Dictogloss: Interactive students, inactive whiteboard

An idea that I presented last week at the annual IH Barcelona ELT Conference, in my talk on Dogme and the Interactive Whiteboard.

Dogme ELT argues that the best approach to language teaching is "materials-light", which is not exactly what you are going to get if you use a digital coursebook on an interactive whiteboard.

Rather than doing that, a dictoglossed single text gives you a "materials-light" class, with the learners interactive and the IWB inactive (sic), which is surely exactly what we should be aiming for...

See also How to make your Interactive Whiteboard interactive

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.

See also Dictogloss: Interactive students, inactive whiteboard

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...???

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

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...!

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

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

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.

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.

MFLE's ICT in Education site

There's an ICT in Education section on Scotland's MFLE that might interest, including a new guide to podcasting, as well as sections on blogging, using mobile phones in language classrooms, and interactive whiteboards, among others.

I also liked some of the ideas on the page about using PowerPoint interactively in the classroom.

There is also an MFLE blog that is worth reading (though, being directed at Modern Language teachers in Scottish schools, English isn't one of the languages it deals with directly).

Interactive whiteboards in the classroom

This makes all our whiteboards interactive... in theory, that is

Futurelab has a new report on interactive whiteboards in the classroom [.pdf file] that makes interesting reading. If you're new to the topic, read it; if you're wondering why your interactive whiteboards (IWBs) don't seem to get used that much, it looks at -- among other things -- the issues involved.

"The introduction of an IWB does not in and of itself transform existing pedagogies," the report highlights -- a misunderstanding I'm sure many of us fell under when they first came out.

There is evidence, it goes on to say, that "factors such as increasing familiarity, good training, time and space to practise and try new approaches, and the growth of teacher confidence all can play in increasing the likelihood of a greater impact on teaching and learning".

How many of those can you check off if you have access to IWBs in your school...?

At IH Barcelona we have "normal" IWBs in some of our classrooms; in all of the others we could use a portable Mimio board (equipment, pens, shown above)... only, regretably, we very rarely do.

Interactive Whiteboards

We have interactive whiteboards (aka IWBs) here at IH... most of them gathering dust, as they rarely ever get used, other than as glorified data projectors.

I'm yet to be convinced of their value myself -- so much so that, other than playing with them myself, I've yet to use one with students.

TechLearning has a free ebook The Why and How of Interactive Whiteboards, which includes a section on "Tips and Tutorials for Purchase and Use".

I quote:

Give students answers or questions on slips of paper, allowing them to take turns coming up to the [IWB]. This will keep them focused on the lesson as they wait for their turn to come.

Admittedly -- because of my lack of experience with the beasts -- I'm not the best qualified person to say so, but that sounds like how not to use an IWB to me.

Then:

Each student is given a part of a plant to label. When it is time for that part to be labeled, the student comes up to the [IWB] and either writes the name of the part or clicks and drags the name of the part.

That sounds like being slower, not time-saving, which is one thing technology ought to be.

And it also sounds like you (or your kids) could do exactly the same equally well on a normal whiteboard with a marker pen.

Could you do exactly the same without the technology...? Yes...? Then don't use the technology, I would suggest.