Blending learning

Blending learning is a term used to describe the way traditional learning is combined with technology. Students learn some contents in the classroom and other ones through the internet, where they can choose when and where to do it. What teachers have to do is to find a balance between what students do in the classroom and through the internet.

As we saw along this year, the use of technology in the classroom is very useful, not only for teachers but also for students. They can find a lot of information, videos, images and everything they want on the internet. Knowing that technology is very important in the classroom, teachers may ask themselves if they are important too. We can say this, because students have a huge amount of information available on the internet so the role of the teacher changed to “facilitator”, since they help students to see what of the online material is the most acceptable and meaningful. The presence of teachers in the classroom is still vital as they have the role of keeping students motivated and making them progress.

We think that nowadays, blending learning is essential in the classroom due to the fact that students get bored working with paper-and-pencil materials. The use of technology may motivate students in an era where they can find a lot of things available on the internet. What is more, the teacher will have a central role and as a result,  they will help students find what it is of highly importance for them.

You can get a better explanation of what blended learning is in the following video:

Digital culture in education.

Hugo Pardo Kuklinski

As we are part of the new generation, we see that classrooms have changed from what they were before. Now, we have the opportunity to introduce new ways of learning in our classrooms which provide motivation to learn.

On Wednesday 28^th of September, we were invited by our teacher to attend to a talk held by Hugo Pardo Kuklinski at Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL). Hugo Kuklinski is a PhD in communication and the director of a project called “Outliers School”. Although we wanted to attend the talk, we were not able to go, but after reading my partners’ blogs we could get some important issues treated at the lecture.

One concept we came across when reading our partners’ blogs, it is the so called “Intraemprendedores” which according to Hugo, it is a task for teachers to think about the position they have as regards content, methods and technology. It was also mentioned a “Red de interaccion” which as we read, Hugo did not provide clear examples on how to apply it to the classroom, leaving aside the role of the teacher  and making obvious that the “red” was more intelligent than the educator.

On the positive side, we could see that he emphasized the importance of taking advantage of the possibilities that technology brings to us to change the learning atmosphere and  the promotion of a flexible environment. It is important to bear in mind that the role of the teacher it will still be relevant in the classroom, so it is of highly importance to not disdain it. 

References:

- Image retrieved from:
http://www.unlvirtual.edu.ar/blog/2016/06/01/hugo-pardo-kuklinski-brindara-una-conferencia-abierta-sobre-educacion-y-cultura-digital/

Word clouds and Voki: two useful tools

Word cloud or tag cloud is an image that contains words. If you enter a text and some words appear more than once, the word cloud gives more prominence to those words. There are a variety of word clouds generators on the internet that are free.

Voki is a tool where you are able to create your own talking character. You can choose from different characters or even one of yourself and then, you give them voice by recording yourself or you can write the text and Voki will do it for you.

We can use word clouds and Voki, in order to make students work in a different way in the classroom. We can provide them with a word cloud containing vocabulary or words, to form a definition of an important concept. Then, via Voki, they can check if they did it well.

• Here is an example of an activity that we create using word cloud and Voki.

First, we will present students with a word cloud containing vocabulary related to countable and uncountable nouns. They are supposed to complete a chart that have two columns, one for countable nouns and the other one for uncountable nouns.

As there are many generators to create a word cloud, we decided to work with Tagul, just because we found it very easy to use it.

After that, we will ask students to go to Voki and check if what they did is correct.

You can go here in order to look at Voki.

Integrating technology in the classroom.

It is important these days to include technology inside the classroom to bring something fresh and new to our students, in order to keep them engaged with the lesson.  Because of this, we designed a lesson plan in which it was included a PowerPoint presentation about holidays, being related to the past simple form. We included a variety of activities such as a brainstorming of ideas, skim and scan a text, filling in the blanks and lastly, we showed to them a PowerPoint presentation that served as a model for their final task. Students are expected to write about a place they visited on their holidays and make a PowerPoint presentation to share in the lesson, explaining it briefly in Spanish.  We will be evaluating the linguistic contents which are included in their presentations. They are asked to do this work in pairs.

Taking into account the SAMR model developed by Puentedura, we could find that there are four levels to enhance information which are:

1.    Substitution: The teacher only substitutes the tool without a functional change.

2.    Augmentation: The tech acts as a substitution but with a functional improvement.

3.    Modification: There is a significant re-design in which the use of tech is necessary.

4.    Redefinition: The tasks are inconceivable without technology.

We found that our lesson was in the level of augmentation since the only improvements  students included were pictures or photos they used on the PPP presentation. To take it to a redefinition level, we decided to ask students to make a PPP presentation (which included pictures, music, texst, etc.) and what is more, to give reasons why they went to that place, giving them the opportunity to complete a task through technology.

To conclude, we will leave you a video which explains more in detail the SAMR model:

Digital literacies in general and focusing on information.

According to Nicky Hockly (2013), digital literacies refer to our ability to effectively make use of the technologies at our disposal. "We are not just talking about a checklist of technical skills, but also about the social practices that surround the use of new media".

We, as future teachers of English need to bear in mind that communication is part of technology and students are closed to it. So it is really important that teachers can keep up-to-date with new networks in order to attract students´attention and make the lesson more relevant to them.

Digital literacies have four main areas: those with a focus on language, on connections, on information, and on (re)design. If we take into account the definition provided by CILIP's (Character Institute of Library and Information Professionals) Council in 2004, information literacy is knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner.

We use the webpage by Discovery Education  to create a crossword for a hypothetical group of students. First, we are going to show them a picture of the Olympic Village where there will be referential numbers on each stadium.

Students will be expected to look at the numbers and complete the following activity with the corresponding sport according to their intuitions and the information the pictures provide.

To conclude, we can say that Discovery Education webpage is a valuable resource because it offers a breadth and depth of digital media content. Also, it provides as Nicole Wagner, a teacher of Tavan Elementary who writes for Discovery Eduaction, mentions "multiple and varied exposure to content".



References:
- Hockly, N. (n.d.). Digital literacies: What are they and why should we care? Retrieved July 05, 2016, from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/digital-literacies-what-are-they-why-should-we-care

Digital natives or digital immigrants?

We strongly believe, as we were born in the 90’s, that we are digital natives.  We belong to the generation in which computers were used to do practical works and internet was used to look for information for different subjects. 

We agree with Marc Prensky (2001) when he mentions in his article that learners nowadays think and process information differently from their predecessors, as they have different access to information, their thinking patterns have changed. For example, our primary or secondary school teachers did not have the opportunity to take advantage of the internet when studying. It is also true that in the future we will be digital immigrants because as years go by, there are technological advances too and we will have to adapt our teaching to the digital native learners.

On the other hand, we do not agree with Prensky (2001) when he says that digital immigrants have little appreciation for these new skills, because digital immigrants teachers are more aware of the digital native students they have in their classroom, so they can see the need to keep up-to-date with the new technologies to make their classes more interesting and adequate to the student’s needs.

We think that it is our job as teachers to make students feel engage with the class  and adapt our language and tasks to the “new” students to succeed in our classrooms and also bear in mind the context in which we are working to integrate all our students.

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Teachers as material designers.

Nowadays, teachers play many different roles in the classroom. They can be: learning facilitators, planners, motivators, prompters, assessors, tutors, technologist, and the most significant one for us, teachers as materials designers. According to Tomlinson Brian (2011), materials are anything teachers use to help students learn. 

Teachers try to use different kind of materials in order to make their students’ learning more interesting and also to support their own teaching in their lessons. 

Some teachers resort to books or activities already designed, while others decide to produce their own materials. This is mainly because they want to contextualize the activities taking into account their students’ needs, the context in which they live, the type of activities they like and the level they have.  

As we read in “Guidelines for designing effective English languageteaching materials” by Howard and Major (2005), there are many factors that teachers have to bear in mind when producing their own materials: 

1.       The learners. 

2.       The curriculum and the context. 

3.       The resources and facilities. 

4.       Personal confidence and competence. 

5.       Copyright compliance. 

6.       Time.

It is really important that teachers take into consideration all of them in order to create remarkable materials.

We, as future teachers, think that it is essential to design our own material, bearing in mind the learner as the center of our plans. In that way, we are going to be certain that they will learn appropriately. What is more, an important key factor to assure learning is contextualization; it would be very useful to adapt our materials to the specific group we will work with. Not only is it important to use the commercially produced materials, but also be able to construct our own teaching material. 



References:
- Tomlinson, Brian (2011). Material development in Language Teaching (2nd Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.