Technology assistants: help is at hand

Toni Walton Atela (15) tells his sister (12) about a job he's volunteered for at school -- being a "technology assistant".

You're getting hot and sweaty in front of your class, trying to get a PowerPoint presentation to open on the beastly piece of junk that masquerades as a computer (which seems to work fine for other people...)? If you were teaching in my sons's school, help would be sitting there in the classroom next door...

It might not work as well in a language school (with kids there only a couple of hours a week) but, if you work in a "normal" secondary school, it takes some of the pressure off the teacher. You're not that good with technology...? You're afraid it's not going to work...? Get some help...!

And it puts the responsibility on the kids. Now, that's got to be a good thing, too...

Task #5: Podcasting

With your two partners, take the following roles: (1) interviewer, the Director of Studies (DoS) in a language school; (2) candidate, a newly qualified teacher looking for a job; and (3) observer.

Interviewer, you have 1 min to decide what questions you are going to ask.

Role-play the interview (max. 2 mins).

Observer: advise the candidate what s/he should have said...

Role-play it again, with exactly the same questions from the interviewer, and the candidate following the observer's advice.

Note that we are going to record the interview and post it on the Internet.

And here's one that we created:

Boss, actually, I think I deserve a rise...

Here's one that came from today's workshop, in which I asked you to role play a dialogue in which an English teacher asks his/her DoS for a pay-rise.

Attendees at the seminar, Ryan and Louis demonstrated that next time they don't get a rise they do have a future in acting:




The actual task, to be done in threes, that I suggested was:

1. Brainstorming the ideas (and making notes) on why you deserve a rise
2. Person A (the teacher) go and ask Person B (the DoS) for the rise; while Person C observes
3. Person C makes notes on (a) how realistic the conversation is (would a boss say that...?); (b) the language used; and (c) the performance (did they put feeling into it...?)
4. Person C discusses the notes to see if the performance could be improved
5. Various rehearsals, to improve it (roles perhaps being swopped)
6. Recording

As I suggested, it's knowing that the dialogue is going to be recorded and broadcast (podcast) to the world that makes the students want to get it right, want to get it perfect...

That's one of the many attractions of podcasting, I think.

Day 6 on the CELTA course

Celta course trainee Dan Arp tells us a little about Day 6 on the course which, among other things included looking at various language analysis issues:

At times it can be hard to take all the information on board, Dan tells us, but he sees what his tutor Gerard is doing as being "planting seeds to cultivate over the course of [our] teaching careers".

Footnote: We produced the audio as part of a demonstration of podcasting in the session on technology on Day 7 of the course.

Technology (1).... Learning.

At the beginning of a session on our Trainer Training course, I asked the participants to "fill in the blank" in the following sentence with a verb, and then complete the sentence:

Technology [verb] learning if/provided/unless/when...

For example, "Technology enhances learning when the learners create, not merely consume content".

At the end of the session, partly to demonstrate how podcasting could be used for project work, we then recorded the sentences with a digital voice recorder.

The result of the exercise:




I particularly liked the idea that technology should be used in a "judicious, memorable and novel" way but in fact liked many of the other ideas just as much.

My thanks to Amra, Annemarie, Barbara, Carol, Constanza, Iván, Jo, Juliette, Laura, Mariela, Mariyana, Sierra and Vika for their excellent ideas.

Podcasting Guide

One that came to me from my RSS feed for the excellent Search English site... Eldis.org has an 18-page

"non-technical guide for those in the learning and training community who are new or relatively new to podcasting and videocasting (vodcasting) and want to explore its potential as part of learning solutions" [summary | pdf ]

I liked its "8 steps to effective podcasting".

>> An even simpler introduction to podcasting
>> More podcasting links

Project #1 Podcasting

Level: Intermediate

Circumstances: Wide range of nationalities on summer course in UK

Classroom time required: 1 hour a day, on an intensive 30 hour-a-week, 4-week course

Brief outline: Students rehearse and then record each other talking about cultural issues of interest to them and the differences and similarities between their cultures and those of their classmates. Recordings are then posted on an audio blog.

Equipment required: MP3 players with recording facilities (which most of the students have); Audacity, a free audio editing program (which is available in the computer room at the centre); a blog (which the teacher has set up).

To find out more about podcasting:
See this previous post.

What is... podcasting?

You've got (or your learners have got) an MP3 player...? Then you've got just about all it takes to be able to podcast...

Podcasting -- a portmanteau of the terms "iPod" and "broadcasting" -- involves publishing MP3 (audio) files on the Internet, downloading and listening to them.

It has become hugely popular [statistics from the BBC] and is one of the technologies we might consider using with language learners (though, says The Guardian, which also claims to have invented the word, it is "...still a format awaiting a purpose".

Where to begin
This short concise article on teachingenglish.org.uk is probably the easiest place to begin to form an overview of what podcasting involves and what you need to be able to do it.

What use could you make of podcasts with your learners? Techlearning.com explains How Educators Can Use This New Technology.

Where to find good podcasts
On Yahoo, as on other search engines, you can search for podcasts on a huge variety of topics.

You also have specialised podcasting portals like Podcastalley.com, where you can also search under different genres (including, eg., education) as well as seeing what's most popular.

The mainstream online media -- the New York Times, for example -- has also quickly picked up on the popularity of podcasts.

For more "general interest" podcasts, LifeHacker.com has an excellent article on where to find them.

Podcasts for English teachers and learners
For podcasts specifically for ELT, there are several places you could try:

• The popular Flo-Joe site ("the place on the Web for Cambridge exam preparation") publishes a weekly podcast
• EnglishCaster.com ("the best place to find English lesson podcasts) is a good place to search
• At a4esl.org, you will find "the 20 newest podcasts by ESL podcasters"
• And as Eslpod.com you will find more...
  

More resources
On the "Podcasting ELT" Yahoo Group (join it, if you are interested in podcasting), you will find lots more links relating to podcasting.