The Talkin' Teachin' Show!

I listen to A LOT of podcasts, so the idea of using them to teach was very intriguing to me, but the podcasts I listen to are mostly based around comedy and wouldn't really be appropriate for a classroom. So, I looked at the podcasts I listen to that aren't comedy based and tried to think if any of them could be used to teach, and the one I think could be most useful is called Stuff You Missed in History Class, and I think it could be used in many ways to help ESL students. 

The podcast is about lesser known stories from world history, and while I think in general it would be good practice for upper intermediate or higher students that were interested in it to listen to it for practice. If I were going to design a lesson, I think a good idea would be to use an episode like a recent one called, "The First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable." For the lesson I would take the podcast and divide the audio into four pieces, and have the students listen to only their section in groups. Then after the group had listen and summarized their segment of the audio they would have to talk with the other groups to put the segments in the right order to tell the story. 
This exercise would be good for helping student to improve their listening skills when listening to and summarizing the audio, as well as their speaking and cooperation skills when ordering the audio pieces. Of course this could be done with other episodes of this podcast or even with other podcasts that have some sort of a narrative form to them. I do realize that you would have to do this with upper level students, but I think the exposure to authentic language would be good for them.

Tell Me a Video Story

I chose to create a video using Animoto. I was a little intimidated at first since I don't have too much experience with video creation, but once I got started it was pretty simple and intuitive. 
The lesson I made on demonyms could be part of a flipped classroom experience where students studied the demonyms at home and then discussed them in class.

I don't think it would be very difficult at all to have students use this site to create videos of their own. One idea I had was the have students create their own short flipped lessons, much like the video I created, then have a classmate or classmates do the lesson. This would be a good way for students to demonstrate both a grasp of the content knowledge but also their ability to both follow and give instructions. Such is in the learning indicator that reads, "Students follow oral and written directions to participate in classroom activities, and provide directions to peers in selected interactions." ( ESL.C.9-12.4.1.7) I could assess these points in a few ways, how well the student created the video, the video's content, and was the lesson successful with the peer who completed it.

Talkin' Ted-Ed Teachin'

The lesson I created would be for adult students to test language associated with a history content course. My language objectives would be to make sure students could understand a historical narrative, and discuss it's implications.

I could test to see if these objectives were met by first having the students rewatch the video and then try to retell the Reagan story in their own words. Then as groups I would have the students choose an even from their countries history and write a short narrative that they could share with the class.

Fun With Flipping!

After reading the two articles on flipping, Three reasons to Flip You Classroom, and Flipping Your EL Classroom, I came away really liking the idea of flipping. It seems like having more time to work with student on material instead of just giving them the material and hoping they'll figure it out, is something that could really work.
What was more interesting to me is that I realized that I've been working with a version of flipping myself for a couple years. The online lessons that I teach are mostly designed to help students work with and practice material that they have already studied. When they get to class with me, it's my job to help them with any questions they have with the material and to show how the language they're studying is used in everyday conversation. 
I imagine the biggest problem with flipping is similar to one that I have in my classes, when students don't do the needed preparation for the lesson, so instead of working with the material you end up using class time explain it to them. Though, if we're being honest, no matter what technique you are using to teach there is always going to be unprepared students, so I don't think that's a good reason to not try flipping.

Teachin' and Tweetin' and Whatnot...

Twitter can be a very polarizing subject these days, for every example of how it is bringing people together and forming global connections there are opposite examples of harassment or hate speech also being spread over the platform.  As someone who has been using twitter for over seven years now I've seen both sides of this argument many times, and I think what it boils down to, is that twitter is what you make of it for yourself.
Like I said I have been using twitter for a long time but it has been more to share thoughts or jokes with my friends and not necessarily for me "productive" purposes.  It was interesting to both look through the Twitterchat and read these articles about twitter to see on other side of it after all this time and to see how it can be used to help in my teaching. 

The first article I found entitled The Teacher's Guide to Twitter is a fantastic source of both guidance and information four educators getting started on twitter, plus  also had this great guide to education hashtags on Twitter. An other article I found from the National  Education Association, was called Can Tweeting Help Your Teaching?  While the first article was more of a guide this one was interesting because it offered some real life examples of how were using twitter in their teaching.  Both of these articles offered a lot of good information but the one thing I took away from them was the idea of being able to stay connected with other teachers.  Currently, I teach about 30 hours a week online from home, this gives me great flexibility with my schedule that in person classes wouldn't be able to give me.  However, the main drawback is that I have little to no connection with other teachers in my same position.  That is why I really liked what these articles had to say about staying connected, they showed me that it's a great way to talk to and share ideas waive other teachers on a regular basis and that is something that I'm not afforded the opportunity to do in my current position.  I am looking forward to doing this in the future and I hope that it will add a lot to what I can offer my students.
Like I said at the beginning there are definitely some drawbacks to twitter and I might be hesitant to let students use it unless they were very highly supervised but it is definitely a tool that can be used and as teachers we have to be willing to use any tool that is offered to us.

Chat Twitter Chat

Regretfully I was not able to attend a Twitter chat live in person in time for me to write this post. Since I still wanted to find out more about the chats I decided to check out the hashtag #ELTChat anyways to see what people were talking about. I realize it's not the same as participating live, but I still got a good feel for how the discussion worked.
This weeks discussion for #ELTChat on Twitter was pronunciation and how to make teachers comfortable teaching it.  Looking through the tweets I could see that there was a lot of people participating and it was a little bit difficult to parse through it all, however I think I was still able to find some good advice and interesting resources.One resource that I found was an interesting website that offered an array of warm-up activities that may help with pronunciation.
Of course I think the most helpful thing was just seeing the short but useful pieces of advice people would give about teaching pronunciation.  For example one user had three short tweets that talked about teaching how we stress words when speaking which was an aspect of pronunciation that I really hadn't considered much.
The only aspect of this Twitter chat that I wasn't particularly fond of was that it seemed to be made up mostly of British English language teachers so they were talking a lot about certifications and tests that I had no reference for.  That being said I can see how this would be a very useful tool and I hope that I have the chance to actually participate in one in the future.

Global Cooperative Learning

The ePals sight is very interesting and I think of all the tools we've looked at this semester this is probably the one that intrigues me the most. The idea of being able to not only collaborate with another teacher, but also give students the chance to collaborate with students in another country, brings up endless possibilities.

The program that I think interests me the most from what I saw is the "A Taste of Culture," concept, it involves kids from different country exchanging recipes. Part of what I liked about this idea, is that it incorporates aspects from two other classes I am taking this semester. In my Methods and Materials class we are learning about Collaborative Learning, and this would give students to not only work in a group but work in a group with kids on the other side of the globe. I am also taking a class on teaching culture, and besides the obvious cultural lessons taught through a recipe exchange, just the act of cooperating with kids from another culture would help students to learn about those students culture.

Social Me Me Media

After looking through the sites suggested, I decided to join the google +  group "English Language Teachers," for a few reasons. I will admit the fact I already have a good account and didn't have to sign up for another site was a big draw in this case, however it seems like the google + groups seemed to be the most populated and active of the sites I looked at.

With the group I joined I could see a lot of good resources and discussions started in just the last few days. With the some searching and studying I'm sure you could tons and tons of great stuff that could be useful. I will be checking it out more in the future.

Connectivism and the Modern Student

            

  The modern student is very much like the modern bank customer. If we look at knowledge as currency like George Siemens does in his article, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age we can think of learners as bank customers who are able to withdraw knowledge from computers and networks all over the world in the same way that people who need money can withdraw it from any ATM in the world.  The same can be said for the way customers put money into a bank, as Siemens says, "Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual." In the same way that knowledge is fed into a network, people put money into a bank, and that money goes on to be dispersed among all of the customers but can also be retrieved when the original depositor needs it. 

What’s important about this analogy is that it changes how we look at education, where students are no longer just expected to just take in knowledge. As Siemens also says in the video, The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature, "As human beings we desire to externalize what's in our head." I think this is an important idea to take away from Connectivism, that we must let students put their knowledge back into the network and make sure that we are not only dishing out knowledge, but we give students the tools to find knowledge for themselves and express their interpretations of that knowledge.

Diigo or Pinterest? Who ya got?

   It was interesting for me to setup and start using both Diigo and Pinterest. While I was aware of Pinterest and had a general idea of what it was, I had never even heard of Diigo before. I was happy to find out that they were both excellent ways to share ideas and resources.  After spending some time with both of them, it's interesting to see how the two offer a similar service but it very different ways.
   The most glaring difference of course the appearance of the two sites, while Diigo offers a very clean text heavy interface, the Pinterest look is almost completely graphic with a more intuitive interface. Beyond the look though, there is other more important differences with the functionality of the websites and how we can use them as teachers.

When setting up my Diigo page what I liked most about it was the ability to search by tags and keywords to find a site you are looking for, and I was able to add or see detailed information about a site without having to actually go to the site. It was also very useful with Diigo being able to follow others to see what they are interested in, as well as sharing my interest with them. One thing that Diigo was missing though, was ability to comment on others links or any real sense of interactivity.
On the other hand, when setting up my Pinterest boards, I was a little overwhelmed by how interactive it was, it was a bit hard to get a handle on what I was meant to do as I was being inundated with tons of images but not a lot of explanation. Once I learned to search through keywords and find some good images I was amazed by the sheer volume of resources available on Pinterest. I also like that you could comment on people's pins and send messages making it more interactive that simply sharing bookmarks like Diigo.
Over all, as much as I can appreciate how much Pinterest has to offer I think I would more be more likely to use Diigo again, as it seems a little more logical and easy to follow, I do wish it had more interaction, but when compared to how busy Pinterest seems to me, Diigo just feels easier to manage and deal with.

Changing Education Through Technology

It seems like everyone involved in education would agree that we need continue innovating new way is to integrate technology into the classroom.  Everyone also seems to agree that as the technology evolves we need to evolve the way we use it in the classroom.  However, what I found interesting about the videos that I watched today was the idea that not only do we need to evolve the way technology is used, but more importantly we need to evolve education as a whole and change some of the fundamental concepts of how and what we teach.
This idea of changing the actual bedrock of what we teach in schools was spoken about and illustrated very well in the short documentary Future Learning.  In this film professor Sugata Mitra of Newcastle University suggests that subjects such as arithmetic, that we have always seen as a fundamental part of teaching children, are not needed in today's world, because of the technologies that we have available today.  Instead, he postulates that what children should be learning instead is how to use these technologies and how to harness them for their educational needs.

Another aspects of this film that I found a specially interesting was their discussion of video games and how they can be very powerful tools for learning.  The reason I found this particularly interesting is because it goes along with anecdotal evidence that I have noticed in my own teaching experience.  As a volunteer EFL teacher in Brazil I worked a few students that spoke very good English, and when I asked them where they learned to speak English many of them told me that along with their courses in their school, where they were able to really pick up on the intricacies of the language was through playing video games.  I always thought this was very interesting so it was good to see those claims backed up by education professionals.

The other video I watched today was entitled Education Change Challenge, this video was much shorter than the first, but backed up much of what it said.  This video talked about how our style of education hasn't changed much in hundreds of years, even with the use of technology.  And it goes on to talk about how we must start to focus on the "experience dimension" of learning.  While this video did not go into as much detail as to how to use the technology, as someone currently learning to be a teacher I found it almost inspiring as it showed me how essential using technology will be in my classroom.
Really when it comes down to it I think I found both of these videos rather inspiring, because I think it is very important to realize that the way I learned when I was in school has changed drastically in the less than 20 years since I graduated.  With this knowledge and hopefully with what I am learning in all of my classes I will be able to adapt my view of teaching into something that will engage and challenge my future students.