Our Class 2006

Semester 2, 2006. Our first lesson.

Hi all,
Welcome to our class blog!

I hope you had a good break and feel ready to work hard this semester. Welcome to the new students.

1. Today I would like you to start work by thinking about posture and good computer habits. Visit this website on Computer stations and read about good working positions, wrists, distance to the monitor, etc. Later I will give you a quiz with questions about good working posture.
   
2. We are also going to have a look at what a blog is. Search the net for a definition (Google, Ask Jeeves, Alltheweb search, wiki, etc). An example of a class blog is the one my previous class had, Our class 2005, this one, Our Class 2006 and the ones linked on the rightside bar below Other ESL Class Blogs . Spend some minutes exploring them and you will get an idea of what we will be doing on Tuesdays. Make sure you visit some of the student blogs (the links are also on the right hand side) which will give you an idea of what you will be doing. Later we will start our own blogs. If you have trouble at home, this power point presentation can help you: Blogger.com Tutorial.


3. We are subscribed to Time4English. Ask me the username and password and you can read/listen to some of their activities. It's a great resource for students at your level. Today you can go to UPPER INTERMEDIATE, Aboriginal Culture. Listen to it, fill in the gaps and when you finish, print it as an example of an information report. Look here for a description of the structure of information reports and write the different parts of this one, Aboriginal Culture.



4. TypeQuick is a program that can help you learn typing more efficiently. All TAFE pcs have it. Ask me to show you how it works. When you have time, you can practise at the college library or ASC.
5. Every week we have a discussion on our forum (right side bar). Go there and answer the forum question. Ask me for the user name and password.



6. Get a headset and listen to any of the listening sites/blogs in Listening Links (right sidebar) or in our own audio blog Sydney's People Podcast. You can also listen to last semester's students' radio programs in Let's Talk. We will be doing something similar this semester. Start getting ideas for your own radio programs.



7. We will aso be doing an online module, Approaches to Learning and some work on Exploring the Internet and Diversity in Education, which are all part of your course. You need to have your student number and an email address.



8. Buy a pair of headphones with microphone (you don't have to spend more than $11.00-$12.00). It's a good idea to bring a floppy disk or a memory stick to class, in order to save some of your work and to bring photos from home (you can also email the photos to yourself).

Good fun and happy learning!

Labels: edublogger, English, esl, esol, multiculturalism, p2p

posted by rosa ochoa @ 12:33 AM