Clarke Wainikka TESL

Professional Learning Network: How did it change? What did I learn? One of the first things I noticed was my expansion of resources. Throughout this course, with the collaboration of my peers and the course content I was able to greatly expand my knowledge of online resources. Sites like quizmaker and screen-o-matic are quite new to me and I'm looking forward to implementing them into my classroom in the future.  Some other things I have learned about my PLN is the great community of online collaborative professionals in the ESL industry. I added this to my PLN under the 'people' section as a larger circle as I believe it is something that all instructors should take advantage of. It is clear that the instructors that actively post and share their resources online are passionate about language learning and acquisition and I hope to become a part of this community so that I can improve my skills and knowledge as an instructor. This community is quite active on ...

What are some privacy concerns in using social media with the class? It's so true that social media can have incredibly powerful ripple effects. And I do believe it can be a very scary tool for both teachers and students. Cyber bullying is a very relevant issue especially to the current generation of high school learners. I assisted high school students last year for a short stint and the detrimental effects of social media on friendships and learner education was quite shocking. I had several students come to me with instances of 'he said she said' on instagram or twitter. These privacy concerns are still a very new issue for most teachers and it can be difficult to navigate our way around these issues when the students are more knowledgeable on the technology than we are.  With that said, I do think it's important that we as teachers take the time to explain the safety and consequences of social media. And I believe this can be done by utilizing some aspects in ...

What is the difference between testing and PBLA? Testing can be used as a formative or summative assessment while Portfolio Based Language Assessment (PBLA) is formative in nature. That’s not to say that PBLA could not be used as a summative assessment but it leans more towards an update on student’s progress rather than an end of unit assessment. PBLA is often seen as something that is cyclical while testing is much more linear. A testing classroom will learn the unit and then have a test and this will continue until the end of the program. For PBLA, it is a more detailed cycle of planning for learning, assessment and engagement followed by skill-building, transparent assessment, action-oriented feedback and future planning. I believe that PBLA has many merits, it offers a much more learner-involved process not only in planning for learning but also in the assessments and criteria. PBLA also focuses on authentic learning tasks which will, in my opinion, translate better to real-wo...