What is "Blended Learning"?

"Blended Learning" fuses traditional face-to-face classroom instruction with online learning, resulting in a holistic learning experience for students. It combines two crucial elements in the process of teaching and learning: teachers’ talent and technology tools. Blended learning enables teachers to do what they do best: work with students by taking full advantage of the power of technology. Following this approach, teachers are able to change learning activities that otherwise would have taken place during classroom time and devote that lesson to answering students’ questions or dispelling students’ doubts.

The ultimate goal of a blended approach is to highlight the best aspects of both face-to-face and online instruction for the students’ benefit. There are many reasons why you may choose to implement blended learning in the EFL classroom, consider the following:

• Instead of using classroom time for presentation of material, teachers can devote that time to clarifying some questions,
• Online activities and assessments can be carried out anytime and anywhere 
• It fosters autonomy, which is a major contributor to student satisfaction and success 
• It improves student attitudes towards learning

Blended learning also has some pitfalls, such as the strong dependence on technical resources, which need to be reliable and updated so students are able to profit from them.

All in all, the main result of proper instruction when it comes to implementing blended learning in the EFL classroom is richer interactions between teachers and students, and also between classmates. Do not hesitate and give it a try! 

I you want to go on reading on this topic, I suggest that you watch this video.  

Dolors Reig's Conference: TIC, TAC and TEP

Hi there! Such a long time!

Today I will comment on some concepts that Dolors Reig – a Spanish social psychologist, consultant, and lecturer at various universities, companies, organizations and events – has put forward in her conference "Educar para las TEP (tecnologías del empoderamiento y la participación)." She made reference to three acronyms: TIC (Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación), TAC (Tecnologías para el Aprendizaje y el Conocimiento), and TEP (Tecnologías para el Empoderamiento y la Participación).

The concept of TIC has already lost its meaning since the appearance of the web 2.0. Nowadays, we are accustomed to actively participating in blogs, forums and the like in order to share our own opinions and beliefs. Still, that was not possible with the web 1.0 since users were able just to read and obtain information but not to make comments or refute someone else’s ideas. That’s why another concept has developed: TAC, which puts particular emphasis on both teachers and students making good use of the new technologies for teaching and learning. Although the concept of TAC broadens our minds as regards students playing a role in this technological society, it still lacks “how” teachers can empower their students to participate, as well as “what” it really means to participate. As a consequence, Dolors Reig incorporates the concept of TEC. For her, it is not significant that students collect and exchange information if they are not critically reflecting upon it. It is not about students remembering or learning things by heart; it is far beyond the scope of the school and the classroom – it relates to us becoming critical human beings, which implies much more than teaching students to surf the net. Reig suggests that teachers adapt their current teaching methods to the student’s language, leading to new ways of teaching. Traditionally, group work was carried out at home while during the lessons, students were expected to gather information. Now, we can change that procedure and devote the time of the lessons to foster group work, as well as the communicative competence and ask students to gather information at home.

To summarise, it is deemed necessary to bear in mind the concept of TEP in the classroom, together with the concepts of TIC and TAC to help our students become autonomous individuals. We must show our students the potential of the internet to learn, but we must also advise them against believing that everything they read is the unique truth. We must help them have their own say on whatever topic they get to read.

If you are interested in these acronyms, take a look at Dolor's website El Caparazon.

Learning Journals

Hi there! Today I would like to reflect upon the importance of using learning journals in the classroom. First of all, I consider it relevant to define what a journal is. “Audience Dialogue,” which is a consultancy, formed in 1999 by Dennis List states that “A reflective journal is a steadily growing document that the learner writes to record the progress of his/her learning.” Don’t you think it is highly significant for your students to keep a record of their everyday experiences in the classroom? Don’t you think it is beneficial for you, the teacher, to know how your students feel, how they face their learning process? Well, all those things, among others, are possible by keeping a journal. It is when we write that we realise how much we have learned and what things need to be readjusted. Besides, when we write, we transmit much more than words; we show who we are and what we think. We, and only we, are the owners of what we write. Keeping a learning journal enables learners to be honest with themselves and with others. What’s more, if teachers encourage students to write down their thoughts using their own words, it will help them clarify those ideas in their mind. Following Jennifer Moon’s ideas in “Assessment – Learning Journals and Logs” (2010), “(learning journals) seem to be helpful in personalising and deepening the quality of leaning (…)”. That is another thing to bear in mind. Learners have the possibility of modifying the journal as they like, giving it their own style. I believe that is quite stimulating since you create the environment you need to write.

To finish, I invite you to read a very nice answer to the question “Why we write journals?”: “In writing a journal we take something from inside ourselves and we set it out: it is a means of discovering who we are, that we exist, that we change and grow.” (Wolf, 1989)

Let’s promote reflection. Let’s allow students to express themselves. Let’s allow ourselves to learn from them.

If you are interested in reading the articles, click here:

“Audience Dialogue” http://www.audiencedialogue.net/aboutus.html

Moon, Jennifer - “Assessment – Learning Journals and Logs” (2010)
http://www.deakin.edu.au/itl/assets/resources/pd/tl-modules/teaching-approach/group-assignments/learning-journals.pdf

The potential of Web 2.0 resources for EFL learners

Hello! Today I want to remind you about the importance of using web 2.0 tools in EFL teaching classroom. Web 2.0 allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social network, in contrast to web 1.0, in which people were limited to the passive viewing of content. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, video sharing sites, and web applications to name a few. Teachers and students can master many of these tools in minutes.

To summarise the differences between web 1.0 and web 2.0, I share this chart with you:

Web 1.0	Web 2.0
Reading	Writing
Individual users	Community
Home pages	Blogs
Taxonomy	Folk
Owning	Sharing
You find news	News finds you

Having said this, I would like to present some web 2.0 tools that you can use in your teaching.

Voki - It is an educational tool that allows users to create their own talking character. 

Create your voki here: http://www.voki.com/create.php

Wordle – It is a visual representation of text data, typically used to depict keywords. The importance of each tag is shown with font, size, and colour.

I used wordle with a student who was practising wh-words to make questions. It worked wonderfully!

 Create your voki here: http://www.wordle.net/create

Shoulders to the wheel!!!

Why use presentations in the EFL classroom?

Using presentations in the EFL classroom is an appealing way of teaching new contents or recycling previous knowledge. You can use presentations at different moments in the lesson to serve a variety of purposes. The design of the presentation will vary according to the audience (secondary, primary students), the purpose you have in mind (promoting discussion, explaining grammatical constructions, playing a game) and how your audience is going to get in contact with it (with a projector as a class, each person in their netbooks, at school, at home).

I would like to show you two very interesting applications to bear in mind when it comes to designing material to work with in class using technology.

The first one is the so well-known PowerPoint presentation. It is a presentation program developed by Microsoft in 1990. PowerPoint presentations consist of a number of individual slides, which may contain text, graphics, and sound. The presentation can be printed or displayed live on a computer. PowerPoint provides numerous features that offer flexibility and the ability to create a professional presentation. For instance, we can create a presentation that includes music which plays throughout the entire presentation or sound effects for particular slides. The ease of use of PowerPoint presentations can save a lot of time for people who otherwise would have used other types of visual aid, as blackboards or overhead projections.

The second one is Prezi. It is a U.S. software company, producing a cloud-based presentation software and storytelling tool for presenting ideas on a virtual canvas. The product employs a Zooming User Interface, which allows users to zoom in and out of their presentation media. Prezi was officially established in 2009.  It can be used by teachers and students to collaborate on presentations with multiple users having access and the ability to edit the same presentation. What is more, it allows students to present their works according to different learning styles.

Now, I want to share with you two presentations I have designed using PowerPoint and Prezi. Concerning the first presentation, it was part of the subject ECO II in the English Teaching Program 2013. We were asked to create a presentation using the technology available and following a book’s unit. Our unit was called “Cappuccino and Chips”. We had to deal with the Simple Present, so we thought of presenting students with an interview carried out by an English boy. Students were asked to build the questions to the answers provided by the boy. Through this interview, they learnt how an English boy the same age they are live every day. 

This is my PowerPoint Presentation. Watch it here:

Eco's presentation ISPB Santa Fe from Sofi Gaite

The second presentation is part of the final exam of EDI I 2013. The topic I chose to talk about was “Ballet in the 20th century in Argentina and the USA”. Of course the level was much higher this time, as I had to inform my findings to teachers of English.

This is my prezi presentation. Watch it here:

Criteria for analysing websites

Hello people! This time I would like to place special emphasis on the importance of analysing websites before making use of the information they contain. Undeniably, we are surrounded by millions of websites, links, authors, bloggers, and such like that we don’t know if the information provided is truthful and whether the author is genuine regarding his or her studies and actual occupation or not. In general, we rely on intuition and that is a terrible mistake! We must pay attention to many other aspects in the site, the webpage’s template and design say very little as regards its reliability. There are many things to consider; for example: purpose, authority, objectivity, appropriateness, currency, responsibility, clarity and accessibility. You can take that criteria into account when it comes to analysing websites. It may happen that you don’t know exactly where to find information on each particular item. In that case, I leave you a link which provides useful questions that will aid you when describing the above-mentioned criteria.

Here is the link:

https://sites.google.com/site/eiawebsite/Home/evaluating-websites-lesley-univ

It is advisable that both teachers and students bear in mind those criteria when surfing the net. Teachers must offer learners several opportunities to carry out this analysis so they automate the task and do it mechanically every time they search the web. If teachers don’t raise awareness of the importance and the purpose of analysing websites, they can’t ask their students to find reliable information as they are not acquainted with the meaning of “reliability” and the value of it.

We must find a moment to reflect upon this issue and find the way to integrate the analysis of websites in the classroom. Sooner or later, students will make use of computers and any kind of technology to answer personal doubts and/or the teacher’s assignment. It would be of use to teachers to be one step forward.

I also consider it important to watch the video at the bottom of this comment; it contains comprehensive explanation on the criteria above-described.

Hope you can take full advantage of this info!

Infomation about Steve Wheeler

Steve Wheeler is an Associate Professor of learning technology in the Faculty of Health Education and Society at Plymouth University. He chairs the Plymouth e-Learning Conference and serves on the editorial boards of ten international journals, including the open access publications Research in Learning Technology (formerly ALT-J), Digital Culture and Education, and IRRODL. He is the chair of the UNESCO sponsored IFIP WG 3.6 (Distance Education). He's a Fellow of the European Distance and E-learning Network (EDEN) and a member of EDEN's NAP steering group. His research interests include e- learning, distance education, creativity and Web 2.0 social software.

Are you a meerkat or an ostrich?

You may be thinking what I mean by that title. In fact, that's the title of a very engrossing article I've read by Steve Wheeler. He is an Associate Professor in Learning Technology in the Faculty of Health, Education and Society, at Plymouth University.

In his article, Wheeler writes about the uncertainty about our students' future. Everything changes so rapidly nowadays that jobs existing today, will probably disappear in twenty years’ time. That's a highly problematic issue for teachers in that they do not know what to teach or if what they are already teaching is going to help students in their future life.

We (I consider myself a future teacher) want to help our students to become self-sufficient people, we wish them to be successful in their future jobs, but at the same time we don't know what is going to happen in the near future. We are shocked constantly to hear news as regards politics, economy and education that threaten us when it comes to teaching. What teachers used to teach some years ago now is old fashioned.

As the author expresses, we find people that turn a deaf ear to this uncertainty and those who try to be constantly updated, improving their own skills at teaching and offering innovative tools to students. As the professor says, "Whether we are meerkats, looking out and anticipating the challenges, or ostriches burying our heads in the sand, the challenge remains, and it is growing stronger."

The author advises us to create environments in which students can be exposed to negotiating, to practice new communication methods through the use of new technologies and not only via face-to-face conversations. That's the only way in which teachers can help students to be independent men and women: generating propitious situations in which they find the tools for solving problems right now and in their future.

"Will you be looking out to see what is on the horizon, or will you hide your head in the sand?"

To conclude I share a well-known phrase that I think we can't forget as 21st century teachers:

"I never teach my students. I only provide the conditions in which they can learn."

Albert Einstein

Here I leave you the link where you'll find the article in case you would like to read it:

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.ar/2013/05/are-you-meerkat-and-ostrich.html

Regards!!

Digital Natives VS Digital Immigrants??

On this first occasion, I would like to share with you my personal views as regards a very interesting article called "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" by Marc Prensky (at the bottom you'll find the link to read it if you like).

Firstly, I will comment on whom I consider to be "Digital Natives" after reading Prensky's article. Secondly, I will choose a quote from the above-mentioned article I completely agree with and another one I disagree with.

DIGITAL NATIVES are a new generation of students that think and learn in a different way to ours. Those students are going to be the students we'll have to teach every day at school, so it's no use going against them and their own skills and strategies to learn. Quite the contrary, we are expected to take full advantage of those new ways of learning.

According to the author, "Digital Immigrants teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been, and that the same methods that worked for their teachers when they were students will work for their students now." In my humble opinion, I can't think of teaching without considering my students' contexts, their likes and dislikes, etc. Teaching in the same way we have learned means turning a blind eye to new ways of learning. Obviously, new technologies affect the way people learn and new ways of acquiring knowledge have developed over time.

"A frequent objection I hear from Digital Immigrant educators", says Prensky, "is that this approach is great for facts, but it wouldn't work for 'their subject'. Nonsense. This is just rationalization and lack of imagination". In this case I don't agree with Digital Immigrants educators because, as the author expresses, the fact that this approach wouldn't work for our subject is "just rationalization and lack of imagination". We tend to think that using computers in our English lesson or designing a PowerPoint presentation is a waste of time and so it isn't worth the risk. But new technologies are a great source of information and a fantastic way to prepare attractive lessons. There are many things to do according to the subject in discussion. English, in particular, is a subject that lends itself to be taught through the use of computers, videos, and such like. As a consequence, teachers must be able to see the advantages of implementing new technologies when teaching.

I hope these opinions help you to reflect upon the use of new technologies in the EFL classroom. It goes without saying that designing new materials and preparing appealing lessons is a very demanding job, but it also means students eager to learn.

Does it sound good? Let's get to work!!

If you are interested in reading the article, here is the link:

http://www.twitchspeed.com/site/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.htm