Learning vocabulary, learning technology

What sort of training with our new interactive whiteboards (IWBs) should we provide our teachers?

The IWB is like any other technology -- the best way to learn how to use it is learning by doing, actually "playing" with it, that is. We're providing sessions but, rather than involving formal instruction, they are opportunities to try the IWB out, to play with it.

Learning to use new technology is also a bit like learning vocabulary, I'd suggest. Apart from learning by using it, you also need to meet it regularly, and recycle it.

It's therefore best to give yourself four or five 15-20 minute sessions with it, on four or five different days -- better that than an hour or more on a single day.

If you learnt a new vocabulary word on Monday, you'd have forgotten it by Tuesday. But if you recycled Tuesday, there'd be a better chance you'd remember it Wednesday.

If your first experience of teaching a class with the IWB is Thursday, learn and relearn it until you know it on the preceding days, plural.

Technology and interaction

Learners first, technology last

In the technology session I do on the CELTA courses at IH Barcelona, I usually begin by asking people to rank the following in terms of their importance in the language classroom:

• Learners
• Materials
• Teacher
• Technology
• Other(-s)

As you can see in the image above, in Tuesday's session you ranked the learners first (red number "1"s), with technology coming roughly last (4,5...).

It's a rhetorical question, obviously, but I agree with the answer -- the technology itself is probably the least important thing.

Why use technology?
Why bother using technology in that case? I suggested that one of the "other" things that are of importance in the language classroom is interaction between the other elements (learners-learners, learners-materials, etc., the black arrows in the image above) and that technology can enhance that and provide further oppoortunities for interaction -- for example via a class blog.

Another big reason for using technology is face validity [definition]. You may well find yourself teaching digital natives, people who have grown up with technology. You may be a great teacher, but try and teach your learners with a blackboard and chalk and some of them at least will be wondering what cave you live in and, unfairly, not "like" you as a teacher.

As to how to use technology in the language classroom, the posts here on this blog labelled "using technology" address that issue...

Searching without Google

I've been landed a job that looks tough: persuading the teachers and trainers in the school where I work (International House Barcelona) that they should use the 10 eBeam interactive whiteboards (IWBs, or "smartboards") that we've just acquired (image, right, the annotation tool palette).

It looks tough first of all as I don't have a lot of experience actually using an IWB as a teacher; secondly because I've preferred not to, being cynically unable to see the return on investment -- by which I mean the amount of learning produced for the time invested.

So -- obviously -- the first thing I did, this morning, was open my browser... and then I didn't go straight to Google-is-Evil. What I wanted was a few expert opinions on how the technology should be used, how we might increase that return on investment.

Instead, I went to places I already knew and trusted and thought might well have ideas (not something I can say of Google), and used the search options there:

• Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog
• TeachingEnglish.org.uk
• Nik Peachey's Learning Technology Blog and his Quick Shout Blog
  

I did go to Google-is-Evil afterwards to search for "interactive board": the Wikipedia interactive whiteboard entry was first, there were some resources, particularly for UK schools [here and here], but not necessarily for language learning and teaching -- but what I was really looking for, expert opinion, wasn't there, at least not in the hundreds of results for people trying to sell me an IWB.

But that's Google-is-Evil for you... Fortunately there are some excellent alternatives.

Project work: Detroit, Barcelona, in decline

Waiting for the bulldozer: Barcelona in decline

One of my favourite blogs (and RSS feeds), Boing Boing, brought me this Time.com photographic essay of Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre [ >> website, for more images].

You don't have to live in a city like Detroit to see ruined buildings (see image above, of Barcelona) and getting your students to photograph them (or construction sites or graffiti...) might make a great project which they could share via a blog.

Those less gifted with a camera, or interested in photography, could participate in the design of the blog, the writing of accompanying text, etc. If your learners have to either take pictures or write the text, they have to interact and communicate.

As I suggested in a recent workshop, one of the attractive things about such a project is the opportunities it affords for real language use to take place: you are setting up enjoyable, creative, real tasks, not fake role play.