Now I often do an introductory lesson where write a bunch of facts on the white board, in no apparent order. The students have to write questions in pairs that they think each fact is the answer to e.g.
7 Years - How long have you been married? ( or ) How long have you lived in Italy?( or ) How old is your daughter? ( or ) How long did you spend at university etc. The correct answer by the way is the second one.
Other Typical facts I write are things like:
snowboarding (What do you do in your free time?)
Bantry, Ireland (Where were you born?)
One (How many brothers or sisters have you got?) etc.
I like this activity as it provides a real motivation for the students to get to know me, write questions (and gives me a chance to check out their question formation), even if the task isn’t really an authentic one communicatively. I usually get the students to ask each other the questions that they wrote which are relevant after the activity, too. This adds a bit more conversation into the lesson.
Karenne suggests a similar activity, but she had the idea of using PowerPoint and images to give the students a little more information about you.
Here’s (one of) her ideas:
Brainstorm
Who are you? Jot down quick notes on words that describe you and your life.
country of birth
countries lived in
marital status
family & siblings
current job
previous jobs
a job you dreamed of having
degree(s)/ other studies
hobbies and interests
group/ associations you belong to
places you’ve been on holiday
your age (number)
how long you’ve been teaching (number)
your house number
fave food /drink
fave music /musicians
fave book(s)
something unusual about you
anything else you feel like sharing
Procedure Option 2(low tech)
Open up a PowerPoint document
Insert personal pictures from your computer
Search www.flickr.com or google images (cc-licensed*) for the images/maps you don’t have yourself – import these into your ppt.
Type the numbers in a large font.
Well, Karenne warned that it can take quite a while to prepare one of these “Who are you?” PowerPoint presentations, and she’s right! Several hours of photo scouting later I’ve got mine, here, all ready for my lesson tomorrow afternoon. Seeing as I’ve done it, I thought I’d post it here to share.
I wonder, can you guess what the pictures, numbers and other bits of information refer to?
I have been using Skype to make cheap calls to friends and family abroad for ages now. While making these free international calls, I’d often wondered whether it would work well in the language classroom for e-twinning. Well yesterday I got the chance to find out.
Thanks to the wonderful Enza Antenos-Conforti of Montclair University, New Jersey, I did some Twitter twinning between my 5th year social sciences class and her Italian language and Italian Studies university students this year. Using the micro-blogging service, Twitter, the initial e-twinning went really well. Our discussions ranged over subjects as diverse as; the right to die, favourite dances and music, politics and Berlusconi, sexism, the media and all sorts of other rich and interesting topics.
After a good three or four months of text-based chatting both Enza’s and my students thought it would be a shame to finish without ever seeing or hearing each other. Proof, if nothing else, that the Twitter twinning had raised our students’ interest in what they were learning. This is where we came up with the idea of an online meeting using Skype.
Although it was great fun, the Skype meeting took a little bit of organising. I thought I might share what went well and what didn’t go so well for anyone else who’s thinking of doing the same in the future:
How we organised the lesson
Setting it all up (the technical bits)
We installed Skype on enough computers for all of the students to have a computer each (10 in total in Italy, 12 in the U.S.) The US students already used Skype, so they signed in with their own Skype IDs. I set up 10 generic accounts for my students. I got the computers working and logged in to one of the generic Skype accounts on each computer before the lesson. I also added one of the US students as a “Skype contact” on each of the computers in the ICT lab.
What went well:
The students didn’t have to think at all about who to call, who to add as a contact and how to start a call. They didn’t all end up calling the first alphabetical name in the list either. Basically each student had one ready-made partner. Although by setting up each computer with one Skype contact we cut down on confusion at the beginning, it did make life difficult later in the session when the students were doing the one to one calls.
What I would do differently next time:
Basically one of the US students didn’t manage to make it to the session, and one wasn’t added to my students’ list of contacts (my fault, oops!) This meant that one of my students and one of the US students were both without someone to talk to for the first 10 minutes or so until we sorted the problem. Next time I will add all the contacts from the other school to each of our generic accounts. Then to make sure no-one gets a call from two of my students I’ll give them a piece of paper saying who to chat to.
Group Introduction:
We did a 10-minute introduction where each of the students from the US and from Italy took it in turns to introduce themselves, say who they were on Twitter and say one or two facts about themselves as a kind of mini “bio.” We did this part as a class-to-class video conference. We used our IWB to do this, but any beamer attached to the computer would do just as well.
What went well:
It was great to be able to see each other at last. The placing of the webcam was a tricky choice. In the end I taped it to the wall above the projector screen. It was also nice to have a whole-class warmer so that the students were able to get their foreign language practice going. My students presented themselves in English, The U.S. students presented themselves in Italian. Me and Enza, and my colleagues from Martino Martini presented themselves in both langauges.
What I would do differently next time:
At first we used the microphone built in to the webcam for our students to speak. This was great to begin with, but as the students towards the back of the class started introducing themselves, the US students complained that they couldn’t hear very well. In the end we plugged in a microphone to the computer and passed this round whoever wanted to speak. I’ll do this straight away next time.
One-to-One chats:
After this each of the students sat down at a computer to have a chat, one to one, with a student in the US. This was the part of the lesson I had most been looking forward to from the point of view of a teacher as I thought it would give each of the students the maximum time to talk with someone in a second language. To help them do this they had a list of suggested topics to talk about (based on conversations we’d had throughout the term.) These topics were all based around our school’s and the university’s curriculum. The students also had to take notes about their partner’s answers while they were talking to them. As all language teachers will know it’s always a good idea to have a task to achieve when doing a listening or speaking exercise.
Students in New Jersey, USA.
What went well:
The students got over their initial nerves about talking in a foreign language and spent a good 40 minutes chatting away to their partners. Both the U.S. and the Italian students seemed to have a lot of fun as you can see in the photos. As we were twinning with a class learning Italian (and they with a class learning English) there were lots of opportunities for the students to fall back on L1 if they ever got stuck. The whole session was pretty much bi-lingual, though (to be honest) I though I heard much more English than Italian being spoken, though to be honest, this could be as I’m used to having to struggle to get my students to use L2 so I was just pleasantly surprised (Enza, did you think this too?) The students also showed an amazing knack to multi-task so common with “digital natives.” While they were chatting they were also sharing favourite music videos on Youtube, adding each other to Facebook accounts and lord knows what else! Our students were also talking about core-curriculum areas too (politics, social issues, the theses they are preparing and so-on) as well as the traditional get to know you chats.
What I would do differently next time:
My students were really nervous about chatting in L2 at first were pleading to be able to do only a group chat. I really felt that this would only give the stronger students a chance to talk, so I refused this. I think that if the students had had more time to prepare for the chat they would have been less worried about the whole one-to-one chat business. I did actually give the students some time to prepare, but I think I overloaded them with tasks when dong their prep (talk about subject, not down key vocab,write follow up questions) which didn’t leave them to feel free enough to chat in L2.
Students in Trentino, Italy
Overall Experience:
Personally I really think that yesterday’s experience was a great success. Sure there were one or two rough edges to smooth over next time, but I think that the sheer fact that a whole class full of high-school students were speaking a foreign language for more than an hour speaks for itself. If we get a bunch of webcams and a higher bandwidth internet connection I’d love to try a full-scale video chat where each of the students could see each other to add to the experience. Overall though my students left the classroom with big smiles on their faces after staying behind late at school after a hard day of exams. In my book that’s a lesson that has worked well!
Finally, a big thank you to the following for all their help getting this together:
Silvana Devigilli (my class’ tutor, Martino Martini), Diego (ICT Technician, Martino Martini) Michael D. Heller (Director of Emerging Instructional Technology, Montclair) AJ Kelton ( Director of Language Learning Technology, Montclair) and last but not least, my inspiring colleague Enza Antenos-Conforti, the tutor from Montclair University.
Now we’ve had this experience getting a Skype conference call and individual calls together, I’d be really happy to help out with advice, hints and tips or to answer any questions you might have about getting something similar done. Leave me a comment here if you’d like to chat about this
Minneapolis Roosevelt High School students have been using blogs, Twitter, wikis, video, podcasts and other digital media in their English lessons.
At the University of Minnesota they have been looking at how the Roosevelt High School “Digme” programme has given students an opportunity to engage with English lessons in a way they never did previously. Judging by some of the feedback in the video, the use of Web 2.0 tools has inspired the students so much that they now really look forward to their English lessons.
Apart from mygeneral interest in the use of ICT in education, this program has really grabbed my attention as the school seems to be doing almost exactly the same kind of activity that I’ve been doing with my students this year at Martino Martini in Italy. I too have been using Twitter to facilitate e-twinning, podcasts and voice recordings to encourage oral fluency videos of science experiments and a social studies video to enthuse the students and encourage them to use the target language.I have also been using a wiki to co-ordinate the whole programme and give teachers, students and parents one central place to check up on the latest classroom activities.
In short, they’re doing just what I’m doing. It’s nice to know that you’re heading in the right direction!
Have a look at this video of the U.S. students to see how positive they seem about the whole project.
This year I’m working as a CLIL/ICT teacher at Martino Martini, a high school in Mezzolombardo, Italy. It’s a really interesting project where I co-teach different subjects together with the “regular” class teacher. The difference with this CLIL project is however that I don’t just help teach the subject in English, but I have to use technology to teach the subject too. This means that so far this year I have taught subjects as diverse as History, Biology and Social Sciences using all sorts of different Web 2.0 technology such as wikis, web-based video, online surveys and so on. I tell you what, it’s been great fun! Take a look at our wiki if you’d like to see some of my students’ great work.
For one of my philosophy classes recently I decided to do a speaking activity based on one of the arguments from the BBC World Philosophy Day article from last year. As philosophy is often taught as a fairly dry subject here in Italy, I decided to “spruce it up a bit” by using some of the great creative commons photographs from Flickr to illustrate the arguments. I put them together as a Powerpoint presentation and I hope you’ll agree that the results are pretty good!
Although the PowerPoint presentation deals with philosophical ideas that Kant had, I’m sure that many speaking classes would really enjoy the subject. The references to Kant are infact only in the last slide. I used this lesson with a class of 17-18 yr olds. It does deal with some pretty “full on” issues, so have a good look through the slides before taking it into your class.
Click on the image to download the PowerPoint file. It’s 14 MB so it might take a minute or two!
Thanks to some great ideas from The Webheads, I’m now also going to do this lesson as a VoiceThread. So, if you (or more likely your English class) fancy joining in the debate, click on the comments button in this VoiceThread version below:
Graham Stanley, from The British Council, Barcelona was the plenary speaker at this years conference. The theme of the conference was testing, CLIL and educational technology. Graham gave a great talk on why we should be using new technologies with our students. It’s funny, but as a teacher-trainer I sometimes forget that our teaching colleagues may well need reminding of just why we’re doing all this training on technology. I’m convinced and I understand exactly the pressing needs for our teaching to complement the digital literacy of our students. Perhaps it’s worth bringing these facts up more often in training seminars though. Sure, ICT is fun for students, but they also need to know how to use these tech tools in a foreign language too. ICT is an essential life skill nowadays. After all, these online tools are likely to be one of the major ways our students will be communicating in L2.
Another thought-provoking part of Graham’s talk was that of the digital divide. He talked of a fascinating educational ICT project called Hole In The Wall that started out in India. The idea behind the project was to leave a working computer, in a protected box in the centre of different Indian villages to enable the local people to get some benefit from advances in technology. Hidden cameras were also sometimes used and the computers were installed un-announced and un-explained to see how people interacted with and reacted to the computer. The amazing thing was, even in villages in India where, in theory, they had never seen a computer before, the kids were the first to start using the computers. Later the kids passed on their skills to the adults of the villages. They also learned English in the process of learning about the computers. All this is to say that seemingly kids have an innate curiosity and ingenuity that computers can often compliment well. We teachers in the “rich West” should realise just how privileged we are to have access to these tools and just how much our students can benefit, at the very least on an interest level, from us adopting the use of ICT in our classes.
As a teacher in a high school in Italy, I think I can safely say that we are very lucky with the ICT resources that we have. We have 5 computer labs in the high school where I work, we have at least 6 IWBs, we have portable computers, beamers, wireless access everywhere and yet, you know what? Half the time these resources are left gathering dust! I know several of the other private language schools I have worked in the same is true, too. Notwithstanding the huge investments these schools have made, teachers are still reluctant to get out of their comfort zones and try out something new. When 1 computer in a village in India can benefit so many, so much, surely we should be making better use of what we have available here? I’m sure I’m not the only teacher who has noticed computers gathering dust?
I was also really impressed by the excellent presentation The British Council’s Steven Roberts gave on the use of three great tech tools for language teachers. They’re all free to download and use too! He told us about Eclipse Crossword maker I think it’s obvious what that does, but it’s great anyhow,) Hot Potatoes interactive exercise maker (crosswords, re-order jumbled sentences, drag and drop matching exercise and much more) and Courselab which was actually a new tool to me. Courselab looks great too! You can create all sots of flash, video and audio interactive exercises and courses using Courselab. Again, it’s free, too. I must give it a look! Steven told us how he’d used it for a CLIL project with a group of Vietnamese students who, prior to his course, had been ICT “illiterate” but after the end of the course they’d all made a series of interactive exercises for each other, learning loads of ICT skills and English along the way.
Finally, Cosimo Cannata from Sicily gave a great talk, about some of the tech-tools, and motivations for using them with his learners at the professional school where he works. His blog (in Italian) also has lots of useful ideas and links for language teachers.
I was really pleased to see some of the “commercially sponsored” presenters too. Brendan Wightman, from Cambridge University Press gave an excellent, thought provoking talk about when we should and when we shouldn’t be using technology with our students (the summary would be: use it when it’s needed and adds to the lesson and not just for the sake of it.)
Brendan mentioned a couple of great looking new products that are coming out (all of the publishers seemed to be bringing out something for the IWB now!) Cambridge’s new commercial release (which I hope to get a trial copy of – go on Brendan) is iDictionary. Cambridge’s blurb on iDictionary says:
It has animated stories, songs, printable worksheets and flashcards. Ideal for general English classes as well as exam preparation. Children can sing along with karaoke versions of animated songs and teachers can use the Primary i-Dictionary in the classroom through a computer and projector or interactive whiteboard, and then follow up with traditional pen and paper classwork.
There is also a great new free resource the Cambridge Clock to help young EFL students learn how to tell the time. Again, it’s just perfect for IWBs. It’s designed for young learners, but I see absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t be used with adults, too. Here in Trento we have lots of A1 -A2 level students who need practice telling the time and this could be just perfect.
Strangely enough, the IATEFL / British Council Milan conference this year was the first ICT specific conference I have been to. Although I missed the wonderful Valentina Dodge whom I’d really hoped to see (will we ever meet face to face?) I met so many other interesting people and found out about so many different ideas, tools and theories that I’ll definitely be looking to go to more conferences like this in the future.
In my next and final post about the conference I’ll be sharing the videos the teachers in my workshop made to present their project ideas. I’ll also be posting the lists of History, Science and Geography internet / CLIL resources I gave out. I hope the links will be useful to you all.
This year’s British Council / IATEFL Conference in Milan was on the theme of CLIL and Learning Technologies. I was really pleased and privileged to give a workshop there, especially seeing as so many of my fellow presenters gave great presentations full of great ideas and useful hints and tips.
By far the biggest highlight of the conference for me was the opportunity to work with such an enthusiastic and participatory group of teachers in my workshop. It was a real privilege to be able to help such an experienced and knowledgeable group of teachers integrate technology into their CLIL teaching. We had great fun during the session, and there was a lot of great positive feedback about the work me and my colleagues at Martino Martini have been doing. There was some great debate too about the practical time constraints of integrating technology into CLIL. I think, all told, we agreed the results are worth the effort.
As I promised the teachers at the conference (cross my heart!) here is the PowerPoint presentation with details of all the ideas and tools we looked at during the workshop. If you are one of those great teachers who came along, I hope this helps you! If you would like try something out with your students and want to talk about it, or if you just fancy a bit of help or advice on something we looked at during the workshop, I’d love to hear from you! Leave me a comment (by clicking on that little box with a number on up there at the top left of this blog post – that will take you to the comments section.)
Finally, be sure to check back again in a day or two and I’ll get the History, Science and Geography resources we looked at posted here as well as our fabulous videos!
All the best,
Seth.
UPDATE: For some crazy reason I think anyone who uses Internet Explorer will not have been able to read this post until now. If that includes you, I’m really sorry! I hope you’ll now be able to read this okay. As always, I look forward to reading any comments and would love to continue discussing the work we looked at in my IATEFL workshop with you all.
This year I’m working as a CLIL/ICT teacher at 
Graham Stanley
Another thought-provoking part of Graham’s talk was that of the digital divide. He talked of a fascinating educational ICT project called 
I was also really impressed by the excellent presentation The British Council’s Steven Roberts gave on the use of three great tech tools for language teachers. They’re all free to download and use too! He told us about 
If that includes you, I’m really sorry! I hope you’ll now be able to read this okay. As always, I look forward to reading any comments and would love to continue discussing the work we looked at in my IATEFL workshop with you all.