On the 24th January 2012 I delivered an online webinar presentation for the IATEFL Young Learner SIG. The theme of the presentation was 'Developing materials and practices for the digital generation.' I focused on how teachers could combine the use of online tools to encourage students' digital literacy and study skills whilst also developing their ability to develop their linguistic skills in a more autonomous way.
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In this posting I would like to argue that in order for technology to really enhance learning and for learners to achieve their full potential, we need to fundamentally rethink the relationship between learning and the classroom and to rethink the role of the teacher.
Listening to songs is a great way to learn a language. It's easy to listen to a song many times, especially if it's one that you enjoy and this can really help with your listening and pronunciation. This activity is based around the Lyrics Training website. The site helps you to listen to and understand songs.
As mobile phone use becomes ubiquitous around the world and texting becomes a new genre of communication, it seems increasingly important that we as language teachers engage with these devices and help students to deal with the impact they are having on the English language.
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Photo Story 3 is a piece of free software that you can download to your PC and use to create multimedia photo stories complete with images, transitions, effects, text, background music and your own voice narration. This article includes a tutorial video, examples and teaching suggestions.
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This is a collection of documents I created a few years back for a British Council project in China. You can download the complete toolkit here.
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The 'Web 2.0' age has brought us more than a bunch of social networking apps and free web tools, it has also brought about a fundamental shift in the way many web based companies do business. I started to wonder if that change could be mirrored in the physical market place by moving towards a new approach to the language school and the way technology is used in it and how it fits into the face to face business model.
I love the power of images and their adaptability for teaching, so I can't say that I'm upset to be almost overwhelmed with really great tools for exploiting Flickr at the moment. The latest of these is Flickriver, an incredibly simple Flickr search tool that creates an endless webpage (just keep scrolling and the page keeps getting longer!) of Flickr images based around either a search term or whatever it finds interesting on the particular day you visit the site.
In this task you'll create a simple blog and use it to make a video based activity for your students. Many of you may already have your own blog, but it's a good idea to have a separate one that yo...
This is a speaking task that encourages students to empathise with other people and try to understand them better. The activity uses a number of visuals of migrants and the students have to imagine they are the person in the picture. The activity is based on themes from the British Council OPENCities project www.opencities.eu
Twitter could not possibly be further away from the concept of a computer game or a three dimensional visually rich virtual world. Suddenly instead of learning to fly and exchanging our money for Linden bucks (the currency of Linden Labs’ Second Life) we were exchanging grammatically correct sentences for status updates of less than 140 characters! Who could have seen it coming? Perhaps Gartner, who also predicted that “90 Per Cent of Corporate Virtual World Projects Fail Within 18 Months”.
Students develop their understanding of third-world and first-world problems and discuss issues related to the role of computer games in education.
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Nik Peachey, digital guru and author of our Tech Tools for Teachers series, talks about the highs and lows of his personal experiences of education and explains how a lazy workaholic (his own words) came to get so interested in learning technologies. He also imparts some valuable advice on becoming a materials writer and gives tips on the wonders of self publishing online through blogs and e-books.
In the first instalment of his brand-new series, Nik Peachey looks at podcasting and how it can be used to help students develop their listening and speaking skills both inside and outside the classroom. Nik provides a comprehensive overview article on podcasting, a downloadable lesson plan, a video screencast tutorial and a printable how-to guide.
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If you are new to technology, I would encourage you to be honest with your students and tell them that you are trying something new and it may not work. Involve them in the process and get their feedback and advice. Many students may have a wider knowledge of technology than their teachers, so draw on their knowledge, but remember that there is also a linguistic and educational purpose for using technology and this is where you will be able to help and support your students.
With the opportunities now offered by the Internet to access information, collaborate, create and communicate, should we now be looking for a new model on which to base our schools, one which reflects the changing post industrial nature of our societies and the growing need for creative, inquisitive independent thinking individuals? If so, how do you envisage this being realised?
This lesson includes a challenging audio file with what for many students is an unusual accent. This challenge has been dealt with by keeping the listening tasks simple and developing vocabulary around the topic first. The speaker talks about his life in a part of the UK called Norfolk. The plan includes a vocabulary activity to develop students' ability to use descriptive adjectives and links to visuals to help them get a better picture of this beautiful part of the UK.
Technology was a huge feature of this years’ IATEFL conference and it’s very easy to be blinded or pulled along by the technology, but in the work of these six women there is for me some sign of the beginnings of a state of normalisation of technology in language teaching. A state when we can move past talking about technology and get back to talking about teaching of which technology is just a normal part and an enabler in that process of learning.
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In this interview with Ana Cristina Pratas we discuss flipped learning, the digital divide, changes in teacher training and autonomous teacher development and the benefits of being part of a global ELT community.
Demand for English is set to grow and, according to ELT researcher David Graddol, it will peak at around 2 billion learners in the next 10 to 15 years. Given the scale of learning it is unlikely that traditional, face-to-face language providers will be able to meet this need. The alternative for people who either cannot afford or get access to classroom-based lessons is likely to be online learning. So what does virtual teaching currently offer?
As with most languages, spelling is pretty important in English. It's also something that gives many native speakers problems too, so don't be too worried if you find English spelling difficult and confusing. In this activity you'll be able to practice spelling and your vocabulary in an enjoyable way.
One of the most common criticisms leveled at teachers who do attempt to integrate technology into their classroom environment, is that this often results in a lot of ‘faffing around’ or time wasted while struggling to get the technology to work properly. To some extent I feel that this criticism is fair, but I don’t think it’s a criticism that should be leveled at teachers, but would be better directed at the people who control the way technology is layered onto the classroom environment, so lets look at that.
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The 'Web 2.0' age has brought us more than a bunch of social networking apps and free web tools, it has also brought about a fundamental shift in the way many web based companies do business. I started to wonder if that change could be mirrored in the physical market place by moving towards a new approach to the language school and the way technology is used in it and how it fits into the face to face business model.
This is something that caught my eye last week. I just couldn't resist adding a feature about it here, though I think this does come with some warnings and reservations. Pictogame.com is a website which enables you to create your own games very easily with just a few easy steps. All you need to do is:
For me twitter is pretty limiting in terms of sharing any real depth of information, but it’s a great way to share sources of deeper information such as links to site, blog or articles.
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