TEFL Dacono Colorado

The most exciting thing I have learned while doing this course is the new innovative (inexpensive) equipment used to aid teaching. There are printers, which hook to a computer via bus ports, small enough to be carried along with a laptop. The laptop batteries power it. This small portable battery powered inexpensive overhead projectors are even more fascinating to me. They can be purchased with their own batteries packs and they can also be connected to a laptop computer, via bus ports, to project onto a screen a pre program presentation saved in the laptop. My future classroom will be in an undeveloped area of the province of Luzon, philippines. I will have a building but not the kind of building most people are used to. It will be built and bamboo and the roof will be of palm tree leaves. My personal home will have electricity but will be inadequate to accommodate a large number of students and parents. I'm told my house will be on stilts and the area below the house will be an open classroom. They will also build shelter from the elements for my classroom. That may sound elegant but what they mean is I will have a sun shade on posts. My plan is to purchase some solid panel to be prepared as a chalkboard which would be attached to a couple of posts and some spruce lattice for sun shade. A simple sheet can be hung over the board to serve as a projector screen. We have taught many summer field classes in the sun and heat of the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New mexico. We didn't have shelter from the sun or any of these new gadgets. We didn't even have laptop computers. However, we managed despite the condition. The children had fun and they learned a lot about the ancient Anasazi as well as the contemporary indigenous tribes who reside there. The “field school” in Luzon will be a great step up. The overhead projector demands the students' attention. By using bright colors and cartoon type transparencies / PowerPoint presentations even children's attention can be held. Most importantly, one can construct a sentence, write new words and present pictures of animals (or items to help the children envision the vocabulary word that we are trying to teach) in full view of the students. In the field situation, the overhead projector is the ideal tool to present information to a large group. In an undeveloped area of the world, the overhead projector can become a means of entertainment as well as of learning. The children could actually draw their own cartoons on transparencies to tell stories. The transparencies can be divided into four or more sections allowing one cartoon frame to be projected at one time. In a symposium classroom, of course we could use large screen monitors to present information to the students. However, in the field, it might be a bit much to drag a large screen monitor and probably unsafe for the monitor. Further, the salty sea air might not be too good for it either. On the other hand, the battery powered portable overhead projector isn't very expensive; therefore, if it only lasted a year it would have been of great value despite the loss. The majority of the information in our course isn't directly applicable to preschool children. The primary goal of teaching esl to preschool children is to instill a working english vocabulary. The children need to learn english vocabulary and how to speak in sentences (and paragraphs) fluidly and intelligently. Grammar is taught but little writing is necessary. The children learn letter recognition, the sounds of vowels and consonants, how to print both upper and lowercase letters, how to print their names and how to recognize a few common words which will help them to begin reading in kindergarten. Of course, the more we can teach the preschooler the better the chance of success that child will have in the main public school system. Teaching children revolves around games and music; games, pictures and music produce learning in small children. Every early childhood education program employs all three modes in a progressive manner. We start with letter recognition, vowel and consonant pronunciation and finally progress to printing upper and lowercase letters. There are certain small words we teach recognition of; ball, sun, hat, shoe, coat etc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzdd0FnVHJQ The evolved “Letter People” preschool program. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Letter-People-Book-Series-Vintage-Collectable-Rare-70s-80s-EUC-Reiss-/160964445516?pt=US_Texbook_Education&hash=item257a3a854c The second link is the set I taught with for many years. This set is most conducive to a ‘field school' scenario but the ‘evolved' edition could supplement via a laptop and larger monitor. I'm certain the addition of a video tape to the original audio tapes and corresponding light pen interactive textbooks would be much more entertaining for the children. The first link above goes to a Youtube site which shows a puppet demonstrating one of the sounds of the latter a (ah). The very same music is used in the video which was originally presented on little records in the seventies and eighties. There are mostly positive reviews of the Letter People program but our government has a negative review…I would suspect our government doesn't like the idea ‘governmental indoctrination' isn't included in the program. In my search for battery powered overhead projectors while doing our unit on ‘teaching aids' I ran across another projector which can be powered by the laptop; a portable video projector. My thought regarding a portable video projector is that it's not necessary. The computer is capable of doing that without adding another drain on its power source. One only has to have a larger monitor. Since I will only work with 12 to 15 students at any given time my 23 inch monitor is probably adequate. In conclusion, all of the information contained in the ITTT tefl course is valid and helped me to review material I haven't dealt with in at least 15 years. Furthermore, I was brought up to date with a lot of changes in grammar, spelling and types of composition. But the most important information to me was the unit on teaching tools. There are so many innovations I was totally unaware of. I dream of having that interactive whiteboard.