DigitaLang

Take Your Phone Out Of Your Pocket (And Use It In Class) – Karin Tirasin and Cigdem Ugur

Seth — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:00:35 +0000

I saw a few great Talks at IATEFL Glasgow 2012, I met some great people including a few EFL Stars” like Scott Thornbury, however, no-one left a greater impression on me than Karin Tirasin and Çigdem Ugur who gave a talk at the LTSIG event. Inspired, enthusiastic and perhaps a tiny weeny bit overwhelmed by talking on an international stage, they and their ideas were, quite honestly, brilliant.

If it’s possible to summarise a 45 minute talk in a just a few words it’d have to be: “They used mobile phones.” Seeing as that doesn’t really tell you much, perhaps: “They used mobile phones, in class, in great fun, engaging activities, using multimedia, QR codes, digital literacies and.. and and… ..and the main thing to note is the activities were all very well thought out pedagogically and they used “all four” of the language learning skills; listening, speaking, reading, writing as well as grammar and dictionary skills.

What I thought was best of all from a memorable lesson point of view is that he students loved it (and if you don’t believe me, after the break, there’s a video from the students themselves with their own opinions on mobile phones:

Finally I have to say a big sorry! to Karin and Cigdum, whose names are actually spelt differently, but unfortunately this stoopid WordPress blog won’t display the Turkish characters needed to write their names correctly. Sorry!

Vicky Saumell – The Lesson Comes First, Technology is Just an Aid #IATEFL

Seth — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:13:07 +0000

I was lucky enough to see Vicky Saumell talk at IATEFL this year. I met her after her seminar to ask whether she would be prepared to do an interview and lo and behold it was another one of those wacky feelings you get at conferences nowadays: I realised I already “knew” Vicky, as we are connected via our PLN.

Vicky gave a brilliant talk about digital storytelling in the classroom, the slides for which you can see after the video interview. Her talk was given as part of IATEFL’s LTSIG group, or for those of us who can’t deal with all the acronyms: the Learning Technologies Special Interest Group of the International Association for Teaching English as a Foreign Language – phew! In a day or so I’ll be posting an interview with Graham Stanley too, who talks more about the LTSIG and some of their work, so if you’d like to know more about the group, keep an eye open for that interview.

Here are Vicky’s smart and well-reasoned comments:

I must say, I particularly agree with Vicky when she says that the lesson must come first and the technology second. Technology can inspire your students to add that extra little bit of effort in a lesson, but if it’s at the cost of good pedagogy, what’s the point? It’s kinda obvious I guess, but it’s a sentiment that sometimes seems to have been forgotten in a lot of technology blogs, training sessions and sometimes even published books, too. It’s comforting that so far three of the interviews in this series from IATEFL have all mentioned the same thoughts.

Anyhow, here are Vicky’s slides, which give the bare bones of four or five ideas for digital storytelling with students. Take a look through her blog, where she has a whole heap of other presentations and ideas for in-class and out of class use of technology.

Implementing Digital Storytelling with Teens

View more PowerPoint from Vicky Saumell

Nik Peachey – Technology Is Not That Hard Now #IATEFL

Seth — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:29:52 +0000

In my fourth interview from IATEFL Glasgow 2012 I spoke to Nik Peachey, a man who probably doesn’t need any introductions at all! Just in case; Nik is a teacher-trainer, educational technology consultant and a blogger on all things to do with language teaching and technology (he’s been blogging even longer than me!) What’s more, Nick is a really friendly, approachable guy, so if you ever get the chance to meet him at a conference, be sure to go and say hi.

Knowing that Nik’s areas of work are very similar to mine, I thought it would be interesting to ask him what advice he has for teachers wanting to get started with technology in their teaching. His answer was a really interesting one, part “old school” and part “new school”; Nick suggests blogging as a good first step (and I heartily agree!) Old school as it’s what teachers have been doing for a while now (proven effectiveness?) and new school as he suggests a great blogging platform which makes life much easier for teachers trying to get started.

Posterous, the blogging platform Nik suggested in the interview, really is as easy as just sending an e-mail. You can send a mail from your mobile phone, or computer, plus any photos, videos etc that you attach to the e-mail will automatically be added into a a blog post that Posterous creates for you. Once upon a time Posterous was perhaps a simplistic way to start blogging, now it’s just a simple way!

As a final thought, it struck me as really interesting that both Nik Peachey (one of ELT’s main proponents of using educational technology) and Scott Thornbury (who has in the past seemingly looked upon educational technology as the devil incarnate) both talked about the main strengths of educational technology being for use by the students at home, rather than in the class. In most cases I would really agree, especially seeing as technology can truly open up homework to real, interactive, meaningful practice of the language, rather than boring gap fill and repetition exercises. I also really want to point out one huge strength of technology in the class when it can be used for things like E-twinning. My original post on how to use Skype for E-twinning is still one of my most popular posts traffic-wise on this blog, and I still believe it was a brilliantly effective, if tricky to organise, language lesson for my students.

What do you guys think? do you prefer to keep technology outside the lesson, or do you sometimes use it in class? Have you ever had a technology nightmare in class (I have!) Or has it always gone smoothly? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.