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!