Posts

Showing posts from April, 2013

Digital Literacy - Gavin Dudeney

Image
People are talking about DSL (Digital as a Second Language) nowadays and Gavin's talk was about the importance of being digitally fluent if you're a 21st century teacher. So important in fact, that Gavin has written a book about it, with co-authors Nicky Hockley and Mark Pegrum (Digital Literacies, Pearson, 2013) There are many different digital literacies relevant to language : (texting, print, gaming, mobile, multimedia, code); others with a focus on  information (information, search, tagging); those that relate to connections (personal, participatory, network, and (inter)cultural) and remix. The last of these Gavin illustrated by showing a video of Tony Blair and George Bush's love song. In the current age, we need to take all of these into consideration because they are part of the skill set that people need and in some ways, as Gavin mentioned, educators are now preparing people for jobs that currently don't exist. Mobility is now one of the key factors

Unplugged and connected: where ideas meet

Image
Burcu Akyol and Luke Meddings were the final speakers of the LT SIG day. In December they led an 'Unplugged and Connected' course in Istanbul that explored how dogme and technology can enhance and reinforce each other in the classroom. They shared reflections and outputs from the course in this session - and shared some practical classroom ideas. Luke started by giving an overview about teaching unplugged and this was followed by Burcu talking about how Dogme ELT affected her approach to teaching when she first came across it. Burcu is an enthusiastic user of learning technology too and she has reflected on how technology and teaching unplugged can be combined to benefit both learners and teachers. Burcu talked about the importance of PLNs (Personal Learning Networks) and how teachers who connect with other teachers in this way an benefit. Luke asked whether being connected was necessary and stated that the two approaches, teaching unplugged and connected teaching can

Paul Driver - Cities, communities, memory and culture

Image
Paul Driver, who has been nominated for an ELTon for his game Spywalk, started his presentation by sharing his love of drawing architecture whenever he visits a new city. Whenever he does this, locals often come over and talk to him, telling him their life stories and talking about the place. There is an inter-twining relationship between people and the cities they live in. Showing a map of New York, Paul talked about trying to understand. City by looking at an aerial view. Maps, Paul stated are things we often think of as objective, but maps are never objective, they are always subjective and show things that the map-maker decides to show. Maps have often been used for propaganda devices. Talking about memory and identity, Paul reminds us that memory is often augmented in many different ways - through written notes and latterly, our phones, and even things like smells and tattoos. Our memories are also shared with family and friends, often distributed among a number of differ

Literature strikes back

Image
The IATEFL ltsig Diana Eastment / Travel grant scholarship winners this year are  Dimitris Primalis and Chryssanthe Sotiriou, who work in schools that have class sets of tablets.  They are both interested in how best to get students reading literature using new technology The speakers first showed 2 examples of literature and asked the audience to think about the following: Layout, lexis, length of text, visual aids, learning styles, skills. Next, half of the audience  were first asked to listen to an excerpt of the film ( http://i.imgur.com/ywKjqEw.jpg ) Rebecca while the others blocked their ears. After this those who blocked their ears were asked to watch the same excerpt of the film without sound. The audience then shared notes and talked together. The idea of doing an activity like this is to stimulate learner interest. The speakers believe that this is the only way to get a ten year old boy to read a novel such as Rebecca. They use  http://www.edmodo.com/  to stimulat

Flipping the classroom - Lindsay Warwick

Image
Lindsay Warwick also uses ideas behind the flipped classroom method in her own classes, but uses it in a different way to Stephen. Her focus is more on the homework aspect. She sees that some of. The benefits include students taking control of the learning process, it is very personalized and it helps the students to learn how to learn as well as enabling her to engage more in 1:1 learning. She has found that students are also more engaged with this system and in a 2012 study (Classroom Window) it was reported that 80% of students were more engaged by using the flipped classroom method. Lindsay started to use this method, but at first it failed. It failed because students had a lack of study skills and were also unmotivated. Lindsay was then forced to adopt a different approach that involved the students creating weekly objectives, checking each other's notes and setting individual deadlines. The 'naughty' students (i.e. those who hadn't watched the video) woul

The Flipped Classroom - from theory to practice

Image
Stephen Bukin's is the first of two Flipped classroom presentations during the LTSIG day. Stephen started by talking about the origins of the flipped classroom with Bergman and Sams in the US and the now well-known Khan academy bei the fore-runners. Proponents of e flipped classroom believe that this model helps struggling students and often helps with poor students. Stephen also believes that it helps over scheduled students. Why flip your classroom? The model of schoolwork and homework was based on the requirements of the Industrial age and it may be about time for a change. Stephen started by looking at his own classes and analyzing his own lessons. He is a traditional PPP.teacher but he felt that the students were not getting enough practice in his previous teaching  model. Another problem he had was continuous enrollment and with new students entering his classroom all the time, often with different levels, differentiation was difficult. This was why he thought that a

Just Hit pause

Image
The second LTSIG day presentation by Suzanne Mordue and Sirin Soyoz was dedicated to video in the EFL classroom. Sirin said she is interested in video because of the multiple channels that it allows and particularly emphasises the potential of Youtube, but because YouTube is not available in  some countries, Vimeo and Videojug are two alternative video sharing sites that have general videos. Top documentary films, TED talks and National Geographic are some other channels for specialized videos at you can use with your students. As far as ELT specific, Real English ( http://real-english.com/ )  Randall's video snapshots ( http://www.esl-lab.com/videoclips.htm  ), ESL Video, Simple English videos and LearnEnglish Teens are all sites with good sources of different videos. Sirin and Suzanne then shared lots of different clips and discussed how best to use them in the classroom.

Filtering relevant information through Content Curation

Image
Carla Arena's presentation at IATEFL was all about digital curation. Carla started by looking at art curation, talking about the role of the curator as someone who gives meaning to content by selecting the best of a body of work and presenting it to the public. Libraries, churches and newspapers also all have lots of content and a curator to help them present content. Asking the question, 'What has changed in content curation?' Graeme Hodgeson answered that it is now bottom-up, with people everywhere on the Web now curating content for others, and filtering information for different specialized audiences. Carla mentioned 'Too big to know' by David Weinberger ( http://www.toobigtoknow.com/about-2/ ) and the question ' what happens to knowledge and expertise now that we are faced with the fact that there is way way way more to know than can be known by any individual?' The hypothesis of the book is that 'knowledge and expertise are becoming network

Implementing handheld learning - Victoria Boobyer

Image
Victoria's session on handheld learning started by looking at the considerations that teachers and schools need to make when considering the use of handheld learning. One of the first decisions that has to be made is which device. The audience was first asked to discuss the pros and cons of different options (class sets of tablets, bring your own device) and Victoria asked us to discuss the benefits and problems of implementing these decisions. Obviously, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is cheaper, but not all students have the same devices, so the kinds of things you can do and which apps, etc you use will depend on this. Having a class set of tablets ensures everyone using a similar device, but then teachers need to consider things such as security, payment options (for apps, etc) and it can become an expensive option. As far as security is concerned, with iPads, Victoria mentioned having to look at worries of device theft and breakage. Victoria's school's solution

The Whys and Wherefores of OLPC

Image
Nicolas Dantaz-Rico, a teacher in Uruguay, spoke about his research relating to teacher education and the laptops being introduced into the country for the Plan Ceibal. He started by talking about the positive effect the introduction of laptops into primary schools He asked teachers if they were confident about using the laptops and how often they used the computers. He found the teachers he asked were not using the computers as much as was first thought. One of the problems he found was that a lot of teachers feel overwhelmed, and what teachers really need to know rather than how to use the technology, is how the technology can be used to enhance learning. Nicolas promotes the idea of partnering pedagogy, as suggested by Mark Prensky, as the way forward. He also thinks that the idea of the computer as a source of motivation is worrying and he thinks it needs to be what the teacher asks the learners to do that should be the source of the motivation rather than the actual machi

Paul Woods - One Laptop Per Child

Image
The most important lesson from the places where OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) has been implemented is that you cannot ignore training and teacher development. Paul Woods of the British Council spoke about it being vital if the project is to be successful, although there are experiments by people such as Sugata Mitre (Hole in the wall project) that claim to have success by just giving kids access to the technology. It's also what you do with the device that makes all the difference. Nicholas Negroponte has also said that OLPC is all about empowering children through education. There are 1/2 million XO laptops in Uruguay and many other laptops all over the world including in Nepal, Afghanistan, India, Rwanda, Madagascar and Argentina, Venezuela and Peru. Research has been done during these projects, with results reporting greater learner satisfaction, and highly engaged learning taking place. Criticisms in Argentina have been: lack of connectivity and problems over maintenance w

One to one learning with handheld devices - Michael Carrier

Image
In this session, Michael Carrier spoke about the benefits of adopting a Programme of 1:1 handheld devices in the classroom, starting by talking about the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) programme. Michael quoted Nicholas  Negroponte, the founder of OLPC: " What children lack is not capability, it is opportunity and resources" Michael spoke about the places where these 1:1 learning is being put into place, and where it is showing success. He also spoke about places where the programmes have not been so successful. The reason why many of these projects fail is well known, according to Michael. It is usually due to not investing in teacher training and teacher development, which means the teachers do not feel involved or comfortable using the devices in the classroom. In many places where 1:1 programmes have been successfully implemented have seen some very positive responses from children, teachers and parents. Uruguay and the Plan Ceibal is the world leader at the moment,

Plan Ceibal - Dario Luis Banegas

Dario Luis Banegas spoke in this session 'Learning English through remote learning' about e British Council's role in Plan Ceibal, which has rolled out XO laptops to all Primary aged children throughout Uruguay. Dario spoke about his role as project manager and how one of the key aspects for him is the relationships between the different roles (lesson plan writers, materials designers, classroom teachers, remote teachers, e-moderators, children, parents and educational administrators). In the project, classroom teachers in Uruguay are supported by remote teachers, mainly in Argentina in order to teach children English. Video conferencing is used to transmit the image and sound of the remote teachers into the Uruguayan classrooms and the classroom teacher facilitates. The lack of English of most of the classroom teachers is the reason why this is done, but the classroom teachers are undergoing an English Programme in tandem, supported by e-moderators, who also talk to t

This world in which we live in

Image
David Crystal's very entertaining opening plenary at the IATEFL conference in Liverpool started with a line from Paul McCartney's song 'Live and let die' (the blog post title) that contains a double preposition. He then looked at other examples of this in newspaper reports and popular media. David Crystal also looked at other examples of non-standard grammar, including double negatives in Beatles songs. David then told the audience that 'blends' such as 'within how long did it take...' , a combination of 'within what time period' and 'how long did it take' also occur in lectures and he then proceeded to use examples from his own recorded lectures that showed everyone ends up doing this in speech. Examples of blends rarely appear in public writing, usually, because it is the job of the editor or copy-editor to rephrase any blends that are found. However, some blends do slip through the net. On the Web, in particular, there are

Joe Dale - IATEFL LTSIG PCE

Image
Joe Dale started his rapid-fire presentation off with information about information about the changing world of technology, with the proliferation of mobile devices and the rise of the Martini generation (i.e. learning any time, any place, anywhere) meaning educators need to pay more attention to possible uses of mobile devices in the classroom. Joe shared a list of different ipad apps he recommends for language teaching and learning, and also recommended a book by Chris Smith ( http://aneducatorsipad.com/ ) for any educators looking to use iPads in the classroom. QR codes and how they can be used in the classroom was mentioned. In particular, the use that Kelda Richards ( http://keldarichards.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/le-mur-parlant/ ) makes of QR codes for her 'Making your walls talk' stood out as an innovative way of making use of them in the classroom. Joe mentioned a number of different sources of evidence of the value of using iPads in the classroom. Models Joe

Kristina Smith IATEFL LTSIG Liverpool PCE

Image
Kristina Smith is our first presenter of the afternoon and her focus is 'Autonomy in Online and Blended Learning' one of the first suggestions from Kristina was that the teacher should start by considering the culture of the learners, considering the interaction between content delivery and deeper learning, individual and social (i.e. group work), teacher led and self directed learning online. One of the issues that Kristina cam across with one group of teachers that she worked with was that they were not allowed to ask the children they taught personal questions, because it was an invasion of privacy and it might embarrass some of them. Kristina started asking the audience to consider where they stand on a line between humanistic and behaviourist teaching, then looking at Tassinari's dynamic model of Learner Autonomy (see  http://sisaljournal.org/archives/march12/tassinari/ ) When it comes to the environment a teacher teaching online should consider the learners

Paul Braddock - The Flipped Classroom (IATEFL LTSIG)

Image
The photo shows, live from Liverpool, Paul Braddock talking about the Flipped Classroom and leading a discussion about what it is and the pros and cons of reversing the role of what you ask learners to do in class and what you ask them to do at home (see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_teaching ). One early definition of the flipped classroom was the idea to invert traditional teaching methods, delivering instruction online outside of the class and moving "homework" into the classroom. Paul said that this definition of the flipped classroom adheres to a behaviorist view of teaching and learning and perhaps it is more suited to a subject with content rather than teaching a language. One point made by an audience member was that, as a student of literature, she was asked to do a lot of reading at home, and what she ended up developing was the skill of being able to talk about books without having read them. She said that the danger with our students is that they end

IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG PCE - Huw Jarvis

Image
Today in Liverpool, Huw Jarvis kicked off the IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG Pre-conference event talking about  'From Learner Autonomy and CALL to Mobile Assisted Language Use (MALU)  and e-acquisition' After setting the context with a look at the history of  Learner Autonomy and CALL, and assumptions wrongly made in this area, that paper-based material is no longer preferred, that learners no longer like self-access centres (SACs), Huw presented research showing the move learners are making (from CALL to MALL). It is no longer about explicit teaching and learning, or just realized in SACs, but learners are routinely multi-tasking and are more and more  informally connecting with other English speakers using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Often this communication is based on hobbies (football, gaming, etc) that learners share. Huw shared Stephen Krashen's 1982 research that distinguishes between learning, which is conscious, and acquisition, which

IATEFL Liverpool Online registered blogger

Image
I've just signed up to be one of the IATEFL Liverpool Online registered bloggers, which means I can repost video content from the 47th annual IATEFL conference on this blog. I'll be in Liverpool for the conference, and have decided to try and blog about the experience as much as I can this year. I'll be starting off at the IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG Pre-Conference Event on Monday, which is dedicated to Learner Autonomy and Technology. You can see the programme and find out more about the speakers here:  http://ltsig.org.uk/