Welcome to our July courses!

Now there's a digital native...!

Welcome to those of you who are coming to take a course with us in July, particularly those of you who are taking a Departament d'Ensenyament technology course.

Both the technology courses, Technologies for Project Work in the English Classroom and the Blogs and Blogging for Language Teachers, will in fact have their own blogs, but pre-course I've suggested you visit this site -- so welcome to it ,-) !

I've asked you to do three things pre-course:

• Complete a pre-course needs analysis form, which I emailed to you
• Set up a Gmail account, and e-mail me your address
• Read this article by Mark Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
  

The kid in the photograph amused me: that's definitely a digital native! I'm definitely a digital immigrant and if you read the article, you'll find out which you are...

Why don't teachers use technology more?

Still in its box: the inactive whiteboard (sic)

How much does the technology get used here, in this school? The question came up in the CELTA session we had Tuesday last week. I suggested that it (classroom computers, interactive whiteboards, a computer room with 15 PCs, video camera, digital camera...) is underused and someone asked "Why?"

For many reasons, I would suggest, most likely a combination of some or all of the following:

• Doubt whether or not using technology will actually lead to language learning
• Lack of ICT training
• Technophobia
• Unwillingness to try something new, to see if it works
• Fear that it might not work if they took it into the classroom, that something might go wrong with the technology
  
• Not actually having a computer in their own classroom (and therefore having to arrange to move to another)
  

The first I think valid and is a question I always ask myself: will my intended use of technology lead to more, better language learning? The last, to judge from feedback I took from staff at a recent workshop, would appear to be the biggest barrier at the school where I work, where only 25% of the 40 classrooms have a permanent, fixed PC and projector (the rest have to have the technology wheeled in, or else the class needs to go to the computer room).

The other reasons in the above list, which I fully understand and sympathise with are, I would suggest, things that as teachers we need somehow to overcome...

Blogger templates

Here's a set of links to Blogger templates if you have a Blogger blog and wish your blog didn't look like everyone else's.

The IWB: what people say

We have 10 eBeam interactive whiteboards (IWBs) at IH Barcelona. I'm responsible for promoting their use and so far they've been used very little.

Although the samples are small, some of the feedback that we're getting on them is interesting -- and almost universally positive.

A survey of 15 CELTA course trainees (mostly in their mid-20s) the other day revealed that only one of them had used (or seen a teacher use) an IWB either at school or university. Nevertheless, after the IWB had been briefly demonstrated to them, in response to the question "Would you want one in your classroom?" 13 (87%) said "Yes".

In response to the question "Would you want to use one/have your tutor use one on your CELTA course?" 3 (20%) responded "Yes, every day", 10 (67%) "Yes, occasionally".

In a class of 6 Spanish course students (mostly in their early 20s) which had used the IWB to display exercises which they had themselves created, 1 had used the IWB nearly every day at school and/or university, 2 "often", 3 never. Asked whether they thought they learnt more, less or the same, 1 thought "more", 5 thought "the same", but one of the latter added the significant comment "The same but it was much more fun".

At the end of a training workshop we ran for 7 practising teachers, none of whom had ever seen or used an IWB before, we asked how difficult they thought the IWB was to learn and how useful it would be to them. On a scale of 0 (incredibly easy) to 5 (impossibly difficult), they rated the IWB 2.3; on a scale of 0 (worthless) to 5 (incredibly useful), they gave it 3.9.

For further recent and/or ongoing discussions on IWBs, see also:

>> Cardiff Online IATEFL Conference IWB discussion
>> Dogme discussion group

Cool, Web 2.0 tools

One I picked up in my RSS feed from the excellent TeachingEnglish.co.uk site: an amazing collection of Cool, Web 2.0 tools for schools.

From the same source, another interesting link suggesting a Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners.

Great site for kids: National Geographic Kids

National Geographic Kids: goofy but great

This one actually comes from one of my favourite web design sites, A List Apart, which suggested National Geographic Kids as an example of a site that "focuses on clarity (...) even if the site is also goofy" [>> article].

Now it may seem a bit goofy if you're an adult but if you happen to be a kid "goofy" probably isn't your reaction when you read "Ruins, Romans and the world's best pizza". And the videos, games, activities (etc., etc.)... why, they look like fun, which is maybe how learning should look!

Sure, I'm a kid: yeah, maybe I am a bit goofy but I also know what kind of website I like!

If you happen to be teaching kids, or doing CLIL [>> more about CLIL], it's your kids' kind of site...

10 books for teaching young learners

Someone on our post-CELTA support group asked the question the other day... Did anyone have suggestions on how to spend a £500 budget (!) on books for the staffroom for those teaching young learners?

These would be my suggestions, with the cash left over being spent on giving each teacher their own personal copy of the first...

A skill you can teach yourself...
First a supremely useful skill, which will entertain and teach your young learners, and will save you ever again having to waste your life stealing pictures from Google-is-Evil:

• 1000+ Pictures for Teachers to Copy, Andrew Wright (Longman): Unquestionably my first choice, this book gave me the most useful skill I've learnt in nearly 30 years in teaching [Amazon]

A bit of theory...
Then a bit of theory, with plenty of practical ideas in these three books too:

• Teaching Languages to Young Learners, Lynne Cameron (CUP): Essential background reading, you don't want to teach young learners without being familiar with what's in this book [Amazon]
• Teaching Teenagers, Herbert Puchta and Michael Schratz (Longman): Definitely my next choice. In my experience, one of the vital things about teaching kids is your attitude to them: this book changed my attitude to kids, radically so [Amazon]
• How Languages Are Learned, Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada (OUP): One that all language teachers should read [Amazon]

Books full of practical classroom ideas...
And then five great resource books in the superb Oxford series:

• Drama with Children, Sarah Phillips (OUP), [Amazon]
• Storytelling with Children, Andrew Wright (OUP), [Amazon]
• Art and Crafts with Children, Andrew Wright (OUP) [Amazon]
  
• The Internet and Young Learners, Gordon Lewis (OUP) [Amazon]
• Writing with Children, Jackie Reilly and Vanessa Reily (OUP) [Amazon]

I put drama and storytelling first in my list there deliberately, with arts and crafts next. One of the most frequently asked questions on our support group is "Can anyone suggest games for young learners?".

But, at least in my own experience, I've found that drama and stories and making things are often in the end more engaging, more entertaining and more language-rich than most "games".

Oh, go on then, there's also a Games for Children in the same Oxford series...

Facebook makes you stupid?

An unnamed US study reckons 68% of school pupils using Facebook got "significantly lower" exam marks than those who didn't, according to The Week, the study referred to probably being that of Ohio State, according to TIME.

What it doesn't say -- though I haven't personally read the actual report -- is whether or not the exams themselves were actually testing what the learners know, or were relevant to their learning styles or actual real-world needs, and I suspect that quite possibly they weren't.

I might just be tempted to use Facebook rather than e-mail as a means of communication with learners as -- says my daughter (13) -- no-one ever uses e-mail now, at least not young learners.

What would put me off would be the privacy issues. While creating a new Facebook profile recently, I got asked did I want to be friends with these 25 people -- all of whom looked suspiciously young, and none of whom I recognised...

Hold on, I did recognise them: they were all 13, all girls, and all my daughter's friends. If you're going to use technology with young learners, you want a network that is a whole lot more secure than that...

Marc Prensky on the 21st Century Digital Learner

Don't bother me, Mom, I'm playing with my phone...

A (fairly) new article by Marc Prensky: Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First-Century Digital Learner.

On Nik Peachey's excellent Quick Shout blog, you can see Marc Prensky being interviewed by Gavin Dudeney at IATEFL 2009.

If you are not familiar with Marc Prensky [website | Wikipedia], his 2001 Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives article has been very influential.

New Learning English site

The BBC's excellent Learning English site has had a makeover.

Among the changes is a new option to download the audio for the Words in the News section, the archives for which go back to 1999. You also have the 190+ episodes of The Flatmates, a section on pronunciation, plus a section for teachers.

It's definitely a site to recommend to your learners (and perhaps suggest that they make it their default home page) but it also has things you could use in class.

Interactive Whiteboards are useless. Discuss.

It's not about the board...

This slideshow by Chris Bletcher I found in a link included in the debate on whether or not "IWBs are useless" on Cardiff Online, the online coverage of the 43rd Annual International IATEFL Conference.

IWBs are not (obviously) useless, provided that you use them well, whatever that means [discussion]. In that sense they're like any other technology.

At IH Barcelona we're at the stage of having got the boards but are still wondering (a) what we're supposed to be doing with them; (b) how to persuade teachers to use them and (c) what training we should be providing.

I'm personally a great believer "learning by quotation", "learning by soundbite" if you prefer, and particularly like the quotation shown in the image, above. It's tough to wade through all the information, the partisan debates and so on. It helps if you can cut out some of the noise.

Learning to use an IWB is a question of "learning by doing"; in attempting to learning to use one well, it probably helps to do some "learning by quotation" first.

See also >> The Interactive Whiteboard Revolution

The (unstoppable) progression of IT

One from YouTube on the progression of information technology, researched (and presumably created) by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Jeff Bronman, and which I picked up in my RSS feed for Tyson William's superb blog.

Does it worry you, as a teacher -- and as a person? You might show it to you learners, and ask them.

"So what does it all mean?" it asks at the end. Apart from anything else, it means that -- as a teacher -- you can't just bury your head in the sand, not use technology and hope that it will go away. It won't. You don't have a choice any longer.

Free resources for learning languages

One that came from one of my favourite RSS feeds -- the excellent Lifehacker.com -- free (mostly podcast) resources for learning languages (37 of them, including English). Useful to your students, useful to you too if you're heading off to teach English somewhere exotic...

"Don't search, have stuff come to you," I always say, and RSS is a great way to make that happen, whether you're a teacher or a learner.

>> RSS feeds for ELT

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.

Non-linear PowerPoint

PowerPoint: you can make it interactive!

As language teachers, you probably aren't big users of Microsoft PowerPoint. It might well be a tool you use for giving a talk or workshop at a conference or if, like me, you teach technology. But, as language teachers, using it is probably rapidly going to produce Death by PowerPoint and, in any case, you're not supposed to be lecturing your learners, are you?

As a workshop presenter, you certainly want to avoid inducing Death by PowerPoint, which is caused by -- among other things -- using too much text and too many bullet points per slide and then simply reading monotonously through it all, which your audience could have done at home on their own.

If you can make it an interactive presentation in some way, in which you respond to and dialogue with your audience, PowerPoint can nevertheless be a powerful tool. If, on the other hand, your audience has gone terribly quiet, best call the doctor quick -- for yourself.

Creating a non-linear presentation is one way to ensure that you respond not lecture. The following links came from the February 2009 issue of the Office Insider for Microsoft Office newsletter:

• Tailoring your message to the audience is everything!
• Relational Presentation: the visually interactive side of PowerPoint
  

If you're not that expert with PowerPoint, and want an easy way to allow yourself a non-linear PowerPoint presentation, you do have a "Go to" function which allows you to jump to whichever slide you want -- and not necessarily the next one:

Right-clicking in "Slide Show view" allows you to jump to whichever slide you want...

Make the learners make the PowerPoints
With learners, PowerPoint can be fun too -- for making presentations (eg. of the results of webquests), as well as for creative writing exercises.

With the latter, young learners love making multimedia stories with PowerPoint, including sound and images as well as text.

See also: Using PowerPoint Interactively in the Classroom

Obama's sentence structure

I'm not sure that this Obama sentence is actually something you'd want to use in class, except perhaps at a very high level:

"My view is also that nobody's above the law, and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen, but that, generally speaking, I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards."

But, at least to teachers, the language analysis here, and linked to from here, is interesting!

The following comment might just get a class discussion going:

This may be the essential Obama gift: making complexity and caution sound bold and active, even masculine.

As a starting point, before looking at the sentence, what is "the essential Obama gift"...?

And I suspect that word "masculine" might get some of my learners going!

How to embed things on a blog

In our Celta Course session, Tuesday, we looked at the above video, from VideoJug.

I suggested that, before watching it, learners could brainstorm a list of things you should do if you want to be able to get your own way with another person. We then used those learner-generated lists as our "listening comprehension" questions, and ticked off those mentioned as we watched.

Why would you want to embed a video
You might want to "embed" such a video on your own class blog -- "put" it there, if you prefer -- as then you have greater control over what else your learners will see. Currently displaying on the same VideoJug page are videos relating to "how to get out of a car without showing your knickers" and "how to have sex in public without being caught", for example.

You probably don't want your young learners to see or watch those...!

If you want you learners to be able to post things on a class blog (and I would suggest that you do!), then teaching them how to embed things (nice things ,-)! is a way of giving them control over what they watch and talk about in class.

How do you embed a video

Copy that line of code!

To embed a video, you need first to copy the "embed" code, highlighted above. Ensure you copy all of it: if you right-click on it, you can then "select all" to make sure that you do.

Paste the code into right place!

All you then have to do is paste the code on your blog. Make sure that you paste it in the right place: if you are using Blogger.com, you will have to use the "Edit Html" tab, shown above.

Again, you want to make sure it starts with the code object... and ends .../object>. If it does, you should then be able to preview it, and find that it will play correctly.

Needless to say you don't need to understand what any of that code means... !

>> Another video: Dance moves: an emergency guide for men