In the first task, students chose a character (an avatar) from Voki, a free podcast creating service, and described it recording their own voices. They answered the following questions for their descriptions.
After a long break, in this post I am going to write about the project I conducted in a young learners classroom last term. Using technology-mediated tasks with young learners of English has always been in my mind. I contacted my former student from the MA program and shared my idea with her.
Recently I have been interested in mobile learning and teaching and reading relevant sources. I came across an online available edited book: Mobile Learning: A handbook for educators and trainers. There are 20 chapters focusing on different aspects of mobile learning and teaching.
Here is the second article from my dissertation on TPACK:
Abstract: The issue of what teachers need to know about technology for effective teaching has been the centre of intense debate in the recent past. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) has been proposed as a conceptual framework to describe the knowledge base teachers need for effective technology integration. The present study aimed to investigate whether and/or how Turkish pre-service teachers of English reflected their TPACK, as developed in a design study integrating coursework and field experiences, on their lesson plans and implementation. Analysis of the data coming from the lesson plans and classroom observations of three cases revealed that pre-service teachers considered the relationship among content, pedagogy and technology while planning and implementing their lessons.
In this post, I will introduce Teaching Channel, a website I have been using in my courses for the last few years. Teaching Channel provides teachers of various subject areas including English Language Arts with video-enhanced professional learning.
I have been offering the Technology and Materials Design Course in the department for the last few years. As the requirement of the course, students (pre-service teachers of English) are supposed to open up their personal blogs and share course related materials there. Weekly, students have assignments such as creating a podcast, preparing an online poster, creating a digital story, etc. (I will write another post later explaining these tasks in detail.) Students upload their products on their blogs and me, as the instructor, and their peers view their posts regularly. Students are also supposed to write an entry for each post to explain the task and reflect on the task completion process. Keeping a blog has many benefits for students. For example:
Here is the list of some (free) ELT online journals. It might be sometimes difficult for ELT students and teachers to find free articles on topics relevant to language teaching and learning. Please feel free to add more to the list as a comment.
In my methodology courses I always mention 21st century learning and emphasise the need to change the way we teach. Here are some sources explaining what is 21st century learning and discussing how actually classrooms should look like today.
The website “Teacher Training Videos” by Russell Stannard provides teachers with training videos instructing them how to use ICT tools such as blogs, wikis, IWBs, podcasts, etc. in education. Russell Stannard is a trainer in ICT and Education and has a number of publications on ICT in education.