Getting teens to listen, and write, in English

I very much liked one of the many suggestions Usoa Sol made in her talk, Listen up! Getting teens to listen in English, given at the IH Barcelona ELT Conference -- getting kids to write emails from the protagonists of the song.

Usoa suggested Dido's Thank You, though I wonder if it's got a strong enough storyline and whether or not it tells us enough that we can interpret about the characters. Perhaps White Flag might work better, partly because you've got a YouTube videoclip there that appears to add something to the story.

I'm showing my age here, I guess, but one I'd really go for would be Springsteen's Johnny 99 (video above), which has a more powerful, more obvious story in it, I think.

Neat idea -- and so much better and richer than just another gap-filled song. You could then get your teens to respond to each other's mails...

How to make your Interactive Whiteboard interactive

Let me, first, rephrase the title of this post, and call it not "How to make your Interactive Whiteboard interactive" but "How to make your students interactive".

In my talk at the annual IH Barcelona ELT Conference, I suggested that we should do the following if we're using an interactive whiteboard (IWB):

• Stop calling it an interactive whiteboard: it isn't interactive!
• Start the class with only minimum materials
• Generate the maximum (interaction) from the minimum (material)
• Don't waste hours looking for and downloading "materials"
• Don't see it as a clever sort of PowerPoint (or photocopier)
• Use it only a little (and use it less than your learners)
• Reduce teacher talk time and student wait time to a minimum
• Have your learners use it to create things
• Use other technology/-ies (blog? wiki? email...?) to do things with what you have created
• Move quickly from the interactive whiteboard to interactive students and an inactive (sic) whiteboard

IWBs are, of course, interactive in the sense that when you use the tools they come with, they respond -- there's an action and response, which is "interaction" in a technological sense; but what we really want as teachers is interaction with and between our learners.

Call it digital whiteboard instead, and I think there's less risk that we're going to kid ourselves that, of its own accord, an IWB is going to lead to proper interaction -- the sort that we want, between engaged and active learners.

Student wait time
I'll post the tasks I suggested in my talk separately but, for the moment, let me just take one of the other points suggested above, what I call "student wait time".

One of the things you want to avoid is having your learners simply sitting there watching someone else (you, or one of the learners) "interact" with the board. People don't learn languages by sitting passively in classrooms watching other people type, they need to be actively engaged in doing things -- and with the tasks I post over the next few days I'll try to illustrate how that can be achieved.

How not to see or use your IWB

We're in Week 2 now of the EVO sessions, in which I'm participating in the Smart Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards event and we're currently doing some background reading from some of the very interesting links provided.

Here's a fairly typical example of what an enthusiastic user of an IWBs says:

Our school has IWBs in every classroom. However, how it is used varies. Some use it as a glorified whiteboard. Others just use it as a projector. A IWB becomes truly useful when it is used a tool. It needs to be integrated into the curriculum. It helps me develop lesson plans and allows me to present my lessons seamlessly. I can have video, links and interactive work. It helps me eliminate props (I teach Spanish). The bells and whistles are nice but when I can have all my lesson plans and many of the materials all in one file to bring up and use on the board, it is priceless.

I'm a fairly enthusiastic user of IWBs myself but I think something fundamental is wrong with what is being said there. Analyse the subjects of the verbs. I make the count "School" (1); the IWB itself (9); the teacher/s (9); and the learners ZERO. What on earth are the learners doing, meanwhile?

If it's not the learners using the technology, perhaps the technology really shouldn't be being used at all...

Can what is described above possibly be good teaching, or good use of an IWB...???

Google Squared

This came from a recent TechLearning newsletter [post], which is well worth subscribing to (free).

Google Squared is still under development and I'm not quite sure if I can see an actual worthwhile classroom application of it but it's at least a different way to search and does allow you to add and take away results.

Disappointing that "Google Squared couldn't automatically build a Square about classroom technology", though it did rather better on "teaching methods" (see screen capture, above).

With or without learners, maybe it would be better anyway just to brainstorm such things, rather than let Google-is-Evil do all the thinking for you?

Ken Lee on Bulgarian Music Idol

Here's a YouTube video my son sent me that might be interesting to watch in class with language learners -- apart from anything else as Music Idol and its equivalents are still popular shows and will thus lead to discussion.

Our first reaction is perhaps to laugh, but as language teachers I don't think we should laugh at people having difficulty pronouncing English correctly. But I think you'll find that our own language learners react in different ways to it -- which is great for discussion.

With this and virtually all videos on YouTube you can also often exploit both the comments (as text) and the "reactions", i.e. other videos other users post in response. In this case, one of the "reactions" is Mariah Carey's response to seeing the Bulgarian version of a song she helped make famous (and predicting what her response will be would make a good activity).

You've also obviously got the lyrics to exploit and searching for whatever they can find out about the Bulgarian singer, Valentina Hasan, might make the basis of an interesting webquest.

EVO Sessions 2010

The 2010 edition of the excellent TESOL EVO sessions has just been announced.

Session topics include video, online games, teaching with interactive whiteboards and teaching languages in virtual worlds (including Second Life).

The six-week sessions start January 11th, are free and open to all and do not require TESOL membership. They tend to be a little over-subscribed, but are run by volunteers and are well worth attending.

Registration starts January 4th.

Interactive whiteboard links

Some of the links that I provided on the handout in the workshop I gave today on using the interactive whiteboard (IWB)...

ELT publishers are starting to produce digital versions of their coursebooks (for use with or without an IWB). Two examples:

• Macmillan's New Inside Out Digital
• Pearson's Total English
  

There are numerous sites where you download things for use on the IWB:

• Promethean Planet
• Smart
• SoloProfes.com
  
• TES
  

It could be that if you doing CLIL, such things might be ideal; but, as I suggested -- believing as I do in a "materials-light" Dogme approach to language teaching -- I really have my serious doubts about such sites.

You've heard of Death by PowerPoint...? Take a materials-heavy approach to using the IWB and I think you're risking something very similar. The more materials, the more passive and bored your students will become...

What you really want is active students and a fairly inactive whiteboard!

YouTube and the IWB

If you are coming to my workshop on using the interactive whiteboard (IWB) this morning, you'll be seeing these two YouTube videos...



With the first (above), I suggest not telling anyone that is an ad and just watching the first 35 seconds before pausing. You will also need to warn anyone already familiar with the video from blurting out what it is (and/or what it's an ad for).

I've no doubt your learners will find plenty to say about it (on parenting, etc.). You don't actually need an IWB, of course, to watch YouTube videos, but you might productively use one to feed in any language that emerges from the discussion.

Having revealed that it is an ad, and what it's for, you might then use the IWB to have the students brainstorm a list of what makes a good ad.

You can use an IWB to import text and images but you can also export things that have been created on it. In the workshop, I suggested, for example, exporting such a list to a class blog, where the discussion could continue and on which your learners could post further great ads.

In common with the first advertisment, it's just possible that people might find the second slightly objectionable...



... which in turn would lead to further discussion, and more emerging language.

LIFE photos: something actually useful from Twitter!

Among my Twitter litter...

I'm not a big fan of Twitter (I actually have never yet cluttered up cyberspace with a message of my own) but I check it every day, largely because I'm "following" LIFE.com, which sends me links to fabulous pictures for use in class every day.

As we've got PCs and projectors and interactive whiteboards in many of our classrooms there's no need to print them out -- you can just beam them up at sizes which are so much more impressive than on A4 photocopies...

Click here for those black cats and the unusual phobias you can just make out in the image, above...

>> See also: RSS, which would be an alternative way of following LIFE

Halloween videos and lessons

Halloween lessons and lots more on TEFLClips.com

Among the YouTube videos and lessons on Jamie Keddie's award-winning teflclips.com blog you've got a Halloween Horror Story that's fun (and topical!).

If you prefer a more student-centred approach to listening, you could alternatively, and as a lead-in, get your learners to brain-storm the vocabulary they think will come up in a "Halloween Horror Story" and then listen and watch to see how many they got "right".

There are in fact two YouTube videos there. I prefer the second because it's so much shorter (one minute, not five).

Jamie also has a book, Images (OUP 2009), with activities that can be used for teaching of productive and receptive language skills, grammar, vocabulary and so on.

Previous Halloween posts:

• Witches and more stuff for Halloween lessons
  
• Halloween lessons
  
• Halloween project

You've got more Halloween links on the excellent TeachingEnglish.org.uk and on the British Council's LearnEnglishKids site.

Video sites for learning to use technology

Everyone knows YouTube, don't they?

But there are other great video sites, too, which are particularly useful for learning how to use technology:

• www.teachers.tv
• www.teachertube.com
• www.videojug.com

You can read about how to do something in a manual, or find a text-based tutorial online somewhere, but sometimes actually seeing how something is done is so much more helpful!

Macmillan dictionary for your blog

If you are using a class blog, you might be interested in embedding a dictionary in it. Macmillan's is real easy to embed (ie, install, if you don't want to get technical).

Here's how to install the dictionary, the appearance of which you can to some extent customise.

It will look something like this:



I've included it here in a post. You might want to install it somewhere where it will be permanently visible (in your sidebar, or at the top of the page, for example), as otherwise it will disappear from sight as you continue to post things on.

Neat (and it will give your learners the pronunciation, too...)

The idea was suggested in the Macmillan English newsletter, which is also worth checking out: it lands useful things in your mailbox regularly.

Fun with WordMagnets

WordMagnets: color them, size them, add more, drag and drop them...

One that comes from Nik Peachey's excellent Learning Technology Blog...

Nik suggests that you could use WordMagnets as a tool for Revising Short Texts and Syntax, on a computer and/or on an interactive whiteboard.

WordMagnets is free, doesn't require installation and enables you to copy and paste (or type in your own) short texts -- which are then converted into drag-and-drop "fridge magnets".

Apart from Nik's great ideas, the variety of simple "backgrounds" you can choose from would allow for the creation of simple exercises and games... Shown above, an example with two overlapping circles, which took me exactly 1 minute to create.

You certainly could use it with an interactive whiteboard -- but it would also work well if you have a computer room on which students could work in pairs creating exercises for each other...

(As Nik notes, regrettably you can't save your creations -- but they are real fast to create... You could take a screenshot, as I did, but you'll then lose all interactivity.)

But that's fun...!

Dogme and Technology

Dogme ELT is a "materials-light" methodology and also a very active discussion group.

The discussion group has got a bit hijacked of late in futile debates between the advocates of technology and its detractors but Graham Stanley now suggests a way forward in his Dogme 2.0 for ELT wiki, with a call for "vows" that would outline technology's place in Dogme ELT... Can you (and how...?) use technology and remain "faithful" to Dogme...?

(In case you wonder, Dogme ELT had "vows" when it was first set up back in 2000, as did Lars von Trier's Dogme 95 film-making, from which it took its name).

Dogme has been defined as being "conversation-driven, materials-light, focused on emergent language"; all of those things strike me as being "right" and the challenge is how to stay with that and still use technology -- without the technology taking over the conversation, and becoming the focus of attention.

One of ways that can be achieved, I think, is that the learners should use technology to create and communicate, not merely to consume... as I've suggested previously.

A similiar definition of Dogme comes from the blurb on a new book on Dogme, Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching (Luke Meddings and Scott Thornbury, Delta Publishing, 2009): it's a "materials-light, conversation-driven philosophy of teaching that, above all, focuses on the learner and on emergent language" (my italics).

It's not nearly so well known as some of the ELT publishing giants, but Delta Publishing has got some really great books for English teachers...

OneStopCLIL: resources and courses for CLIL teachers

Onestopclil: The Resource Bank for CLIL Teachers

You're probably already familiar with OneStopEnglish.com, the Macmillan resources site (lesson plans, worksheets, flashcards, etc...), which modestly claims to be "the world's number one resource site for English language teachers" (though you'll need to subscribe for full access, which costs €52 pa for individual membership).

OneStopEnglish has a younger sibling, one year old this month, OneStopCLIL, which also requires subscription for full access, but has sufficient free resources on it to be useful, and to tempt you (or your school) to make a small, worthwhile investment.

If you are teaching or going to be teaching CLIL [define], you may also be interested in our online CLIL course, the first edition of which starts October 19.

Sites for Teachers of (Very) Young Learners

Hi and welcome if you came to Monday's technology session on our teaching very young learners course...

The following, in alphabetical order, were some of the links I suggested to sites with either lots of resources for teachers of young learners and/or -- and perhaps more importantly -- ideas and the resources for professional development.

• British Council "Kids" site
• DLTK's Crafts for Kids
• EnchantedLearning.com
  
• First-School Preschool Activities and Crafts
• IATEFL Young Learners SIG (see also its discussion group and list of other links)
• National Geographic Kids site
• OneStopEnglish.com (subscription required for full access)
• PrometheanPlanet.com for resources to be used on interactive whiteboards (registration required)
• TeachingEnglish.org.uk (see also the Language Assistant site with its "Primary Tips", "Games" etc sections)
• Times Educational Supplement (registration required)

Great sites! But are they...?
As I suggested in the seminar, while there are undoubtedly some great resources on such sites, I'd be just a little wary about becoming a heavy user of them. The trouble with them, I would suggest, is that it may end up being the teacher not the learners using the technology, whereas I think it should in fact be the other way round.

Go for the sites that are giving you ideas, rather than printouts -- the IATEFL YL SIG, for example, rather than First School, or the community section on TES, rather than the resources section on the same site.

As my DELTA tutor, Neil Forrest once said to us: "An idea is worth a thousand photocopies".

Footnote: year groups, ages...
On some of the above, where there is so much material it may be helpful to search by age group, and on the sites not intended primarily for ELT, it maybe helpful to know how ages correspond to the years kids are in... Wikipedia tells us -- for England, Scotland and the US.

From the same seminar:

>> Stickers for your kids: print them or make them?
>> Resource books for teaching young learners

Stickers for your kids: print them or make them?

Customisable Mr Men stickers from the TES site...

One of the resources sites I suggested in the technology session on our very young learners course this week was the Times Educational Supplement (TES) site, which has over 30,000 free resources, for all subjects (not principally ELT).

From TES, I took two examples (registration required to view them): a PowerPoint Jeopardy template, and some customisable Mr Men stickers. For very young learners, note that you can edit the text, or eliminate it altogether (see image above).

Both would be huge time-savers: the former would require a minimum amount of prior knowledge of PowerPoint, but would still save you hours of work; the latter not much more than a bit of fiddling about to get them to print out on sticky labels...

But would you actually want to use them...?

That would be a very definite YES!, to judge from the comments about them on TES, but personally I have my doubts. In both cases it would the teacher using the technology, but it surely ought to be the learners doing so. You could, for example, have (older) learners write questions, which would certainly be a start, if you wanted to play Jeopardy.

As for the stickers, personally I'd either create my own (as, see image below, you did at the start of my session) or else I'd get my learners to create the labels for each other...

Mr Personal: it's so easy to make your own!

There's also the question of the time it's going to take: it was so much quicker to produce our own -- and so much more personal!

Sometimes the resources technology offers are in fact not necessarily the best solution...

Resource books for teaching young learners

Some of the excellent titles in the OUP resource book series

In the technology session we had on our teaching very young learners course this week, I mentioned the books in the superb OUP resouce book series for teachers of young learners.

Among the titles we have in the library (not quite the complete series) are the following, with the age groups they are intended for given in parenthesis:

• Art and Crafts with Children (4-12)
• Assessing Young Learners (6-12)
• Creating Stories with Children (4-14)
• Drama with Children (5-12)
• Games for Children (4-10)
• The Internet and Young Learners (7-15)
• Projects with Young Learners (5-14)
• Storytelling With Children (7-14)
• Very Young Learners (3-6)
• Young Learners (5-12)

Sample pages, activities, etc., are available online (registration required).

Clearly, not all the activities are suitable for very young learners, but I can most highly recommend the series...

Sure, you can find great things on the Internet, but you've got wonderful things in books, too!

Social Networking Conference

November 5-8, we have the Social Networking 2009 Conference. It's free, completely online and its objective is "elluminating ELT practitioners to grow in the use of social networks as learning development tools". The event is run by AVEALMEC and ARCALL, two Latin-American associations interested in promoting the use of ICT in the language classroom.

If you're interested in social networking and wonder how it could be used in ELT, it's one that definitely looks interesting.

What should you do in a private class with a kid?

Blogging: it's so easy and is not just "the usual stuff..."

You've got a private class with a 13-year-old girl, who's getting on fine in English at school, but whose Mum wants her to be really good at English, and can afford to pay for it. What do you do with her for three hours a week...?

The question came from Liza on our post-CELTA course support forum and Liza was looking for "another book we could use for the classes that covers all the usual stuff, reading, grammar etc" and she wanted "to make the classes a bit more exciting and interactive".

Now I actually happen to be myself the father of a 13-year-old girl, who's fascinating to listen to on what makes classes "a bit more exciting" (or otherwise!) and I can't help thinking that another book to cover "all the usual stuff" isn't going to have the desired effect.

I'd get the kid to blog.

I'd have her blog on whatever subject/s interest her: whatever she's into, music or dance or xtreme skateboarding, I'd get her to write about it on a blog. I'd get her to find stuff on the Internet on it; get her to talk to you about it; provide the language she needed to say what she can't yet say; and get her to write about it on a blog... which I'd make really private.

And in that way, do the reading and the grammar, and lots more besides...

It's so easy to set up a blog [video] and it's not just the usual stuff, which -- chances are -- she's probably already bored with from school...