Lesson Plan: The Biography of Barack Obama

Time	Course of the class	Activity	Media/Material	Objectives
5 min	Opening of the lesson	brainstorming	blackboard	Activation of the pupils‘ previous knowledge
5 min	Main part of the lesson	Listening to the sound sample	cd-player or online on www.eslpodcards.com	Listening comprehension
5 min.	Main part of the lesson	Listening a second time and answering the questions on the worksheet	cd-player or online www.espodcards.com worksheet	Listening comprehension and note-taking ability
10 min	Main part	Comparing the results	Worksheet	Conversation between pupils and teacher
20 min	Creative part	Marking the different stages in Obama’s life on a world map	Worksheet with a map on it, small sheets of paper to write down the stages and glue them on the map	Visualization of the results of the lesson

My dream project

My dream project would be working with a webquest I have designed about the attack on Pearl Harbor:

http://www.students.uni-marburg.de/~Kadach/webquest/introduction.html

For this webquest, the pupils have to put themselves in the position of investigative journalists who want to publish a book about the attack on Pearl Harbor. The crucial point about this task is that the pupils are supposed to speculate (because there cannot be a definite answer) about whether or not President Roosevelt might have known (or even co-planned) the attack in advance.

Answers to the questions

My first question was in which subjects the new media might be used the most. Mr Schouler said that this question was quite hard to answer because he is a teacher of English, physical education and computer sciences and therefore, he does not know that much about the use of the new media in other subjects. But nevertheless, he has noticed that the teachers of the natural sciences often teach in the computer rooms and in the so-called “Lernwerkstatt” and thus, they seem to include the new media in their lessons.

Furthermore, especially the English teachers make use of the new media very often because there are many ways in which they can be employed effectively, e.g. for e-mail correspondences with English-speaking countries or for watching videos and movies. These are all methods which provide the pupils which authentic language material, which might be more motivating for them than working with a textbook.

 My second question was how the school was raising enough money to be able to afford the new media. It turned out that the schools “profited” to from the financial crisis to some extent because to make the economy in Germany flourish, the government has spent a lot of money on computers and data projectors etc. So the Alfred-Wegener school which is already quite well-equipped will soon get 80 new computers and new data projectors with integrated DVD-players so that if a teacher wants to watch a video with his pupils, he only has to insert a DVD. This new technique saves much time because the teacher does not need a TV and DVD-player to show a film.

Questions for the field trip

For our field trip to the Alfred-Wegener school  in Kirchhain, we had to think of two questions we would like to ask. These are mine:

1.) In which subjects are the new media used the most and why?

2.) How do you provide enough money for the equipment?

Describing a teaching project with the new media

For this blog task, we had to find an interesting teaching project that involves the new media and describe why we think it was a success. Unfortunately, it was really hard for me to find a good teaching project on a reliable website.

Finally, I have found a very nice webquest by a teacher of Latin and Catholic Theology, which can be found here: 

http://www.interrete.de/latein/Troja/Intro01.html

 

Especially in the classical languages like Latin or Ancient Greek it is essential for the teachers to be equipped with appropriate methods to motivate their pupils since often these subjects are considered somewhat outdated. The webquest seems to have been a great success because some teachers made comments on it and they were all very enthusiastic about it.

This webquest is called “Der Kampf um Troja” and deals with all the events and mythology concerning Troy. As in every good webquest, the pupils have to take up different roles in order to do the assigned tasks. In this case, they are reporters from a radio station who have to create a live report about the fall of Troy.

The reason why I find this webquest especially interesting is its quite attractive design. Despite the fact that the text is sometimes not that well readable because the background colour is too dark, the webquest makes use of quite a lot of animation and different pictures have been inserted that fit well to the topic. It is also worth mentioning that the pupils have to do the tasks correctly in order to be able to finish the webquest because sometimes, you need a password which is hidden in a certain task to be able to go on. What is also quite useful is the fact that the webquest cannot only be used in Latin but also in history or Ancient Greek classes.

The teacher who created the webquest said that it could be used in every class but I think it should be restricted to classes 8-10 because the design is not that appropriate for older pupils. But nevertheless, this teaching project should be realized at school because it might be highly motivating for the pupils or at least more interesting than working with the textbook all the time. As a future teacher of Latin working with webquests is definitely something I would like to try out.

Comparison of learning software

First of all, I have to mention that I had a lot of problems analyzing the learning software because most of them could not be installed on the university computers. The only one I could really have a look at was the program “Lernvitamin Plus English” by Cornelsen. I could also have a peek at a restricted version of “English II” (Winlernen).

Comment on one of the posters

The poster that the 8th group has created deals with the question how the internet can be used with respect to multicultural and cooperative learning.

So the group came up with three major categories that might help to ensure this type of learning: communication, research and presentation. Then, the group listed some keywords that fall under each category. For communication, these are: skype, emails and chat, for research: search engines and online libraries and for presentation: podcasts, homepages and weblogs.

In the middle of the poster, the group has written a boomerang-shaped headline “Multicultural and cooperative learning” .

Visually, the poster is quite appealing because different colours were used in order to indicate that there are different categories. The listed keywords also seem to make sense but they do not go very much into detail and thus, the viewer might have some difficulty connecting the keywords with the topic “multicultural learning” because the connection is not explicitly mentioned and you can only guess what could be meant.

However, the keywords are such broad terms that you can quite easily imagine what they have to do with multicultural learning. The communication section, for example, provides you with different tools that can all be used in order to get into contact with other people. Thus, they can be employed to stay in contact with your friends, but they can also be used in school if you want to start an email friendship with a school from a foreign country. Therefore, these tools have very much to do with multicultural learning.

You can also have a look at websites or blogs from another country and get a more or less authentic overview of what their culture is like. By means of search engines you can also find some information about a certain country and its culture.

So all in all, this poster is quite nice because it provides the viewer with some head terms of what the internet and the web can be used for. But it does not directly show the connection between these tools and multicultural learning.

Why use the new media in foreign language education?

Using the new media in school can be of a great advantage for the pupils as well as for the teachers, especially in foreign language education. But nevertheless, there are also quite many dangers that one should be aware of.

Hello world!

Welcome, dear readers!

This is my very first blog and I am happy that so far everything has worked out fine with it. I have created it for the class  “New Media in Foreign Language Education” at the University of Marburg and from now on, I will try and publish new posts regularly. Feel free to leave a comment!