Entries Tagged as 'CONFERENCES'
To be Plugged or Unplugged? Is this the whole question? Is everything so black and white? What are the ways to integrate these into teaching not only without losing the real communication but also following the newest trends in ELT? These were just some of the questions in my mind while going to the conference held on Yeditepe University this weekend.
The first star on the stage was Scott Thornbury who is the founder of the big idea “Dogme”. He gave a speech about the importance of Dogme both for students and teachers and pointed out something very important that most of us have forgotten nowadays. Do we really take the correct action plans for the students’ engagement and talk or just unburden ourselves by using course books and technology more than ever.
“We are looking for ways of exploiting the learning opportunities offered by the raw material of the classroom that is the language that emerges from the needs, interests, concerns, and desires of the people in the room”
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Some Golden Suggestions for the ELT world
1. Don’t complain: You don’t have to be sunny about everything.
2. Ask an unscripted question: If you ask a question the machine begins to feel less like a machine.
3. Count something: If you count something, you find interesting, you will learn something.
4. Write something: By offering your reflections to an audience, even a small one, you make yourself part of a larger world.
5. Change: Be willing to recognize the inadequacies in what you do and to seek out solutions.
Keeping these valuable ideas in mind I will go on looking for how to channel technology into Dogme. Hope to find many sparkles on this journey.
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The second star was Lindsay Clanfield who writes books and materials for English language learners and teachers. His session was interesting in a way that reminded me the old days before technology developed so much. Lindsay looked at Teacher Development from a triangle perspective: Person, Teaching and Language. He underlined that the length of these items may not be equal, which causing a kind of difference among teachers.
It is well known that media has changed the person, teaching and language a lot for 15 years and here is the intelligible summary of the current changes from Lindsay’s point of view:
1. PERSON: Friends- Support Network (PLN) – Self Esteem
2. TEACH: Accessing to materials – sharing/unboxing our own materials – reflecting while writing – asking questions to teachers
3. LANGUAGE: Language trends-exposure to English-Reflection- Sharing
Lindsay finalized his talk suggesting an application called “Outsmarter” to set time limits for addictive websites. It worths keeping in mind since the new innovations on media are multiplying each day.
Looking forward to attending the next conference at Yeditepe University.
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Tags: CONFERENCES·IATEFL·LTSIG EVENTS
The lyric “They tried to make me teach with Edtech” and an angry teacher who is ready to explode is on the screen. What are the implications of the song? What does it really want to show? The challenge that most of the teachers experience while using technology or the students’ point of view about this issue! Işıl prepared a cocktail for us on that day. She shared with us enormous, valuable information from terminology to applications on ICT. Here are the cornerstones of her session:
Mayer’s Principles for the Design of Multimedia Learning
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Multimedia Principle: People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
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Segmenting principle: People learn better when a multimedia lesson is presented in learner-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit.
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Pre-training principle: People learn better from a multimedia lesson when they know the names and characteristics of the main concepts.
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Modality principle: People learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text. After the session I made a short search of Mayer’s Principles and found loads of information on the web. You can can also read the details about this topic here.
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Virtual Learning Environment vs Personal Learning Environment
Virtual Learning Environment is a computer program that facilitates computerized learning or e-learning (Moodle, Blackboard, Second Life, etc…) VLEs are considered as institution-led “one size fits all” monoliths. On the other hand, Personal Learning Environments are systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. (Web 2.0 tools, Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, etc…) PLEs are considered as learner-centered, flexible environments. It seems that each PLE by its nature is unique since each learner chooses his own preferred approaches. As a teacher I have already started to think of the implementations of PLEs into my classes.
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A Bunch of Web Tools
JING is a free image and video capturing tool that can create miracles responding to the requirements of teachers and learning needs of students. I personally prefer to use this tool giving feedback to students’ written homework or clarifying important points of an assignment.
QR Codes is the trademark for a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code). Even though the definition looks complicated, I think that QR codes are among the revolutionary ideas in this century.
Doodle Hangman is a fun animated hangman game which you can use in one or two player mode. It’s possible to choose different categories such as animals, clothes, countries and a few other options.
There is no doubt that many new areas/tools/applications will be discovered in the future. These ones were introduced by Işıl Boy and I found them really helpful and useful to think about. I hope I could reflect the major points of the conference within these serials. See you at the next techy-conference.
References Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia Learning, New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Tags: CONFERENCES·ICT·Web 2.0 tools
Today Beykent University held a conference called “The Use of Technology in Student Centered Learning”. Even though waking up early and trying to arrive at the university on time were eventful, the conference atmosphere was enough restful to make me calm. The first plenary speaker was Nik Peachey whose session was about developing materials and practices for the digital generation. He started his talk giving some statistics on the usage of technology among teens:
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More than 75 percent of teens own cell phones.
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73 percent use online social networking sites
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38 percent share something online that they created, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos.
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Teenagers averaged 3,339 sent and received texts a month!
When you look at the numbers, you again face the reality of digital invasion of all those applications and techy devices, and inevitably start to think how to catch up with these on going innovations. Actually, the way I found on this way is to internalize the innovations/applications at first and then use them in class without wasting time since it is a fact that digital literacy is quite damaged when it is not applied in reality.
The Pinpoints from the Nik Peachey’s Session
During his talk, Nik shared with us amazing Web applications, which can be integrated into a warmer of an activity or a follow up task outside the classroom. Here are the web tools for you, the digital bees:
TodaysMeet helps you embrace the backchannel and connect with your audience in real time. It is used for Information sharing, audience responses, democratizing the classroom, brainstorming and engagement.
Transl8it is an online SMS converter that changes long texts into a shorthand SMS language. It can also convert any SMS back to normal text. In class teachers can convert long texts into text messages and ask the students to figure out the language/genre/discourse/phonology. without paper, a record of interaction.
Text2Phonetics is an online application that transcribes small English texts into broad phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It is really a great chance for teachers to create phonology based tasks integrating with readings.
Posterous is a simple blogging platform involving sending emails, with attachments of photos, MP3s, documents, and videos. Nik suggested using it to publish content as writing task, creating online materials and a shared private workspace, to work collaboratively with students.
Storify is an online platform to tell stories using social media such as tweets, photos, videos and the o
ther elements form the web. You can add your headline, interaction or text to create a context.
Scrible is a tool that allows you to highlight or annotate any web pages and share it with others. It is helpful for developing study skills, analyzing text (grammar and vocabulary), pinpointing text comprehension and creating different types of projects and assignments.
Evernote is a kind of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving.
Vyou is a video conference tool, which can be used to create Question and Answer Sessions by the teachers or students.
Mailvu is a video mail service allows you to save your videos. Nik suggested using this tool to develop speaking skills and increase self reflection and awareness in class.
Visual.ly is a website on which you can use many types of infographics or visual data such as timelines, flow charts, annotated maps, graphs or venn diagrams.
I think Nik’s stuff is extremely enough for a post so I’ve decided to write about Michael Swan and Işıl Boy’s sessions in another serial. I hope I could portray the details of the session reflectively enough for the ones who couldn’t attend the conference
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Tags: Digital Literacy·edtech·Web 2.0 tools
