Food for thought

Last 28^th of September in the FHUC (Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias) in Santa Fe city, Hugo Pardo Kuklinski delivered a conference called “Digital education and culture”.

In his conference, there were some ideas we agree with, and some others we do not.

It is true, as Hugo says, that we need to make huge changes in the way we teach because learning and learners are not the same they were before mass media access appeared. Digital tools are not just “ingredients” to make teaching and learning more fun. These tools can become important elements that enrich the teaching and learning, giving access to information and knowledge that could have been impossible some years before. [read SAMR Model in this blog] He gave some examples about the podcast teaching and the importance of face to face teaching [read blended learning in this blog].

 Other point we agree with is the importance of giving the possibility to choose topics relevant to the students, and to their particular context. This is related to Task Based Learning and CLIL, which in our field and in Santa Fe especially are the bases of the new curriculum. [read more about NIC] He also talked about students doing tasks related to some topics and learning the contents through the tasks, which we consider crucial in the process of learning.

Another important element in his projects is the creation of significant webs in the classrooms. This means to stablish relations between the different participants in the classroom and the school to make possible the creation of knowledge, or the distribution of information between the participants as equals, without taking into account the hierarchical relationships.

However, as we mentioned before, there were some shadows in Hugo’s projects and developments. First of all, he is not a teacher, he does not know how difficult is to make those changes for those teachers that had learned to teach and have been teaching (and who have had good results with learners) in the old fashion for many years. Secondly, he has proved his theories or ideas in few schools, and it is still in the process of development, so even though his talk was very inspiring in some ways, there are a lot of work to do and not much knowledge about it. The most controversial point to us is his view of teachers and learners as sellers and buyers: the logic of the commercial system, which is in fact very different from the process people undergo when teaching and learning at school or at any place.

BUT, we consider that the ideas that he presented and the projects are very enlightening. We know that technology came to make a change in the way we think and we need to change the way we teach. We need to be open minded, creative, not to be afraid of trying new things. He talked about “border knowledge”, that is to say, the newest knowledge will become old in less than 5 years from now, so we and our teaching need to be updated.

Please, read more about Hugo Pardo Kuklinski in Digitalismo and Outliers schools

Blended learning: Future now?

Future is a word that some people may find frightening, to some others it may imply challenges, or to others may be a beacon of hope. For learning, it might as well be all of the above. But why talking about the future? Shouldn’t we talk about the present situation of learning? Most definitely. However, we think that there is a need to debate about a blending of the two.

Nowadays we are experiencing a situation unthinkable 50 years ago, where technology is a central part of the learning process.  To integrate technology into the physical classroom seems a regular thing in the present, whereas in the past it was unconceivable. The teaching environment evolved naturally, allowing this transformation to become a common aspect within the teaching institutions.

In the article “Why we still need face-to-face teaching in the digital age”, Sophie Partarrieu (2015) talks about the concept of “blended learning”. Do students need to go to schools instead of learning online? If we think the process of learning as acquiring basics concepts, information, etc., we can say that nowadays all this can be done without the physical help of the teacher since these facts can be found in the world wide web. There are even special platforms where a teacher can post the contents of a subject so students have a more controlled access of what kind of information they need. However truthful this is, we cannot leave aside the endless factors that are at interplay in the educational process. In the words of the author: “(…) teachers are concerned with more than just the knowledge their students acquire – they’re often called on to act as guidance counsellors or provide emotional support.” (Partarrieu - 2015)

The reality is that a factor that has to be taken into consideration is the context of teaching. In Argentina we can try our best to implement online teaching, but there are certain regions where internet connection or hardware accessibility at home are non-existent. The truth is that other more important priorities are on stake, such as food, clothing or housing.

Technology is becoming a priority in many fields, and teaching is not the exception and blended learning is  one of the options we need to start taking into consideration to expand the borders of the classroom. 

Source:

Sophie Partarrieu (2015) "Why we still need face-to-face teaching in the digital age" 

Web 2.0 in Education

The term "Web 2.0" first appeared in January 1999, used by an information architecture consultant, Darcy DiNucci, to describe a change in the previous concept of "web 1.0". In the following years, its usage gained popularity, and nowadays, most people know the basic concept behind it (or at least it rings a bell).

There is not a clear-cut definition that was agreed on the field, but as a broad definition, Tim O'Reilly (2005) said in his article "What Is Web 2.0", that Web 2.0 is "(...) a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core." This encompasses a plethora of resources at the users' disposal that make their experience even more rich.

If we apply this concept to education, it allows a more collaborative process. The endless tools and devises available in this Web enables a multi-dimensional teaching, especially in the EFL classroom.

For example, we can mention two tools that can be very helpful to our lessons, adding an extra flavor to our students’ interests.

First, we have “word clouds”, also known as “tag clouds”, which is a typical phenomenon that appeared with Web 2.0. A “word cloud” is a visual representation of text data. It can be used in a wide variety of ways, such us free form text, hyperlinks, etc. In our lessons, we can use it as a pre-reading activity so students can hypothesis about the text. It can also help students to review a writing task since “word clouds” can show you the prominence of the most used words. 

For instance, we can take a sentence related to Web 2.0 and make a word cloud so students can reconstruct the correct order of word. 

Another tool that can be helpful in our EFL lessons is “Text to speech” (TTS). There are many TTS tools available but we are going to talk about Voki. With Voki we can create an avatar that can verbalize the phrase or text that we want. We can use this tool to make a presentation, to create a message (since once the Voki is done you can send it by e-mail or post it in any platform), or to practice isolated phrases or words. 

As an example, we can reconstruct the word cloud above with this Voki.

As we have said, the Web 2.0 offers us limitless possibilities to improve our teaching and to make it more interesting.

We encourage you to try these tools that we presented in this post and to dive in the depths of the available options that we can find in the world wide web.

If you have any other interesting tool, leave a comment!

Sources: 

Tim O'Reilly (2005) "What Is Web 2.0"

Is technology improving your teaching or just making it a little more attractive?

Nowadays technology seems to be a familiar tool in the classroom. But, are we using it in a successful way? Or, are we using it just to replace the old model without bringing any profits to the teaching?

Sometimes when we plan our lessons we include the use of technology as a way of simplifying our work that can easily be done in the traditional way, for example, showing a text in a Power Point presentation, instead of giving to our students a printed copy of the text. However, there is a growing tendency to change that perspective that tries to use technology in a more profitable way where we can achieve a significant improvement in our teaching. So, instead of showing the text in a digital presentation, why don’t we upload it to a shared platform where students can write comments and give opinions about the topic?

This new thinking is expressed in the SAMR model, being the acronym of Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition.

The following image describe the SAMR model with an analogy to coffee, which we think it can help to clarify the concepts.

For instance, let’s analyze a didactic sequence that we designed for a group of 1st year students at a secondary state school with an A1 level of English, where we included a Prezi presentation. (You can access to the presentation here). The students’ final task is, in groups, to design and describe their “ideal house” and present it to the whole class with a Prezi presentation.

In this presentation, there is a pre-reading task in which we will show them four pictures which illustrates rooms of famous families’ houses so they can hypothesize. We will ask them questions as guidance. 

After that, we will show them two texts and they have to match them with the correct picture shown before. Finally, as a post reading task, students have to reconstruct two texts. 

The aim of the presentation is to provide the students with the opportunity to practice the language, focusing the attention especially on the features of the description (there is/are, vocabulary related to furniture and prepositions) and, hopefully, will help students with their final task.

We consider that our presentation is at the level Modification since the use of Prezi allowed us a flexible movement between slides (it breaks the mold of the linear display of slides, typical characteristic of PowerPoint presentations), and it also gives the possibility of zoom in and out. Moreover, the reconstruction of the texts are more interactive with the aid of technology and the instant possibility of feedback. Besides the practical features of Prezi, including this kind of presentation shows our students that we are trying to use current tools that will not only help their learning experience, but also bring something new and interesting to the table.

SAMR model is a useful parameter to take into considerations whenever we plan to incorporate technology in our teaching, without falling to adopt the “law of minimum effort”. As we have said in previous posts, technology runs our lives in a substantial manner, therefore it is imperative that we should try to include it in our lessons in the most successful way we can.

Source: What is the SAMR Model and what does it look like in schools?

Are you digitally literate?

It cannot be denied that technology is running our lives, and this could be seen in a bigger scale in young people, where every second of their lives is immersed with technology. Because of this, new skills need to be developed in the classroom so as to keep up the pace of the new era.

Nicky Hockly (2013), in her article “What are they and why should we care?”, explains the importance of including the teaching of these skills in our language lessons, since what we teach should correlate to our students’ lives outside the classroom, and by doing so, making our lessons more relevant and appealing.

One of the subskills to be developed is “information literacies” which states the importance of finding and evaluating online information. It is imperative for students to distinguish reliable information from the plethora that we can find in the World Wide Web.

As an example of this, we analysed the webpage “British Council. Learn English Kids”. We think that it is a valuable webpage for teachers who need material to work with, since it offers suggestions and resources to make the lessons a very successful learning experience. As a drawback, not all of the resources can be downloaded.

For instance, in a Didactic Unit called "The human impact on the environment", we planned to use one of the GAMES in order to practice classifying trash in an interesting way, either in the computer lab or in the classroom with the projector.

Taking turns to play, students participate and help each other to identify, name and classify the elements in the picture. To assist pupils, we can guide them with questions, e.g.  Where do you place it? And also reading the labels aloud to help them.

As you can see, it is not impossible to use technology to grab pupils' attention and at the same time use it with educational purposes, but it is necessary to learn to distinguish which webpages are reliable and which are not.  

Hope it helps.

Source: Nicky Hockly (2013), Digital Literacies “What are they and why should we care?

Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives... A question of taste, interest or access?

The title of this post presents a very well-known dichotomy as regards the use of technology and learning processes nowadays. There is an interesting article written by Mark Prensky in 2001 which states the emphasis on how different students are now from the students 20 years ago (even though the article was written 15 years ago, it is still current). 

However, our opinion differs from the author’s, at least in our teaching contexts. It is true that there are schools where students have smart phones, computers, tablets, laptops, access to Internet at home and at school they also have computer labs, internet connection, interactive whiteboards in the classrooms,etc. Most of them have grown up with technology all around, and have the stereotypical characteristics of Digital Natives... but there are schools where the majority of students have no access to Internet or computer at home, they don’t have even smart phones, and attend schools where the budget goes to more urgent things than a computer lab (these are the characteristics of most of the state schools in Argentina). In this context, as you may imagine, we cannot say that people under 18 years of age are Digital Natives with all the characteristics that this term implies. 

But we totally agree with the need to empowering students' learning through technology. This means to make the learning experience richer and accesible, because society demands those characteristics from our students, no matter where they come from and how many hours they can spend in front of a screen in their lives. More than knowing Maths and Science, they need to know where the reliable sources come from and how to read and write in a computer (not in the traditional sense, but in this hypermedia full of images, videos, links, etc.). 

We, teachers (or future teachers), need to be updated, connected, and, more important than anything, not to be afraid of technology in the classroom. It is there already; let’s use it in favour of our teaching and learning! And where it isn't there, let's include it. It is not simple, but not impossible. It is part of our teaching to ALWAYS TRY NEW THINGS. So, depending on the context, let's give all our students a chance to try a different thing, and if something doesn't work, it's part of the experience. Digital immigrants usually have a different perspective.

If you like TED TALKS, here is a interesting one by Sree Sreenivasan about this topic. 

Hope you enjoy it! Leave a comment.

Source:  Digital Natives, Digital ImmigrantsBy Marc Prensky 

Teachers as Material Designers

Teachers all over the world need materials to teach. Most of them rely on textbooks or materials already produced for specific levels. However, that is not always the case. Depending on the context and the content, some teachers decide to design their own material for their lessons. But why bother to do so if only by typing a few key words in Google we can find endless resources ready to be used? As we said before, it all depends, mainly, on the context and the content of the teaching situation.

It is obvious that the context of teaching will determine what and how we teach. That is why teachers have to carefully choose the right materials whether they are to teach in the most prestigious university of New York or in a rural school in Chaco, Argentina.

"For many teachers, designing or adapting their own teaching materials, enables them to take into account their particular learning environment and to overcome the lack of 'fit' of the coursebooks" (Howard & Major, 2005, p. 101)

"English language classrooms are diverse places, not only in terms of where they are situated, but also in terms of the individual learners within each context." (Howard & Major, 2005, p. 102)

It is also important to give the material a "personal touch" to increase motivation. Moreover, the teacher designer can use the current local and international events as resource, creating relevant tasks to respond to up-to-date affairs. 

But it is not a bed of roses, designing materials has its drawbacks. It is time consuming, the material can seem unprofessional due to the lack of printing quality, unclear instructions or bad organisation. 

In the paper written by Jocelyn Howard & Jae Major (2005),Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials you can find 10 guidelines to help you when designing your own materials. 

Here is a graphic summary of the content of the guidelines. 
Hope it helps. Leave a comment.

[This word cloud  was created in https://tagul.com/]

Source: Jocelyn Howard & Jae Major (2005),Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials