domenica 22 novembre 2015

EFL Talks with Rob Howard

MM7: EFL Talks with Rob Howard

The webinar took place on 6th November and the presenter was Rob Howard.
Rob Howard is a teacher, tutor and writer of English and he is the founder of  EFL Talks  http://efltalks.com/.
I checked online and found also his blog
http://onlinelanguagecenterblog.com/tag/rob-howard/

I had never checked the website he presented, but I did it this morning and  I could see that it provides help and sharing experience for teachers, for anyone who has just started teaching or needs to be connected and work on self-development. It must be a great way for being in contact with teachers from all over the world  and meeting people online who like me are eager at learning. It is a great community and it is run by teachers!
The topic of presentation were:
PLN  Personal Learning Network
CPD  Continuing  Professional Development
TD     Teacher Development
I know most of the definitions because I have done a lot of MOOCs and courses for teachers and I belong to those who work on keeping updated. Like Rob I have problems with time but I am engaged in working on my self-development in my free time.
What Rob has devised is a way for making videos/webinars available by making them shorter so that teachers can work on them in a shorter time. Usually, webinars are long and are planned at night or at times when we work and so we miss them. Working and having to commute is really hard for me but now I have found an interesting website that can help me:
See http://www.efltalks.com/Videos.html

There is also a youtube channel which has been set up by him:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJUhh3Bj_lOIcz0CUyjU0_A


The ideas and the things I have  learnt are now part of what I am doing and must say that people like him have made my teaching more interesting because I have learnt that I am not alone but I am working with  other teachers and learning from the others. This is also the message that I have received from other great thinkers in TEFL and modern technology.

Thanks for the nice  webinar and I  am looking  forward to following him  and the nice activities he is sharing with us!

Tips on Using TED talks in your ELL- Moodle Mooc 7

MM7: Tips on Using TED talks in your ELL lessons with Judy Wong

Sunday 8th November  2015
My reflections on the  webminar.
This is going to be my first reflection on the MOODLE MOOC webinars  that I am doing. The choice for this webinar, which I did by watching a recorded video, as I was busy at school, is  mainly due to the fact that as a teacher of English I have always searched for interesting videos and clips to use with my students of English. Ted talks are my favourite ones. 
The webinar took place on 8th November and it was presented by Judy Wong.
I regularly receive updating from the  section of TED lessons  http://ed.ted.com/lessons  and think  that  TED is  really great and teachers are working on talks to bring them into the lessons to make the learning  environment  engaging and  more interesting.
The webinar started with the presentation of Judy Wong who is not only a teacher but also a performing artist and a writer.
I liked the slide presenting her with these words:

"We are teachers as well as students and our students are our teachers"


Links to  TED and  web pages related to TED
https://www.ted.com
http://www.ted.com/talks
http://ed.ted.com/lessons


Ideas from the  presenter when  using  TED talks.
These are mainly based on the presenter who seems to be a caring teacher and someone who teaches by loving what she does:

  • think about your students ( adults/children? what are their interests?)
  • think about the theme of the lesson
  • think about the objective of the lesson ( grammar? speaking?)
For language learners there are  plenty of lessons with also Grammar videos where students can also have fun too.
TED talks are good  for Listening:
- main  ideas
- supporting  details
-  inferences
-   grammar
TED  talks  and   READING  SKILLS:
Transcripts can also be used to focus on the language/words. Videos have transcripts which can help the students while they are watching the videos.
When reading the transcripts we can work on many levels:
 -  key ideas
 -  details
 -  find  interferences
 -  key  grammar points
 -  compare  spoken language and written language 

Ted talks can be  used in writing for many interesting activities, these are the ideas presented in the webinar: 
  • talking as   prompt
  • talking to research further
  • setting up argumentative essays  or debates 
If you do not have access to internet, you can use  transcripts for activities like reading, speaking skills and identifying grammar points.


I agree with what the speaker has said who uses the videos by thinking deeply about what she wants to do in class. I would also add that TED offers great videos and interesting topics that can help us develop better lessons.

This is Judy's  Blog:


The presentation she made can be retrieved from :

You can learn more from her if you are on Linkedin:

I also checked  with Google and found these interesting suggestions shared by teachers:
 
Some people who wrote about  TED Talks and English language learning


and now the next reflection on ..........................

sabato 21 novembre 2015

MOODLE MOOC 7 November 2015

November 2015                    Moodle Mooc   7

Reflecting on   Moodle Mooc   7

Thanks to Nellie Deutsch I was able to start a MOOC course about  MOODLE in November. I was late as I had worked on more  Moocs and I was busy with my new classes this year. But I could not resist and just started late , it was the second week but I could catch up. And now I have done most of the activities.
This is the link to the program   https://docs.google.com/document/d/19YfwWbwgP7jwJaMfJ8H2YPVuRL8awTvyDst9DCyOqPA/edit

 I had done some  lessons online in August and I had already used  Moodle  https://moodle.org/ as a beginner. I had also  used Moodle as a learner as I had  done two online courses thanks to ZANICHELLI in Italy. But I wanted to try to work on it again.

WHO RAN THE MOOC online:

Dr. Nellie Deutsch is founder of Integrating Technology and Moodle for Teachers (M4T) social learning networks. She organizes MOOCs, Moodle training, online conferences, webinars and teaching with technology as a way to learn. She is a blended and e-learning expert and is the author of Instructor Experiences with Implementing Technology in Blended Learning Courses.
She has set up her youtube channel  https://www.youtube.com/user/nelliemuller/featured

The course is well-planned and it helps Teachers work on Moodle while following  webminars and sharing ideas too.

You can find  a  presentation of the Mooc  on the webpage  www.moodle4teachers.org  or by seeing the  video on the Youtube:



In the next days I will write about what I have seen and learnt by watching the webminars mainly in the recorded sessions as I was not at home to watch them while they were  presented online.  Some interesting sessions and what I saw was really worth seeing.


Tiziana Angiolini    21 November  2015

venerdì 13 novembre 2015

Blended Learning - Week 1 and 2 a Mooc run by FutureLearn November 2015

Week 1 and Week 2  My personal reflections on  Blended Learning
                                           Week 1
What is   Blended Learning?


Blended Learning.

From Visually.






The platform   Futurelearn  started an interesting MOOC about  Blended Learning on 2nd November. The course has been planned with five modules, one for each week and it is being followed by a growing number of people. The course will be followed by a second Mooc Blended Learning Essentials: Embedding Practice which begins on 1st February 2016.
 
I had already done some Moocs about  Blended Learning in the past but I wanted to see what is going on. I could not start the course on the first days but I tried to catch up because I am a teacher who wants to continue learning and I love the opportuninity of studying online and learning from the others.
These are my reflections and  I am also providing interesting weblinks which I think are worth checking. 
I have done most of the activities in the first two weeks and  I have found interesting ideas, links about the best ways for working with Blended Learning.
We have been provided with interesting videos, weblinks and we are now sharing ideas about the best ways we can work by using  digital tools.

An interesting part of the course is this Glossar http://ble-leeds.wikidot.com/wiki:index, we can add new words in relationship to the topic but I think that the first term is the  definition of  Blended Learning:


 Blended learning is an approach to facilitating a course in which parts of the course are facilitated ‘face to face’ in a brick and mortar environment and other parts are facilitated online with learners controlling time / place and pace they will study these parts of the course.


I have always associated the term to Flipped Lessons: it is also flipping lessons but I have seen how it can be used in many vocational courses and I think  it is a great way for proving courses to people who need to work online and study while they are working. 

From the same index I just checked what students had added, the definition for flipping lessons or learning is very simple:

teaching method where materials and themes are watched, read or researched before contact time and students come prepared with questions and discussion points.


In some ways I have already done some flipping lessons: I have asked my students of English to watch some videos or some presentations online at home and what we did in the next days was a discussion or a reflection about the themes/issues and topics presented online.  I must admit that I had chosen to ask them to work at home because at school we did not have a good internet access and also for discussions I had to ask them to watch again the videos and sometimes we did it while they were watching their smartphones because we had no internet in the classroom.
But I also liked the idea of " flipping" the students' learning because I wanted them to work on  their own and think more about what they had just seen.

Why is it important to use new tools and  learn in a digitalized 
environment?  If you check the  article 
  https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/five-reasons-why-you-should-do-digital-01-may-2015
 about the many reasons for choosing this way you will find the following points:
- digital teaching helps you to reach new learners
- the learning experience online  can be more engaging
- digital capabilities are important for our students who need to look for a job but also for teachers who can continue learning
- digital technology is essential for supporting professional development
- "digital technologies can actually support your organisation in becoming more sustainable and prosperous. Digital delivery of the curriculum can be used to counteract low class numbers and attract more learners, such as supporting distance learning, particularly in rural areas."
The following links provide you  with videos about  some examples of  Blended  Learning :

https://mymedia.leeds.ac.uk/Mediasite/Play/1f057e9e75974c198601d07d21316c6e1d

https://mymedia.leeds.ac.uk/Mediasite/Play/ffd297564f544dbf9dd06e2cbc3d77041d
https://mymedia.leeds.ac.uk/Mediasite/Play/ce05d719f3334ecbb171830e7d233ee31d
https://mymedia.leeds.ac.uk/Mediasite/Play/05a1ed14d2324ee6ae671d7a534818f61d

Why should have blended learning?   These are some ideas presented in Week1 :
  • To enrich the classroom experience to bring in more kinds of active learning
  • To make use of existing digital resources to enhance the learning activity
  • To use online learning for learners to prepare themselves for work in class or on site so they can use that time more productively
  • To use online learning to support them in following up on what they did in practice
  • To make it easier for learners to study flexibly alongside work, enabling them to be much more time efficient

I would add that in the post-industrialized society, in a world where technology is changing our way of working, learning and living   Blended Learning is now a  " must" : in most activities we rely now on technological devices  and technology and internet are shaping our way of living.  The educators and teachers must be aware of it.


ELT AND FLIPPING LESSONS

After doing week 1 I just checked online and found this interesting article for teachers of English 

http://eflmagazine.com/is-the-flipped-classroom-relevant-to-elt/

They suggested these tools for  TELF/ESL teaching:

Tools
Ed Ted Allows you to add quizzes and questions to YouTube videos
http://ed.ted.com/

This is a great tool and I have already used some lessons online.

MyBrainShark. A video that shows you how to use and access MyBrainShark
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/audio-podcasting/mybrainshark-quick-version.html

This is a LMS  and  it is in the cloud but it is expensive see :

http://www.brainshark.com/solutions/learning-cloud

Present.Me A video that shows you how to use and find Present.Me. You can make videos to be shared and embedded too.
Available at
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/video-youtube/present-me.html

http://presentme-edu.com/          It is not a  free subscription but you can pay also for one month.


SnagIt.   It is an image and video screen capture.  It is not free.
A video that  shows you how to use and access SnagIt
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/screen-casting/introduction-to-snagit.html


This is the padlet where teachers shared their ideas about  Blended learning:



                            Interesting Webtools 
We were able to learn about new webtools too, some teachers shared ideas about devices and provided links:

https://getkahoot.com.
http://www.refme.com/  for  generating references
http://accesstechnology.org.uk/images/

A teacher shared her presentation about   Edmodo - a safe learning environment which I also know:





Useful website for searching  Web tools:


http://james-thinks-its-worth-a-look.blogspot.co.uk/ 
This is the most interesting weblinks which provides real help to people who do not know much about  webtools.

http://procatdigital.co.uk/learning-wheels/

This is a great weblink for my personal learning growth.


                                               Week 2

We have  seen some good examples based on different  approaches constructivism, social constructivism and problem-based learning:  the following  links will provide you with the videos we  saw.






What I liked was the level of engagement of the learners : they were working, doing something and it was meaningful.

The tools used were  

  1.  Nearpod    https://www.nearpod.com/
  2. Google Classroom
   3.an e-learning platform 


We  were presented with ideas and information  about   digital literacy  skills .
The concept of  digital skills is not new to me  because  I have done a MOOC  about this  topic  recently  and I must confess that  these skills are really the ones we should all have , our students must be able to work by using the new technology and also know about the main issues and problems online.

The importance of Digital Literacy Skills

What I am going to do is to analyze these important weblinks which are all new to me :



Educators need to know more and when teaching we have to be aware of the problems of  safety and privacy, but our  students have been online for years now and maybe they still need to learn about such issues.

Embedding Blended  Learning may  require a lot of time and the experiences shown make me reflect : a good school need to work on the skills of the teachers, on the learning environment and planning such new approach must be shared.  This would not always be possible in some schools.  As regards me  I have tried to embed Blended Learning by choosing to use modern tools and by using blogs and websites where I embed some activities for my students. 

Here are the links for the experiences presented in the course:


They must have worked hard and working on case-studies is the best way we could work at school and in further education.
I think that it will take time but we can make progress: blended learning can help us offer better learning that takes into consideratin the flexibility of learning and also the differences among our students.

Finally, I would like to thank all the teachers in the course who are sharing ideas, experiences and more. That's the best way for learning and improving our teaching methodologies and learning about  new digital skills and  digital tools.

sabato 31 ottobre 2015

Free Tools in education

Free Tools for  educators

Last Saturday was a great one. Thanks to SimpleK12   http://www.simplek12.com/ I had the chance to see some webminars dealing with Free Tools on line, it was a  day for educators and all the webminars were free.  I must confess that the experience online made me think about the best ways for working in a digitalized classroom and this was great.
SimpleK12 offers  free webminars online and also webminars for  people who belong to SimpleK12, in some cases you have to pay to have access to some materials online(registered users).

If you want to learn more about what is offered  just follow this link  http://www.simplek12.com/upcoming-webinars/

This is my collection with  some information about  some great  tools which I think we should all be able to use : I have already used some of them but  for many I must admit I have been thinking about but I have been working in a learning   environment where most of the students do not have a  good internet access point . My great hope is to be able to work online from home and also in collaborative projects from home and at school.  The padlet will be updated anytime I find interesting tools which seem to be interesting.






What skills for the future ?

Almost in the same week I saw a webminar online and it was  about the future and what our  students should learn  and what skills they need : the references were based on a report which was presented on line:  DRIVING THE SKILLS AGENDA from the Economist . Our students need to learn how to work in a different way and collaborate, use webtools and have  21st century skills.


http://www.economistinsights.com/analysis/driving-skills-agenda


This is the reason why I feel that we should all change our way of working and our lessons.


To be continued...........................................

sabato 10 ottobre 2015

DIGITAL STORYTELLING LEARNING ON LINE WITH COURSERA


                 DIGITAL STORYTELLING  
         WITH  COURSERA

After 5 weeks I finished my  MOOC course  about  DIGITAL STORYTELLING( DS) with COURSERA see   COURSERA MOOC COURSE
To begin with  it was an interesting experience and I could learn a lot about DS, the new tools which we can use  to create videos, how to write a script and how to  choose pictures and music. We learned from video tutorials and we  tried to work by following the tips of the professors who were a good guide for us by focussing on how to plan a story, create a story board and how to edit a video.

I was not so successful,but I could enter a new world: DS can be a challenge, but  it can help us develop new activities and  provide  help in  writing stories with our students.

These are some great videos which were shared by the  students in our course, they used different video editors but they were successful and I was pleased to see such good  videos: these are just some which I was able to see


  
Lilac Love from ellen feeley on Vimeo.




I would like to underline that we worked on peer assessment and self-assessment and the choice of the topic and the tools made the difference.  I did not  make a great video and I am going to learn more about  WEVIDEO  because I could not  finish my work.  One problem was the length of the video  and I did not finish editing the video. I used another tool but again it was a problem. I will therefore  try to see why I could not save the final video. I used screencast o'matic but the final output of my video was really low quality.  I got  28/36 marks but they told me that I should improve the quality of the photos and  of  course  use the video makers which they had suggested.

Anna  Laghigna made a great  video: an interesting video which shows how well she can work with modern web 2.0 tools



Finally some  links for further learning and  studying and  develop  great  videos  when teaching:


http://www.shellyterrell.com/digitalstorytelling.html                                                                      
                                                                 
In my website you can find more information about  my experience online    and my research about  DS                                                                                                                                                          
                                  
https://sites.google.com/site/thenewworldoflearning/digital-storytelling


In addition I am sharing this interesting  LIVEBINDER :
Click here to open this binder in a new window.




I am going to work to learn how to make  better videos and I hope that I will finally become good at making  them.

Enjoy working online and editing videos!

mercoledì 30 settembre 2015

Moodle: MOOC Course summer 2015- Looking forward to the next session in January 2016

Moodle  is  an open source LMS (Learning Management System) DEFINITION OF MOODLE .

When I was doing the course about online learning in  a Mooc course run by COURSERA in  the  summer  I had come across it .
 However, it was new to me in some way because  I had used the platform ONLY as a learner  for some online courses in Italy.  I had appreciated how it could work well for students who study on their own and teachers who work online.
Last summer I did the  Mooc course online - an introduction to Moodle - and it was engaging and worth doing. I created my first online course and I am going to do it again next January to learn more about the platform. At present I cannot work online with my students but I could try to use it. My online course has been saved and I might upload it later as there is a platform named " Moodle cloud"   https://moodlecloud.com/en/
This is my learning experience. I will continue  learning next year to be able to create a nice course in the cloud. More information about the next  course  for beginners can be found online:
https://learn.moodle.net/

These  are the  important  videos which presented the new platform   MOODEL 2.9 . I have  also uploaded my video to end my final reflections about the engaging  experience I have made. 
It was great to meet so many learners and to see so many dedicated teachers sharing their courses online.