Blended learning?

Nowadayas, we are getting used to hear about this new term: blended learning. But, do you know what this mean? Roadmap for Competency-based Systems explains this expression as:  "The term blended learning is generally applied to the practice of using both online and in-person learning experiences when teaching students."

I embed a short video, just in case you want to have a clearer and  more "visual" idea:

In this new way of teaching and learning, students can attend normal lessons and, at the same time, keep the in-class discussions and works going after lessons via platforms, virtual classrooms and/or social networks. Students can take a lot of advantages when learning in this "combined" way:

• Students have greater time- flexibility and freedom, as many times they can choose when and where to work or participate in different activities (despite the fact that there might be a tight deadline);
• Students can participate more in class discussions since they can choose environment- online or face-to-face- in which they feel more comfortable;
• Students have more time to reflect upon a specific topic, or to select and share relevant material;
• Students have access to different kind of materaials (books, internet, partners, parents, etc.);
• Students can learn and acquire diverse skills from using the computer and the internet.

I have just mentioned some of the most important- for me- advantages of working with blended learning, but the list is much longer, and if you want to add some more, you are more than welcome.

Source: 

• http://www.nxgentechroadmap.com/CCSSO_glossary.pdf
• https://sites.google.com/a/idahopd.org/blended-learning/advantages-and-challenges

Didactic sequence + web 2.0

Some time ago, our teacher of ECO asked us to create a didactic sequence for an imaginary course using one or more web 2.0 tools and to show the final outcome from our students. My partners and I had to teach irregular verbs in the past simple. After analyzing all the web 2.0 possibilities, we decided to work with Storybird; this resource lets us create, as I wrote in  my last post,  art-inspired stories. As final outcome, our ficticious group of students had to create a story about Ancient World , using the previoulsy mentioned tool, in order to share all their stories

To begin with this didactic sequence, we made a video in order to show "our" students what Ancient World is and to help them activate their schemata so as to create a brainstorming on the board.

After working and talking about the video and some civilizations, we presented a legend called The Secret Power of Ra with Storytbird, so students  had a model of what they were expected to create:

http://storybird.com/books/the-secret-power-of-ra/ 

Finally, we worked with some past irregular verbs that appeared in the story; and students had to complete some worksheets with those verbs in order to practice.

Although I presented  a general view of our didactic sequence, I hope you have seen how we can use our lessons to introduce different tools so as to teach English and to let students know how to employ them appropriately for different purposes.  

Stories inside the classroom

Some weeks ago, I came across with Storybird (https://storybird.com/), an incredible webpage that lets us create art-inspired stories that we can share, read and print. This webpage allows not only teachers but also students to make different kind of stories. What I really like about Storybird is that it encourages creativity. 

I embed a tutorial, just in case you want to learn how to use Storybird (I truly recommend it!)

Teachers can benefit from this webpage as it can help them to assess students' reading skills (there are many stories that can be read) and writing skills (students can create their own stories.) If I wanted to use Storybird in my lessons, I would work with a specific topic and ask students to write a short story about it. Of course, they  would first have to write down their ideas, then produce a draft, and lastly write the final version that would be written in Storybird. Once all students have created their own stories, I would print them so as to create a mini library inside the classroom; students would be able to take the short stories to their homes, and we would have books so as to work with them whenever necessary. 

How would you use this wonderful tool?

Source: https://storybird.com/

Social media in the classroom

I came across with the following websites:

• http://www.phoenix.edu/forward/perspectives/2014/02/how-teachers-can-use-social-media-in-the-classroom.html
• http://www.edutopia.org/blog/guidebook-social-media-in-classroom-vicki-davis

Both of them provide tips as regards how to use social media in the classroom. I'm posting them as sometimes it can be quite difficult or we may feel lost when planning how to work with this new technology. Kathy Cook (Director of Educational Technology for the Universtity of Phoenix) states that students are using these technologies in their personal lives, so it makes sense to leverage them for teaching and learning. We are constantly talking about connecting student's outside world with what happens inside the classroom, why don't we start with social media that really catches students' attention? 

While I was doing my practices, I worked with a very well-known webpage, couchsurfing (https://www.couchsurfing.org/). At the end of the project they had to create their own profile in the webpage; during the process they were so engaged that they really put a lot of effort so as to learn the many grammatical contents that I presented to them, but because they indeed were expecting to complete the final task. Moreover, some of them said that it was the first time they worked with something so original. 

Working with social media inside the classroon it's not so easy as we have to plan the lessons very carefully, it's time consuming, and we need certain items like computers, beamer (if you want to show them something from your own computer), internet connection, etc. However, it's not impossible and it is really worth it. We should try to include students' interests in our lesson plans so as to motivate them and at the same time in order to show that English lessons go beyond the student's book.

In the above webpages you can find very interesting suggestions...hope you find them useful! I worked, as I said before, with couchsurfing...what would you work with?

Word clouds

Let's welcome Wordle (www.wordle.net) and Tagxedo (www.tagxedo.com). These two webpages help us to create word clouds. Maybe if you read the term you may think you don't know what it is, but if I show you some examples, you might change your opinion:

They're great, aren't they? If I were to present this tool to my students, I would do it at the end of the year and I would ask them to create a word cloud so as to express what they learnt all troughout the year and how they felt in the English lessons. First, they would have to write a short text with their opinions, feelings, ideas, etc. and then they would have to use Wordle or Tagxedo in order to make a word cloud. I would employ it in that way, what about you?

Voki

I want to present a really interesting and funny tool: VOKI (www.voki.com) Voki is a free service in which you can create speaking avatars. 

This instrument can be truly useful inside the classroom as students will be motivated as they can create their own characters, change their appearance and even make them speak with different voices. I think we can employ this tool when working with vocabulary, for instance. Students can be given words and asked to create Vokis so as to present the new terms to the rest of the class; it is funny and much more engaging than working with dictionaries.

I embed the official Voki tutorial just in case you want to try it (I definitely recommend it!)

The selfie phenomenon

Day after day we can find this selfie phenomenon in different social networks such as, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, among others. But... do you know what a salfie is? Fortunately, the Oxford Dictionary has provided a very clear definition for this term:

A selfie is a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media (Oxford Dictionary) 

Although this event is quite new and innovative, it is considered a very useful tool when teaching as students are constantly taking selfies and we can take advantage of this inside the classroom. These self- representations can be used for many different activities, as Jill Walker Rettberg did with her students from the University of Bergen "...I asked students to discuss what our selfies, taken together, would tell a future historian about what everyday life was like in 2014..." Let's read Jill's experience and let's start working and planning so as to introduce selfies in our lessons and make students feel motivated with this engaging and fashionable instrument. http://jilltxt.net/?p=4039