Countable and Uncountable Nouns Presentation

Hi, so this is my presentation. Please open it full size on the online PowerPoint to enjoy a full enriching experience :)

Now I see taxis everywhere

𝕐ou know when you cut your hair and now everyone you see has short hair, or when you buy a new piece of clothing and now everyone in the streets is wearing the same thing?

I used to see g-classes everywhere after deciding they’re my favorite type of car because they’re not very popular. They’re still not popular but they were the first thing my eyes would lay at if I saw one. Now all I see is taxis. No, I don’t want to buy a taxi. I don’t even want to use one when I’m in Albania. But it was that one project that made me aware of their all around presence, and it was that specific amount of time working on that project, that got me attached to said item.

The project we did wasn’t anything big or special. After all it wasn’t even the group’s idea. But it was its creation process that made it special. So it is not about the result, but about the experience. Maybe the fact that I would be presenting in front of some of my favorite teachers may count as the special thing. Or the fact that I was trusted to present it in the first place, which is a thing I am very thankful of.  Yet, I learned a few very important lessons during these days. I learned to trust in group work. I’m a late bloomer in that direction. I believe it was the fact that all of my team were good students and most importantly great individuals you could easily communicate with, and I learned to let do. I am very possessive of my work, (not in a bad way I swear) because of the curse of being a perfectionist up to some point. But this time deciding to let everyone do their thing without interfering was something that came naturally to me. So I am thankful of a great presentation partner with killer presenting skills and a supportive team who were just as anxious as us to get a decent presentation as well.

The only thing I might’ve been a bit sad about, was the change of the name of the DictioTaxi, wishing it remained the same, but I am sure there’s a good reason behind. In a conference context, the good amount of work did pay off, so now I only hope that students in the following years make it possible for the work to be out there in the world.

Now even though my defensive mechanism wouldn’t let me express my excitement in the day of the thing, I genuinely was exhilarated, and there were a lot of sparks, so I am thankful of that too.

And as always, thanks for reading.

Here are some pictures I wish I was cropped out of xp

This is probably the last blog post, so no matter the sentiment, sorrowful or liberated, it will be nice having a thing as such to look back when nostalgia hits.

☀ LEARNING OUTDOORS FOR A CHANGE ☁

                                                                  ꃼ
I am finally writing about a theme I am very fond of. My favoritest. And as the title implies, it is about outdoor learning. Learning outside the class environment has indeed been one of my favorite activities in elementary school. I remember almost everything about those classes. I even found a four-leaf clover once, my first four leaf-clover ever. It was indeed a biology class, and until late I used to think outdoor learning can only serve a biology, history or geography class. But no, I was totally proved wrong, and all the research that I have been doing has left me speechless about the infinite ways in which you can integrate the outdoors into your English teaching. Not long ago I had my first experience as an outdoors teacher. I was obviously skeptic about the fruitfulness of the method, yet day by day, I come to the conclusion that it is absolutely necessary for such method, if I may call it so, to take place as a learning environment. In order for my suggestion to resonate to you, so that you can use it in your future classes, in case you’re still curious about the benefits of it, let me tell you why.

                                                                   ⁂

Outdoor learning has a positive impact for teachers and educators on their practice, health and wellbeing, professional development, job satisfaction and can support curriculum delivery.

Outdoor learning has positive impacts for children - it works on their intrinsic motivation for learning, provides enjoyable lessons, increases creativity, and activates thinking outside the box.  It also improves children’s social skills and behavior, and furthermore has been proven to encourage better attendance, teamwork and to reduce bullying. Studies have shown better grades, decreased stress level, increased motivation, better attitudes about the environment, better overall behavior, increased communication skills and outdoor skills, increased self-dependence and improved memory because moving the class outside opens up a world of fresh stimuli for the senses that have an amazing power to lock into the brain and secure whatever information was being learned at the time along with it. Outdoor education and play support emotional, behavioral and intellectual development. Studies have shown that students who learn outdoors develop: a sense of self, independence, confidence, creativity, decision-making and problem-solving skills, empathy towards others, motor skills, self-discipline and initiative. Often, the outdoors provides a change of pace from the classroom, which students and teachers enjoy. Studies have shown increased student enthusiasm for learning outdoors – if the student loves doing something, they are more motivated to lean hard and are more likely to learn from that thing, as long as teaching outdoors is fun. It is also very inexpensive, can work with all ages and can be adapted to each child’s learning goals and needs. 

                                                                   ✻

Activities and games you can use.

Writing activities:  ✒

• Ask your students to collect some items that interest them. For example, a shell, a flower or a pebble. Ask them to create their own exhibition and to write a caption for each item.
• Ask your child to shoot a short, silent video. For example, my favorite places, or my favorite things to do outdoors. Then ask them to write 10–20 English words to describe their video. If they feel confident, they could then record a voiceover to their video, using the words from their list.
• Outdoor adventures can be a great inspiration for creative writing. Ask your students to take some photos of things that interest them. Then ask them to use one or more of the pictures to write a short story. 

Reading activities:

• Ask your students to research an outdoor food recipe - something that could be cooked on a barbeque/campfire, or something that could be prepared for a picnic.
• Your students might like to create their own outdoor reading den. Encourage your child to read storybooks outside, particularly books about outdoor adventures and nature. 

Speaking and listening activities ☊

• Decide on an obstacle course, with objects that have to be avoided (for example, trees, bushes, footballs). One student will walk through the obstacle course while blindfolded. Another student will guide them using English words (e.g. left, right, stop, take one step back). 
• Scavenger Hunt. Give your children a list of things they need to find outdoors. They can be a pebble, a leaf, a piece of wood, etc. If you want to make it more challenging, ask them to find items from specific colors, textures or in alphabetical order. You are also welcome to hide items related to a specific set of vocabulary words that you want them to practice. After a period of time, ask them to show you all the treasures they found outdoors and tell you what they are for, or maybe take pictures of.

• Play guessing games such as I spy something that starts with the letter … and 20 questions (ask your child to think of something, then ask up to 20 questions to guess what it is). 
• Balloon War Attack. This activity is great for reinforcing the vocabulary words that they may be struggling with. What you need to do is fill balloons with water. Then, give the kids a permanent marker and ask them to write a vocabulary word on the surface of each balloon. (If they don’t know how to write yet, you can do it, while shouting the vocabulary word out loud.) After the task is done, the kids will need to review every vocabulary word using them in a sentence or giving specific examples. They will get one balloon for each correct answer. Therefore, the more balloons they get, the better prepared they will be for the water balloon war that comes at the end of the exercise.
• Simon Says. This classic game of giving players a command starting with the phrase “Simon Says” is a great teaching tool. It will entertain your children while helping with their listening skills. Make sure the commands require physical activity such as: “hop on your left leg” or “jump up five times.” You can add props to make the activity even more fun!
• Talk Amongst Yourselves. Give students discussion questions or have them bring their group activities outside. Your students will find lots of space to get away from their classmates, and will have just as much to talk about when they are outside as when they are inside. If you are looking for a specific topic to bring outdoors, why not talk about being environmentally conscious? Challenge your students to find evidence of your school acting in earth friendly ways. At the same time, have them list any ways they think your school could be more environmentally conscious, and use those ideas to write letters of recommendation to the school board.
• Maybe take them on a school trip to someplace the locals speak English so the students will be more exposed to the language and have more opportunities to practice speaking.

So, when planned and implemented well, learning outside the classroom contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils ‟personal, social and emotional development‟ (Ofsted 2008)

Peer review - how to do it right (MUST READ)

...or not, because it's just a post like all the others.

If you made up your mind, then here you go. First things first – I am copy-pasting some parts of this post because this is what you do in the era of technology – but the idea is original. Swear. That’s what matters right? At the end of the day I am doing this for a good purpose. At the very very last end of the day everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. Even this sentence is a copy.

So during these last few weeks, we have dealt with a lot of presentations in class, be it our own or our friend’s. Be it on this subject or on any other. In most of them we were invited by our professors to comment on, praise them or suggest our friends how to do better. This is why I am coming up with a list of attitudes we should get in order for our comments to really be worth saying, and help the other.

1) Be professional. This is a core part of your job as an academic. You help and want to be helped. During all of your life you will have to deal with comments on your work. You might as well learn to do yours like a pro. It shows both that you are part of the academy and willing to engage in the interplay that makes the profession work.

2) Be pleasant. If the presentation is truly awful, suggest a reject but don't engage in ad hominem remarks. Rejection should be a positive experience for all. Don't say things in a peer review that you would not say to the person's face in a presentation or in a bar after a conference. I have done this before, and it really felt bad afterwards, even though it was true that didn’t like the other presentations. Or was I mad I didn’t get the validation in mine? Either way, experience talking here.

3) Be helpful. Suggest how to overcome the shortcomings you identify. It's the easiest thing in the world to poke holes in something. It is usually much harder to suggest how to fix them. A review is more than a suggestion to revise, reject or accept. It should be meaningful. It should guide your colleagues on what is good and what is not so good as you see it. If it's too short, then it probably isn't going to do that. So be loquacious. Explain what is going on in your thinking. Suggest alternative approaches.

4) Be scientific. Your role is that of a scientific peer. It is not that of an editor in either the proofreading or decision-making sense, even though grammatical mistakes suffocate me it’s so hard to act blind. But I feel it is best to fall back on making a review with editorial and typographic issues. Concentrate rather on showing the added value of your scientific knowledge and not so much on missing commas etc. If as part of your revision you think that the presentation should be professionally proof edited, then say so. (btw if you know someone who needs an editor, let them know about my existence, please) The presentation is not about style but substance, unless the very bad style gets in the way. Sometimes it hurts. Me. It’s the OCD.

5) Be realistic. Be realistic about the work presented, changes you suggest and your role. You as a reviewer are part of the process. You don't have final say on the determination of the presentation. Sometimes this overriding is because the bar being set by you is too high for that presentation, but keep your feet on the ground.

6) Be empathetic. Think of the best review you have gotten in terms of guiding a presentation forward. Then think of the worst. Which would you rather get on average? Then put yourself into the shoes of the student whose presentation you are commenting on. Where along the scale will your comment fall? What goes around comes around and therefore ensuring that your reviews are scientific, helpful and courteous is a good idea.

7) Be organised. To review means communicating. It therefore requires structure and a logical flow. It is not possible to critique a presentation for logical holes, grammatical howlers, poor structure etc. if your critique is itself rife with these flaws. Think before commenting, then rethink. At the start, give a brief one or two sentence overview of your review. Then give feedback on the following: structure, the quality of data sources and methods used, specific issues required by the project theme, logical flow of argument (or lack thereof), and validity of conclusions drawn. Then comment on style, voice and lexical concerns and choices, giving suggestions on how to improve.

7.Stopping here because the coolest things in the universe are 7.

And as always, thanks for reading. Busy lives we’re living! ♥

PTT

Powerpoint has now become a method of teaching in itself. Scholars should put it in their science books and have it taught as part of glottodidactics. It is so common that if you're bad at PowerPoint u should fail as a teacher or student. And while I am just kidding, I'm also being dead serious about the reality and the importance it has gotten. I remember 8th grade maybe, buying colorful posters, printing out images, gluing them on, handwriting the text and sometimes pushing it to the limits using the poster as a book or have it opened as a window in front of the class. Do I miss that time? Yes. Would I like to go back? No, don't expect me to say no, because I would love to if I continue being exposed to the PowerPoints I am being exposed to. The mass usage of the PowerPoint has made it so boring to look at them and be interested in when the presentations are dull. You have to be extra creative and invest a lot of time and effort in it to really make a difference, because theyre no longer something special. They are everywhere, in every class, in every company, in the military. I've even seen kids communicating to their parents in a powerpoint presentation why they needed a new instrument. Ema Stone told her parents that she decided to be an actress using a ppt presantation. What I am trying to convey, is that you just have to be imaginative with them. Experiment with them. Be authentic by not using the same animations and designs and fonts and structures everybody else uses. Bad powerpoints just offer an alternative something to look at. Instead a good PowerPoint presentation is created specifically to BE the thing you would want to look at and not want to miss out. I truly believe in the power of a beautiful presentation in the learning process of the students and any audience in general, and the effect it has in their attention and visual memory people funcion with. It's crazy. We remember best how the information was presnted to us rather than the piece of information itself. It happens subconsciously. This is why with PowerPoint being around for more than 30 years now, I belive in the 3 main ideas related to it, to make its usage more effective. USE IT LESS, USE IT DIFFERENTLY, and USE IT BETTER. 

Until next time, thank you. 

Webinars - what about them?

Did I watch all 3 hours of webinars? No. Only partially.

Would I watch them if I actually were interested in the content? Definitely yes.

And this is why I feel like webinars are awesome. You get to see the content you want in the comfortability of your home. But there have to be very specific conditions for webinars to take place. I feel like they are the last resort if you don’t want to spend money travelling or if you don’t have the time to. Because this is what a webinar does best – connect people unable to attend a physical learning class, and enable them to actually experience learning in a very cost effective way.

The challenges are huge, attending one as a student and especially as a teacher. If it ever crosses your mind that it is easier learning online, you’re wrong. It requires a lot of motivation to concentrate and a very established peace of mind. Because either the topic has to be highly engaging or the students have to be highly engaged in order to not lose track when the subject is boring. Even though it is true that you can still go back and rewatch it when the webinar is done and saved, and it is so flexible you can even pause it if your baby is crying or you feel like taking a break. After all, more frequent breaks are something we could all use in a physical class, and you can even grab a cup of coffee to maintain your alertness during a webinar ;)

Back to challenges – from the perspective of the teacher, I would mention that a lot of preparation is demanded to be done, as it is necessary to have good knowledge in technology to undertake the right steps and use the proper tools to create the webinar, like audience polls, Q&A chat functions, and whiteboards and to later work with them virtually as the students contribute. Even though there is no special equipment needed, which would count as a positive aspect, there can be incompatible system configurations and other downsides like the fact that a bad internet connection means distortion and delay, so both parties have to be well set in order for it to work. So a good internet speed is the real deal. There is also a lack of one on one interaction with the students, so you don’t really get to know them, and the other way around, unless the webinars are rare and you see them other times in class. Knowing them means you feel when something need to be explained otherwise because you see that in their eyes – and other limitations.

A good thing about webinars is that the teacher doesn’t have to worry about motivating students. It it is taken for granted that they want to be there and want to learn, unlike the physical class where if you’re not interesting, there are going to be students disrupting the learning process, and a good amount of time may go to waste. With webinars and you can also have an unlimited amount of audience to attend since it is online, and there is A LOT of space in the web.

So after all, even though I re-state it – webinars are awesome – I wouldn’t choose this method for students that can easily travel to class, as long as I am aware of the all possible pitfalls. I’d use it if my teacher was in the US or I were in Japan, but not close to. And it is method you can only use if all of your students agree to. So it is not all up to you.

[θæŋk jʊ fə ˈriːdɪŋ, lɛt ðə ˈkɒmɛnts fləʊ, ɔː nɒt]

Project Fundatur Cognita

Not to sound cliché or anything, but PBL is the best of the techniques I know of yet. The coolest. The most practical and engaging and useful and entertaining. You can have your normal, traditional, boring class every day, add aside a fun project for your students they can learn interesting facts from by working on, and you automatically can get them committed to the subject. I mean, it’s not this easy of course, and there is no fixed formula, but that’s how useful these projects are. And don’t get me wrong here, because not any kind of project you know of works. If we go back during our education years, we’ve done them a lot. Head online, check a couple of links, copy some information, shuffle the paragraphs and voilà! A+.

PBL is much more than that, and by reading your good posts, I know you already know.

But I’d like to offer some retrospective for y’all, during the last year of my high school, on the subject of literature, where we were asked to do a project, more of a research work, about all the teachers of literature that worked on my high school since the beginning of times. We had to find life facts about them, the exact work years, and other details of their work we could find useful. We were divided into groups and had a whole semester to complete the project, to later present it as a whole class in a conference, that would come to the help of a book about the history of the school that was later o be published. During that experience I remember being so anxious, because there was nothing online, no books about it, and no instructions given by the teacher. All of the work had to be done by asking the elders, other teachers and getting information at the office of archives. And it was a massive work of us (read: me) having to do countless visits at that office and at the library, reading vast volumes of old registers, where some of the print would be unintelligible. Anyway long story short – even though it didn’t impact my learning in the subject, it certainly affected my problem solving skills, time efficiency, it helped me write a proper article, challenged my thinking, and improved me in a lot of other competences. Reflecting upon it, the project even helped me unearth things I didn’t know I enjoyed doing. It made everyone at the end of the project, feel like they contributed to something bigger, and what’s most important, appreciate what is authentic. Do you feel any kind of accomplishment when you send in a copy-pasted project? Because I don’t.

That said, us, the teachers, have the possibility to cultivate this sort of learning to our students. The example I gave may not be the best example, because it had a lot of drawbacks I’m not going to focus on, but imagine getting your students to work on a project that really interest them and they’re passionate about. It can work wonders with their learning abilities. It’s all about giving them a purpose and get them to think outside the box and beyond borders. It is how deep learning happens, utilizing the academic content in new context, in the real world, applicable especially in the subject English, where the project can be about ANYTHING in the world, except that in the English language xp. If there is anything more student-centered than this, I don’t know what is.

And it can be complex, yes, but it is in your hands not to make it stressful for your students, so be kind, because at the end of the day it’s just a project and they can lean in a million thousand other ways, so it’s best to be realistic and understanding that not everyone is cut for it.

Thassit! Thank you for reading, really. ♥