Blended learning

First of all, we need to make clear what we mean by the term “blended learning”: It is a mixture of online instruction and face-to-face learning.

Teachers could resort to different tools such as Edmodo, Moodle or even Facebook groups where they and their students can share a lot of useful information and resources.

Blended learning could have many advantages, as this video shows:

However, it is important to realise that face-to-face teaching should continue being an essential part of learning. As Sophie Partarrieu (2015) explains, the role of teachers nowadays is not just to pass on knowledge: Because students have the opportunity to obtain information almost immediately, teachers have to help them to “understand, interpret and apply” the material they get from the web. In addition, many times, teachers have “to act as guidance counsellors or provide emotional support”, using the author’s words, since they help to build self-confidence, to prevent exclusion and bullying providing a warm environment that could not be possible when working only with computers.

In our experience as students, we have worked with all the tools mentioned before and they have been really useful. For example, every time we need a file we know it is available there. Moreover, we can share our opinions about a text or a post and teachers can let us know about any news in connection with the lessons, exams, marks and we can ask if we have any doubt.

However, we strongly agree with Partarrieu since in our face-to-face lessons we learn a lot with the teachers as we can discuss the material they share with us online and we can give our opinions and make plain any concept that is not totally clear.

So, all in all, we could say that the best option is to find a balance between online and face-to-face teaching due to the fact that they are both beneficial to the learning process.

Source:

S., Partarrieu. (n.d.). Why we still need face-to-face teaching in the digital age. Retrieved October 29, 2016, from https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/why-we-still-need-face-face-teaching-digital-age

Vokis, Word Clouds, Web 2.0

Some weeks ago, we were dealing with two Web 2.0 tools: Word clouds and Vokis. The former is an image with different words that have a particular kind of relation, for example, they refer to a particular concept or, as in our case, they form a definition and we have to depict what those units are trying to say. The latter works as a speaking tool which records texts that we create. They are both great educational resources that we might use either in the classroom or as homework.  

As mentioned before, Word clouds, Vokis like many other sites, such as SlideShare, Prezi, Edmodo, GoogleDocs are also called Web 2.0 tools since they are used for the sake of interaction and collaboration, providing communication and connection among users.

  

  One of the most significant difference between Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 is that in Web 2.0 everybody is sharing information in which others can contribute with more content so as to enrich the source and not only be a site to enquiry.
Teachers have to take advantage of those kind of devices because they will probably help teachers to engage students in the info provided.

Resource:

Web 2.0 Tools. (n.d.). Retrieved October 29, 2016, from http://web2014.discoveryeducation.com/web20tools.cfm

Digital culture in educational contexts

Some weeks ago we had the opportunity to attend a conference by Hugo Pardo Kuklinski about education and digital culture. Hugo is Doctor in Communication from the University of Barcelona. He is the founder and director of an educational project called "Outliers School" and he is the author of some books about digital culture -“Planeta Web 2.0. Inteligencia colectiva o medios fast food” (2007) being the most popular-.

From the very beginning he made clear that integrating technology into the classroom does not only mean to work with ITCs in the lessons but to go beyond that. He proposed the idea that, in order to improve the classroom pedagogy, teachers should be “Intraemprendedores” and that they need to realise how each one sees his or her role as educators so that it is possible to start designing a sort of “red de interacción” inside the classroom.

In our opinion, the conference was not totally good because of 2 reasons. Firstly, we realized that although during his talk he strongly emphasized the importance of “interaction networks” mentioned before, he did not provide us with specific examples about how to implement them in the lessons. It gave us the impression that besides he told us his experiences with some projects, all the ideas were too general.

In the second place, he gave us a series of tips to reach the aim of integrating digital technologies into education but we noticed that most of his suggestions were based on capitalist ideas, with a clear focus on the market. We do not completely agree with this idea, since we consider that educating needs to go beyond this capitalist perspective.

In conclusion, we think that it is necessary to find ways to include technologies in the classroom but always taking into consideration the context we are working. In fact, although Hugo intended to give us some ideas, they were not completely specific so as to start implementing concrete ideas or designing a project.

References:

Pardo Kuklinski, H. (n.d.). Dr Hugo Pardo Kuklinski Perfil. Retrieved October 12, 2016, from http://digitalismo.com/hugopardokuklinski/

Integrating technology into pedagogy

We have designed a Didactic Unit in which we use a PowerPoint presentation (PPT) for a certain purpose. Since we have dealt with vocabulary related to sports and the use of “Can/Can’t”, we choose to work with the Olympic Games. If you’re interested in, you can have a look at the complete work here.
As students are expected to create a PPT for the final task, we have decided to use one as a game. It is called "Unjumble the letters" in which they are going to guess which word the jumbled letters form. The aim of it is to review the vocabulary already given and to have an idea for their presentations.

Those devices such as PPTs, Prezis, and the like are a great way to integrate technology into the lessons.
In fact, Puentedura developed the ‘SAMR’ model which provides Teachers means of integrating technology into their practices. This model is divided into 4 levels, from enhancement to transformation:

1. Substitution: The teacher only substitutes the tool without a functional change.
2. Augmentation: The tech acts as a substitution but with a functional improvement.
3. Modification: There is a significant re-design in which the use of tech is necessary.
4. Redefinition: The tasks are inconceivable without technology.

If you want to know a bit more, the video below explains the SAMR model and each of the levels:

Considering our lesson, we realized that the use of our PPT reaches the 1st level since there is a substitution without any significant change and we could use, for instance, some flashcards or just a worksheet instead of technology.

What we could do to go higher is plan a lesson where students play the game via skype with students from another school. Of course, it should be taken into account that both institutions must have computers, webcams and  Internet access.

Hope this will help to consider how to integrate technology in the English classroom in a purposeful way. If you have any further recommendation, let us know it in a comment!

Information and Digital literacies

 Technological advance is a fact and we, as future teachers of the language, cannot stay behind.  

 As regards Digital literacies, they are known as our ability to make use of the technologies that surround the mass media. With the globalization, they begin to be a fundamental skill not only for everyday life but also for the language classroom.  

 Teachers, as Nickly Hockly suggests, should foster digital skills “in parallel with teaching English” due to the fact that what students learn in school is not similar to what they do in their online lives.

 Considering the integration of digital literacies into ELT classrooms, their development could be divided into four main areas: Those with a focus on language, on connections, on information, and on (re)design.

 One of those main areas deals with the ability to find and evaluate the information which is provided by the Internet.  As an example, we analysed the site “Learn English”, which provides free content for learning and teaching English, and fulfils a great number of criteria for evaluating web resources to use in the classroom.

 One advantage of this webpage is that the information is presented clearly, which is really important if we want to use it with the students. For this reason, teachers can use this webpage to do online activities, either in the lesson or as homework.

 In fact, we used this webpage in a unit plan we have designed. After presenting vocabulary about food and recycling and doing a wordsearch, the students are going to do the online activity which consists on dragging each word to the correct box in order to practise all the new vocabulary (presented in the image below).  

On the webpage they will read the following instruction and activity.

“We can recycle glass, paper, plastic and metal. We can also put left-over food into our compost to use in a garden. Can you put the rubbish in the correct recycle bin?”

 What is more, as “Learn English” is run by the British Council, its reliability, purpose and objectivity are explicitly stated. Indeed, we came to the conclusion that it is a valuable resource for getting language materials to every learner and teacher who wants to improve their ability in the English language.

Sources:

• Hockly, N. (n.d.). Digital literacies: What are they and why should we care? Retrieved July 05, 2016, from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/digital-literacies-what-are-they-why-should-we-care
• Recycling. (n.d.). Retrieved July 05, 2016, from http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/word-games/recycling
• Worksheet provided by the teacher: "Evaluating web sites: Criteria for the classroom". 

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

A thought-provoking issue in education is the one in connection to Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. With our classmates we have read an article by Marc Prensky (2001) and today we want to share part of our discussions about and reflections in relation to it. The main idea that the author presents in the article is that Digital Natives -those who have grown up with digital technologies- constitute a new generation of students who “think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors” (2001: 1). As a consequence, teachers, most of whom are considered Digital Immigrants, (since they were not born into the digital world but have adapted many aspects of new technology), speak a language totally different from that of their students, establishing a conflicting “discontinuity”, in Prensky’s words.
Along the article, we found certain statements we don’t entirely agree with; for example, when the author expresses: “The single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language” (2001:2), in our opinion there are other issues of great importance that teachers and schools have to face day by day (for instance, building problems, racism, bullying, physical and psychological violence, etc.). Actually, with the digital era, students get involved with declassified information that could be inappropriate for their age, or the content is just not ‘funny’ as they think. In that case, we as future teachers have to be prepared to face these kinds of difficult situations and, we think, it could be less demanding if we teach them to speak the new language so as to facilitate the communication.
Moreover, we reflected about the following statement: "A frequent objection I hear from Digital Immigrant educators is 'this approach is a great for facts, but it wouldn't work for my subject.' Nonsense. This is just rationalization and lack of imagination" (2001: 6). We agree with it to a certain extent, since we consider that probably one of the reasons why teachers don’t try new ways of teaching is the lack of imagination. However, there are other reasons that are more “common” or frequent, and here is where we agree to Prensky’s idea when he says: "It's just 'dumb' (and lazy) of educators- not to mention ineffective- to presume that (despite their traditions) the Digital Immigrant way is the only way to teach, and that the Digital Natives 'language' is not as capable as their own of encompassing any and every idea" (2001: 6) since we think one of the main reasons for teaching in the old way is the lack of willingness from the part of the teachers and their fear of wasting time in designing and implementing new ideas in their classrooms.
Hope these reflections can be of interest and we strongly recommend reading the article, since it shows a current problematic issue as regards education and of great importance in EFL teaching contexts.

Resource: Prensky, M. (n.d.). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Retrieved July, 2016, from https://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/PRENSKY%20-%20DIGITAL%20NATIVES%20AND%20IMMIGRANTS%201.PDF

Advantages of being a material designer in ELT

 As regards all the activities, resources and skills that are involved in teaching, we could mention a great number, such as the ones showed in the following picture: 

  Actually, one of the most important roles an English teacher plays is that of material designer.

  Even though designing materials could have some drawbacks -for example it’s highly time consuming and also the quality of the resources created probably is not the best-, we consider that creating the materials for English lessons has a lot of benefits. Let’s list some of them:

• Contextualisation: English coursebooks contain many situations that probably students don’t feel identified with since they are not part of their culture. On the contrary, when we design our supplies, we have in mind a specific group of learners, taking into account their needs, interests, levels and learning styles.
• Individual needs: They are related to one idea previously mentioned, that of taking into consideration our learners in order to develop the resources for each lesson.
• Personalisation: Creating our own materials gives a personal touch that students appreciate and, as a consequence, they become more motivated and engaged in their learning.
• Timeliness: When developing new activities and tasks, we could bear in mind events that are context-related, i.e. that are happening at the moment of dealing with them and are meaningful to students.

  Having mentioned some advantages, we would like to say that creating materials is a good opportunity to take profit from all the resources we have available nowadays, such as the internet, which could be a really helpful tool for educators. Although sometimes it’s a really demanding activity, we think that teachers should implement material designing to their teaching so as to enhance language learning.

Source:
Howard, J., & Major, J. (2005). Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials.
Kumar, S. (2012). What is the Role of Teacher in Teaching, Guiding Children, Community Relations, and Administration? Retrieved June, 2016, from http://www.publishyourarticles.net/knowledge-hub/education/what-is-the-role-of-teacher-in-tteaching-guiding-children-community-relations-and-administration/5391