First, I can't believe it's the last day of May today, and we've gotten through five or six weeks of classes (depending on the day of the week) already.
I've been SO busy getting ready for classes (Introduction to American Culture and Literature takes the longest because I've been making PowerPoint presentations and Google Forms quizzes for every class so far) that I haven't had time to write any blog entries here for a while. So here are some stand out great moments in a couple classes. First, I've been having the students in my three conversation type classes give 2-3 minute self-introduction speeches one at a time, after each of which I ask about two students some comprehension questions and then have them ask the speech makers a question about the speech contents, and then sometimes have the speech maker return the question to them and so on and so forth. And every once in a while there is some kind of neat serendipity thing that happens where my random choices of students to do those things yields some surprising connections. For example, in one class last week (I can't even remember now which it was but maybe it was an Economics major Freshman English class on Wednesday), consecutive speech makers one after the other told us the following. The first speech maker said she likes drawing pictures of animals, specifically cats. The second speech maker said she likes coloring in pictures in coloring books, especially pictures of cats. The third speaker said she has a pet cat five-years old with a long tail. The boy whom I asked randomly to ask her a question asked her, "Do you take your cat on walks?" And she said, "no," so I made her return the question: "How about you? Do you take your cat on walks?" And the boy said, "Yes," so I asked him, "On a leash?" and he said "Yes." And I was so excited by the whole thing, the chance that four students would have cats like that (when most who have pets have dogs), and that one of them would take his cat out on a leash on walks, etc. was delicious. Made my day. Then in the Introduction to American Culture and Literature class, I was doing a special Wednesday class on Saturday (our university wants us to have fourteen class meetings no matter what, so they stick in extra Saturday classes here and there), and we were covering rhyme and so on, and I was introducing rhyme by showing them some educational games for American kids like puzzle blocks that only fit together with rhyming words (and that have neat pictures illustrating the words too), and then I showed them this TV game about rhyme for 5-9 year olds called Rhyme Robber, and I asked them to chat me the pictures whose words rhyme, and immediately there was this torrent of "cat hat," "bear chair," "snake cake," and so on scrolling down the Webex screen, and it was so funny and exciting I was laughing and clapping like a 5-9 year old, and I saw one guy suggested "neck snake," so I could say not really, and later refer back to it as another example of near rhyme when I was covering near rhyme later in the class. Anyway, it was great fun, really. Of course, I spent too much time playing around like that and so had to rush past assonance and consonance and never even mentioned rhythm, so the quiz was too hard again, but it was fun. I am really enjoying this weird class situation. Of course, the three conversation classes, two on one day, become grueling, and kind of all blur into each other, so I might be combining cat people from two different classes in my above account, but so far it has been somehow manageable and even fun (if very very exhausting). Good luck to us for the rest of the semester, which we're just over a third of the way through now.
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Last Friday I was just getting going in my Reading and Writing class (using Charlotte's Web), using Webex' online website application cause my desktop version stopped working two weeks ago (my meeting participants can't see or hear me, nor I them, when I use the desktop Webex), and I was just getting into the rhythm of the introductory things for that day, and I was just going to share with the students a two minute sample of E. B. White reading the first audiobook version of his novel Charlotte's Web when suddenly a happening happened! I couldn't see in the list of the applications Webex would let me share the Chrome Amazon webpage I had open to the audiobook with the sample ready to play at the right point etc. I panicked a bit because I vaguely remembered something similar happening in the second introduction to American Culture and Literature class when I was trying to share a web page... and then... and then... I might have clicked something strange--I can't remember now exactly what i did--but anyway suddenly Webex wouldn't let me share ANYTHING. When I tried sharing my PowerPoint slides or a Word page I had open, I got a "Webex can't share anything now" message or something similar. I had to share screens for the class to continue, but couldn't.
Panic! So then asked the students to leave the meeting so I could end it and then start it so they could rejoin it, etc. They were great--and after I restarted my computer and restarted the meeting, they all joined and we continued the class and it ended up OK, I suppose. But jeeze, I sure hate Webex! I can't count on it. Otherwise, last week's classes went OK, I guess. There were great moments in the three English conversation type classes where by chance a student giving a self-introduction speech got matched with a student to ask him/her a question and there was some kind of spark of simpatico connection, like two people who had done brassband in high school or two people who like High School Musical or someone who asked a girl with a five year old little brother what she does with him so the girl could say play jump rope and dinosaurs. There were also some uncomfortable moments where I discovered that someone's mic wasn't working or someone's voice was way too loud or quiet and so on. But maybe those classes went as well as they could in an online situation where the students are supposed to turn off their mics and videos and I have to turn off my video too. I think my Seminar is going OK--the kids are sharp and good readers and so far have been able to articulate what I've been hoping they could articulate about the Native American tales we've read together ("The Dream Fast" and "The Girl Who Escaped"). The only problems really are those caused by my asking them difficult topics to prepare, like about the parts of the plot or the nature of the settings of the stories and so on... There seem to be nearly half of the first-year students who are responding well to the Introduction to American Culture and Literature class, as evidenced by about that number submitting comments and questions to our class blog. These leads to a fair amount of time and typing by me as I reply to each person, but I enjoy it cause I get the impression (delusion or reality) that about a third to a half of the students are wanting to communicate in English about our class topics (right now Native American history and songs, with Puritans coming next week). With my two graduate students who this year must write their 50+ page master's theses, I can basically only hope that they'll do their work well. I mean, they are nice and intelligent people, but after all it's up to them... Right, anyway, apart from that moment of technical trouble and panic, last week went OK. OH! I also made a stupid careless mistake for the poor Reading and Writing students: after spending a lot of time perfecting (I though) the quiz I was going to give them last Friday, I at the very last second switched an answer in a multiple choice match vocabulary word and definition question, but neglected to change the answer key on Google Forms, so 25 people about got it right but had it marked wrong, while 5 people got it wrong but had it marked right! So... I had to modify everyone's grade one way or the other, defeating the automatic purpose of Google forms and, I'm sure, giving the students more confusion... Sigh. No more mistakes or technical troubles next week! So we're now well into May, and I've had two weeks of Wednesday and Thursday classes and three weeks of Friday classes, so... How is the Online Educational Experience going?
Well, so far I think that in general it is working as well as could be expected. That is, I have not had large numbers of absent or late students, nor of students leaving class early, and the Webex technology is working all right for the most part, and so far I've found relatively few students with problems like their mics not working when I want them to say something, and so on and so forth. I've given three quizzes so far (two to my Reading and Writing class on Fridays for second-year Pharmacy students and one for my Introduction to American Culture and Literature class on Friday), and the Google Forms quizzes seem to work OK (though I did have one question for the R&W class's first quiz that 25 people of 30 answered correctly but were somehow given wrong answer marking for by Google). I copy paste the link to the quiz into the Webex chat area and have the students go at it, usually at the end of class. I have noticed that the most difficult questions for classes are those based on things I tell them in class, whereas the easiest ones are those based on the handouts I assign for homework before class, which I hope is not indicating that a larger number of students have defective or incapable devices than I'm assuming is the case. (I do sometimes ask one or two students what they see and hear when I share certain screens, and usually they can see/hear what I want them to at that point...) ANYWAY. I am finding PowerPoint to be more useful than I thought it would be, and am using it to introduce each class' schedule for that day and to highlight key points and so on. In the three English conversation type classes I'm teaching (Eikaiwa for first-year English majors and Interactive English for first-year Pharmacy and Economics majors), I've begun having students take turns giving 2-3 minute self-introduction speeches, after which I've been asking random students simple comprehension questions to gauge their listening and so on and having random students ask the speech makers questions based on their self-introductions, and so on, and that is generally going OK so far. (Though one guy in the economics class couldn't understand that i wanted him to ask the speech maker a question until I finally told him what to do in Japanese, a surrender on my part, and they seemed to have trouble when I moved too quickly from any questions being asked to follow up questions being asked.) In Gairon I did one of my favorite topics, Native American history in the USA, which is preparation for covering Native American songs next week. In my seminar (for nine third-year English majors) we've begun by reading a couple Native American tales for boys/girls becoming men/women, and I've been giving them topics to prepare and then having them talk a bit about them in turn and so on. That is going a bit less smoothly because I'm having them master literary concepts like character and setting and plot as well as reading stories early on... But overall I've been impressed with the students' ability to speak in English when suddenly called upon. One difficult thing in all this is that our university told us that we must have the students turn off their mics and videos at the start of classes and that we must turn off our own video for class, with the result that they can't see each other nor I them, so it's basically impossible to gauge reaction when telling them anything, and when they give their self-introduction speeches, they also can't get any reaction from their classmates. It's very artificial and constraining. I do turn on my video for the first few minutes of each class to say hello to them as they join the class and so on, just so they can have a face to match with my voice for the class. I have also begun (as I indicated above) to have the students turn on their mics to answer or ask questions and so on. I hope that's not running through their data plans too rapidly, those that are using smartphones for class. About that, I've found that the majority are using computers, but still there are always some using smartphones so I can never let them turn on their videos, etc... Another problem looming on the horizon will be how to do conversation classes when the students can't turn on their videos and are not s upposed to turn on their mics AND when the Webex bought by Fukuoka University does not come with breakout room (small group) capability! I still haven't decided what to try in that context, so I've begun with these self-introduction speech and Q&A sessions to prolong the time until I really must decide what to do with those three classes. Finally, the biggest problem of all is that it takes so much more time to prepare classes now, what with PowerPoint and all, and that it really affects my body now that I have to both prepare classes with my computer AND teach them with my computer. So my fingers (especially my right hand ones) have begun getting swollen and sore (party my fault for assigning 200-300 word writing about themselves to two classes before I realized I'd kill myself replying to each one and stopped assigning that kind of thing), and my left wrist is getting sore and weak, and my right eyelid is getting very twitchy with strain. The first two and a half weeks or so were the busiest I've been at the start of a spring semester in probably 20 years... For years Introduction to Am Cult and Lit has been rather easy to prepare, cause I've taught it for so many years, but this time I've been making PowerPoint slides for everything in it, which is quite time consuming... I haven't been able to write any reviews of books I've read or even to summarize the one I'm currently listening to... I'm always tired and exhausted... the students must be so tired, too! I really hope we'll be able to open the university (and city) soon! the poor students and their families and their teachers! We'll all just have to keep doing our best. |
Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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