School of Education. Activating and extending your language classroom with technology Gary Motteram.

School of Education

School of Education

Activating and extending your language classroom with

technology

Gary Motteram

School of Education

You and technology

Who has a mobile on them now?

Who owns an iPod (or similar)?

Do you have a computer at home? Is it portable?

Do you have a digital camera/ digital video camera?

Are there computers in school? Where? Are they portable?

Do you have access to an LCD projector/beamer?

Does the school have a digital camera/ digital video camera?

Does the school have resources to invest in technology?

Can such technologies be borrowed from a local teacher’s centre?

How about the British Council?

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Your learners and technology

How many of your children own a mobile? Do they bring them to school?

Do they own an iPod (or similar)?

Do they have a computer at home? Is it portable?

Do they have a digital camera/ digital video camera?

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Hardware

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• Wordprocessors (off and online)

• Powerpoint (off and online)

• Blogs

• Wikis

• Web pages

• Voice Thread

• Ning

Software

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Beginnings

Start simply and within your own comfort zone; or get some support to go beyond your comfort zone.

Do it together as a school, or as a group of interested teachers. Think of working with teachers from other subject areas.

Link the use of technology to your curriculum, choose obvious topics.

What are typical topics in the curriculum?

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Activating 1

Let’s start with digital pictures and words:Children can bring in a photo of themselves, their mother/ brother/ granny and talk about it, or if they have phones they can bring pictures in on them.

Picture of me and my Dad

The teacher alternatively can take some photos, put them on a pen drive/ laptop and bring the pictures in. She can then project these on to the WB/ IWB and start either telling the children about the pictures, or getting the children to talk about what they see. You could end up with a family tree. Children could replicate this with their own families.

Pictures could be imported into Word and short text created, printed out and put on a display board.

If pictures are not available children could draw family members and scan them in to be added to the Word document.

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Activating 2

Further with digital pictures and words:

Teacher/ Children can take pictures of their home/ school/ environment/ local festival etc (based on the curriculum)

These could be dealt with in a similar way to Activating 1, or they could be used as the basis of a ‘video’

Making a video using pictures and sound: MovieMaker on a PC; iMovie on a Mac

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Activating 3

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Activating 4

The six schools project

http://www.tellp.org/

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Extending 1

Start with something simple, e.g. a blog

Here’s one to aim at:

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Blog providers to use

Wordpress.com

Blogger.com -- Part of Google these days

It is easy enough to find ideas on how to use blogs with younger learners by searching on the net.

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Blog sites: examples

http://saintexupery6.wordpress.com/

http://edublogawards.com/2009/best-class-edublog-2009/

Not all language blogs aimed at primary, although the second runner up and ‘English with Rosa’ are. A good place to what other people think makes a good educational blog:

Another useful starting point:

http://blogs.onestopenglish.com/blogs.php

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Extending 2: Creating a websiteThe obvious place to start is Google who offer free website hosting. However, although set-up is easy, getting your page working is more complicated than starting a blog and it’s probably more difficult to get others involved.

On the plus side you have more freedom to do what you want.

http://sites.google.com/site/garymotteramproject/home

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Extending 3: Wikis you might want to use

Wetpaint

http://www.wetpaint.com/

PB works

http://pbworks.com/

Why use a wiki rather than a blog?

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Wikis to use: an example

http://e-language.wikispaces.com/mark-bio

http://new-web-two.wetpaint.com/page/Wikis+in+the+TEFL+classroom

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Extending 4: Voice Thread

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Continuing

http://ltisg.org.uk

http://edtechandtesol.info

http://www.all-languages.org.uk/

[email protected]