story narrated by a kid who wanted to eat a cake his mother had baked. At night, he makes the decision to go for it, and he tiptoes toward the kitchen fearing to wake up his parents just to discover out that his sister has eaten the cake.
2)-The first thing you must do is to watch the video and pay close attention to single details to answer the quiz in a correct way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL6xzw7kKN8

3)-After watching it, go to: http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_action=take&obj_id=208422&filter=my_qs&f_cat_id=-1&time_span=all

SECOND QUIZ

1)-This quiz is for teenagers and it is based on a reading about the smell of a book. It says that each smells remembers us something and that everything has a different smell. The author says that his favorite smell is of a book’s, and he also describes some books he has bought because his favorite hobby is reading.

2)-Go to the following link to read the article:
http://www.topics-mag.com/edition19/smells/book.htm

3)-After that, go to this link to carry out the quizz.
http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_action=take&obj_id=208153&filter=my_qs&f_cat_id=-1&time_span=all

THIRD QUIZ

1)-This quiz is for adults, and it is based on a listening about “the ideal woman.” We can listen to the opinions of two friends who have different points of views about the ideal woman. There is one man who seems to be possessive and perceives a woman as a slave, and the other who describes a woman with wonderful feelings and emotions.

2)-listen to the conversation on:
http://www.esl-lab.com/ideal/idealrd1.htm

3) Go to the following link to carry out the quiz:http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_action=take&obj_id=208414&filter=my_qs&f_cat_id=-1&time_span=all
It is important to say that some of the statements need your critical thinking because you cannot find the exactly answers in the audio.

CONCLUSION
This activity has been meaningful for us because most of the time students and teachers are accustomed to the traditional quizzes based on paper, but with these tools we can change the methodology, and it can benefit our pupils and the teacher. As you can see, by using these methodologies, we have access to most of students’ skills. We are sure that students will enjoy the experience of taking online quizzes and little by little they will get practice on the use of Internet tools.

My first class

Well, I´m gonna talk about my first class at the university. It was in Advanced English II with teacher Giovanni Blanco. To be honest, that day I was very nervous because some of the students were my classmates, but at the end it was an advantage for me.

I started my class with a beautiful quote, and some students helped me to read and analyze it. Then, I developed the warm up activity. For me it was incredible because students were exiting to participate. It was a group spelling activity, so we were shouting to confuse the person at the front. The problem was that we were making such as noise that it made me feel that the teacher next door was going to arrive to say that they were in classes. Fortunately, it didn’t happen.

The topic of the class was adjectives and word order, so I studied a lot to be prepared to whatever unexpected question. I really like that when teaching advance students, we have to investigate and read to be ready. It is incredible that I studied that topic in grammar, but I didn’t learn it, and now I manage it very well.

During the class, some students asked me about the topic, and I was happy to answer them. Then, I gave them a series of sentences, which they had to organize, and when I saw that all the groups did it correctly, I felt as a good teacher jaja. At the end, we share the answers, and I congratulated them because of their effort.

Also it is important to mention that the teacher gave me the feedback at the end of the class. He gave me some recommendations that for sure will benefit my work as a teacher.

My computer and Internet skills

Though the introduction of technology in our Educational system,
the use of computers and Internet skills have become essential in the development of our classes.
Technology as a friend of our work, can help us to do our job in less time,
innovate our activities and classes.
The thing is that we have two types of teachers.
First, the ones that don´t care about learning how to manipulate a computer
or how to use Internet tools. Those teachers prefer to continue
using the old methods in which the teacher spent the whole class
just talking and talking without noticing that some students were not paying attention.
There is another type of teachers that have little knowledge about computers,
but they don´t want to improve it.
The thing is that everyday new sources, pages etc, are appearing,
so we have to be up dated.
This type of teachers just use the common resources as the e-mail account, messenger etc,
believing that they are the only things students need to use.

For those many reasons, I want to tell you why you must
develop your computer skills even if you don´t like.
As you already know, nowadays kids, teens and also adults tend to be attracted
by computers and Internet tools, so I teacher must take this information
as an allied that can help to keep students on the road.
A teacher has to investigate what type of electronical sources,
pages and groups his/her students are interested in,
so that she/he can use those sources with the purpose of introducing
students to knowledge by using their own methods.
This means that if they don´t want to go in the way you go,
you must change your direction.
Remember that the best way to learn
is by doing something that you like.
Due to these factors, a teacher must polish his/her computer skills,
so that he/she can be introduced to other´s way of learning.

Another important thing is that you must try to innovate
your classes as much as you can because
it will give them a sense of freshness.
Remember that every student has to spend years in the learning process,
and to be exposed to the same techniques all the time can be boring.
That is why you must innovate your lessons and activities.
Imagine that you are going to have a 2 minutes presentation,
but your students don´t feel comfortable when talking in front of many people,
so you can change the methodology by telling them that
they will do it by recording their voice in voxopop.
That change in you lesson could help many students to start
improving their speaking skills because they know
that they have to be well prepared.
In this case, the teacher has a big responsability because he/she must know
about the different options to develop a single activity.

Also a teacher must improve his/her computer and Internet skills
because when using technology, students can find different difficulties,
and they expect the teacher to solve them.
Imagine that you ask your students to look for information
and then cite the sources, but after a complete homework
you find out that a student has problems and that he/she cannot find
the web side used to get the information.
The student feels bad because it was hard to do the activity.
In this case, you must have general knowledge that makes you remember
that every computer has an application, in Internet, that tells you about
the last visited pages, so that you can find what the page used by the student was.
This means that a teacher must know in order to teach students
because it could be strange that a student tells you how to do everything.
YOU CANNOT TEACH WHAT YOU DON´T KNOW,
SO, LETS PRACTICE IN INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY.