Day 9

Today Russell Stannard suggested we might be interested in reading

"Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course design and Implementation", 
edited by Brian Tomlinson and Claire Whittaker (available online in pdf).

The book introduces  different cases in which Blended Learning was used to make both teaching and learning more motivating and effective.

I created a presentation, with Google Slides, of course!!,  about the case I was assigned.

Day 7

Russell started the lesson reminding us that



-Edmodo, Moodle and many many platforms are repository tools to organize the students' learning materials especially at home.


-We can link whatever tool we want (YouTube, Google Slides/Docs/Form, SnagIt, Blogger....) to these VLE to make them more powerful.


-Blended Learning is using the platform and linking it to other technologies. For example: create a slide on Google Slides about your favourite book and share it on Edmodo.

-The platform is the very centre of Blended Learning but of course, it always has to be connected to Face to Face teaching.

-Screen Capture is very useful even for high level students to give them a model essay ("you should start your essay..., then make sure you cover the following points....").

-Screen Capture is a useful tool for students too: they can record their performance and self-evaluate it!


Now, the big question is: are we ready for another technology? Hopefully we are...

Google Forms

First of all,  Russell Stannard will make it very clear and appealing to you with one of his video from www.teachertrainingvideos.com/.

Google Forms is used to carry out surveys and collect data.

-What can teachers use it for?
To create questionnaires ( short answers, multiple choice, true/false...)


-What for?
At the beginning of the school year to find out about students' expectations;
mid-term questionnaire to monitor their learning;
end of the term questionnaire to get their feedback.
at the end of a project to get feedback from students, parents....

-How does it work?
The teacher can create the questionnaire, share the link with the students who will complete it , send it back and the teacher will have the results in the form of a graph.


Teaching Tips
Another interesting speaking activity might be the presentation of the graphs by the students.
Teachers can create self-evaluation questionnaires (can you do this? can you do that? If not, we had better revise this point...)






Now, my survey about holiday preferences: please have a look but remember, it's only my first try...


And here is my second production, a questionnaire I am going to use with my 1st class students at the beginning of the school year.
I created it to have a clear picture of the class in terms of motivation, previous studying experience...

Day 4

Today a new teacher from Turkey joined the class. Welcome Ugur! (impossible to pronounce!)

Unfortunately (for me!) he seems to be a computer geek (just like his friend Husnu)!!! so now, there's 5 of us . What a fantastic class!!

We started with some theoretical info about Blended Learning. How did it all start?

Teachers moved from “F2F” lessons to “F2F” lessons integrated with plenty of new technology (videos, podcasts, forums, chats, wiki, blogs…). This meant that the amount of content would double and students felt overwhelmed; to overcome the problem , sometimes the length of the course was reduced to give space to the new contributions from ICT.
Students worked at home on their own and in class. This is NOT Blended Learning.
Blended Learning is when we create a link between what is done in class and what is done at home, remembering always that all the assets MUST be used in class.

Golden Rules

n. 4: always create a link between class and home activities (either in a discussion form or creating a contest…).
n. 5: let’s not overwhelm the students with content ; we should keep the amount of content under control.


And now, something more about Edmodo:

Steps to be made by the teacher.
-sign up an account
-create a class/group which will be given a code by the platform
-ask students to log in the class thanks to its code.
-lock the class/group (if you want to make sure that  nobody from outside can log in).

Possibilities offered:
-post videos, documents, links, images 
-create quizzes (multiple choice, true/false, matching , short answers, fill in the blanks) that the students can do and that will automatically be corrected by the platform. 
-create a poll
-give assignment (post a video, a recording, an image and ask questions about them, or comments, or essays..
- keep records of the  results of the individual students 

 Golden Rule

n.6 : the assessment of the Edmodo activities MUST be integrated in the general assessment (to avoid students thinking the use of technology is only secondary) .

Day 1

Blended Learning

Wow! Here I am, in this lovely city, Norwich, to start the teacher training course on Blended Learning at NILE, with Russell Stannard,



In 2008 Russell Stannard was awarded the Times Higher Outstanding
Initiative in ICT for his work on www.teachertrainingvideos.com.

one of the best- known expert in the field of ICT integrated into the educational process.

I am sure that, apart from my personal experience of a training course with him, you will find his website very helpful and clear whatever new technology you wish to integrate in your teaching.
A part from being professionally very good, Russell is highly involving, super-dynamic and definitely passionate about what he is doing.


I
from left to right: me, Husnu, Aga and Alla

In fact, he is trying to make me and my 3 classmates, Alla from Ukraine, Aga from Poland and Hüsnü from Turkey, self -confident and positive about the results we are going to reach. He even told us that we are not miles behind (as I think I am!!) in using technology in class!

Russell started the lesson introducing Today's Meet, a very interesting tool to be used in collaborative learning. It gives the possibility to create a room, for a limited period of time, where teacher and students can share ideas or ask each other questions.
Here's Russell's short video about it:


Next we went on working on Google Slides, a great tool to share, guide and monitor group or individual work . This is Russell's short video about how to and why to use Google slides :

Finally Russell taught us how to create a blog with Google Blogger so ...this is what I'm doing now!! And once again, I am sure you will appreciate Russell's instructions and ideas much better than my description...

Golden Rules

1. Always remember technology MUST have a value added
2. Always use assets
3. Technology is useful especially to organize students' studies outside the class!

Teaching Tips

Italy is slowly moving towards cooperative learning and project-based learning and both Today's Meet and Google Slides can be very helpful in letting the students cooperate without moving around from town to town.
The teacher can have complete control over the students' activities, in class and at home, and at the same time be available to help .
Today’sMeet can be used in a great variety of situations: students might be asked to jot down plenty of questions to one of them about the past holidays (revision of the Past Simple), about plans for the next holidays revision of the Future Tense), or about hobbies…. The answers given will create an opportunity for comments, discussions, surveys…..
In addition, I can ask the students, in group, to select one of the holiday destinations mentioned in the discussion and create 3 slides each : one showing a meaningful picture, the second including a video and the third one giving five fact about the place ( limiting the number of words in order to prevent students from copy-pasting from the net).
With higher classes,I might ask the students to read a poem or an article and write down their impressions, comments, doubts on Today’sMeet;
the next step will be a discussion about it and finally I might ask the students, divided into groups, to create Google Slides about the writer or the poem or the context.