Book: Teaching English Reflectively with Technology

To me, the beauty of digital technologies is the power to connect people and this way help them develop themselves.

In 2016/2017, I had the great pleasure to collaborate with a dear friend, Jennifer Verschoor, to write an article for a publication which invited teachers and researchers to reflect about tech integration.

TEACHING REFLECTIVELY WITH TECHNOLOGY is an IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG publication in collaboration with the TESOL CALL-IS.

Quoting the editors Phil Hubbard and Sophie Ioannou-Georgiou:

"We wanted to help bridge the gap between practitioners and researchers by leading the authors to defend their use of technology persuasively by acknowledging prior research and practice and by presenting challenges and limitations along with the positive aspects, backed up by more than just memories and intuitions."

This morning, I was thrilled to receive my hardcopy!

 

Jennifer and I described and analyzed a project which we developed together with our students from Argentina and Brazil.





There are articles about telecollaborative projects, Facebook Groups, Mobile Technology, Google Docs, Virtual Reality and much more.

PDF and Epub versions have been made available to contributors and members of the LT SIG in June 2017. Nowadays, I unfortunately don't know how the book can be ordered.

You can read the table of contents and the introductory chapter on the following link
https://web.stanford.edu/~efs/tert/

How to make an interactive reading activity (PART 2)

My previous post explained the reasons for writing this post and also brought the results of my exploration with a tool called ACTIVE TEXTBOOK suggested by Shelly Terrell.

This time, I focus on a website called NOWCOMMENT recommended to me by Nik Peachey.

At first glance, NowComment was exactly what I was looking for: a tool which allows teachers to turn documents into conversations and is appropriate for a large number of students.

It's free and you can upload different sorts of files.

Once you upload the document you want your students to read and discuss about, the site will alert you to possible overlays it may find on the document you've uploaded. I had problems with pdf files with images, graphs and also a pdf in two columns. I advise you to check the preview on the website to see if the formatting of the text is ok or not.

Check what happened to the PDF file I tried to upload.

Now, if the same thing happens to you, you can edit the document right there or try a different document with text only. And that's exactly what I decided to do next.

I copied and pasted the text into a Word file and also decided to try out something else, to embed a video to my word file. Following the instructions found in the website, I selected a video about the same topic and grabbed the embed code. Next, I pasted the code directly into the Word file I was going to upload to the NowComment website.

I clicked the blue button SAVE AND CONTINUE and Voilá, the video "magically" appeared.

You can use different color schemes to highlight parts of the text.

And you can also select specific paragraphs around which you can start a conversation by clicking on the speech bubble with a plus sign.

The conversation can be viewed by students in two ways: 2 panes or combined.

If you select the 2-pane view, the text is on the left and the conversations appear on the right side of the screen.

The other possibility is the combined view, with the text interspersed with conversations.

The conversation can be started by the teacher or the students themselves. And to interact with a previous comment, all you have to do is click REPLY.

Another plus is the possibility to develop discussions around videos. If you add a Youtube video embed code to the Word file you upload to the website, it's fairly easy to propose a discussion.

Above the video player, when you click ADD COMMENT, you can add a comment/question to a certain point of the video or to the video as a whole. The image I've added below shows a question I add at a certain time in the video.

HANDS ON MOMENT

Would you like to try it out with us?

If so, click HERE and feel free to leave comments, highlight parts you find important and play with the website. Be aware the text is not complete as I just wanted to test the website.

WHAT I LIKED ABOUT IT

• It's free.
• It works well with Word files.
• You can easily create Word files + embed code to different videos to create conversations around videos or flipped assignments around videos.
• You can create great conversations around images you add to a Word File you prepare beforehand.
• Using the COMBINE page view, you can create reading tasks which ask students to pause reading, discuss and then continue the reading.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT IT

• PDF files are easily deconfigured once uploaded to the website and it's really time consuming to edit the whole text.
• The documents are private as default so it takes some time to locate where to edit the document properties so that large groups of people can participate (especially if you don't have everyone's emails)

A video about NOWCOMMENT

Next week, I'll be exploring one more tool!

How to make an interactive reading activity (PART 1)

I'm back. After almost 2 years away from the blog, here I am again. 

I'd like to share a few tools you can use to make a reading text INTERACTIVE.

This post started with a genuine need. When I work with small groups (up to 30 people), I like creating reading activities on Google Docs and use the comments feature to have students answer questions and/or add their reflections (Click HERE for an example in Portuguese). However, this last year, I had to work with teachers all over Brazil and instead of 30 people interacting, I had more than 500 teachers in one asynchronous reading activity. The result was that despite instructing teacher/students to click on the comment in order to see the RESPONDER/REPLY box, more often than not they clicked RESOLVER/SOLVE deleting the original comment or question I had posted. Having said that, you can imagine the hassle to restore everything that had been deleted daily. 

This is an example of technology that works perfectly in one context, but not necessarily in another. As I didn't know other alternatives that could solve my problem, I asked my PLN (via Facebook) for help and they promptly came to my aid.

These are the tools they've recommended:

• https://activetextbook.com/ (Shelly Terrell)
• https://www.peardeck.com/ (Giselle Santos)
• https://www.bookwidgets.com/ (Shelly Terrell)
• https://nowcomment.com/ (Nik Peachey)
• https://edji.it/#/home  (Shelly Terrell, David Kapuler, David Deubelbeiss)
• https://padlet.com/dashboard  (Leo Moretti Barbosa)

During the next few weeks, I'll be posting my explorations with each of the tools.

Let's start with ...

ACTIVE TEXTBOOK - https://activetextbook.com/ 

So far, it's my favourite one for what I needed. Apart from COMMENT THREADS, you can add several features to your text, such as highlights, videos, songs, text, images and quizzes. With the free plan, you get 50 MB storage and unlimited access to library. 

FEATURES I'VE ADDED TO THE TEXT: comment threads, image, highlights and a video.

HANDS ON MOMENT 

Would you like to try it out with us?

Click HERE to go to this activity on Active Textbook and feel free to leave your contributions (look for the speech bubbles which I've added to the text). Then, I'd love to hear what you thought about the tool.

Before I finish, let me thank all teachers who have kindly contributed to this post with their wonderful ideas.

I'm truly happy to be see Life Feast come to life again and hope you are too.

P.S. I still love Google Docs.

How to convert webpages into pdf files

• Imagine you want your students to read an article from a webpage or a blog post but don't want to rely on the internet. 
• Imagine you want to share a text from the internet with your students but don't want all those images from ads.
• Imagine you want to print an article from a webpage but don't want to waste so much ink with images and ads.

What can you do?

I'd like to share one of my most used tools at the moment. I often assign readings to students and more and more good articles can be found online. However, relying on wifi connection is not something I can count on right now, unfortunately.

This is what you can do:

1. Download the google chrome extension PRINT FRIENDLY & PDF .

2. Open the website/article you would like to share with your students.

3. Click the Print Friendly & PDF extension.

4. Delete the parts of the text which you think are not vital.

5. Download the pdf file.

6. Share the PDF file with students.

Learn how it works.

Google Keep in the classroom and in life

One of the Google tools I use the most on my cell phone is GOOGLE KEEP. Funny enough, it's one of the least known Google apps. The objective of this post is to share some of the ways I use Google Keep in my personal life and how we can use it with students.

Google Keep is an app (for androids and IOS) and website which can be accessed from your cell phone or any laptop, once you log into your google account.

With GOOGLE KEEP you can create different kinds of notes: a text, a list, record your voice or take a photo. These notes can be shared with others so that they can collaborate with you. You can also add a note as a reminder which will pop up when you need it (based on time or location). Imagine getting to the supermaket and your shopping list popping up, or getting to the library and the names of the books you need to borrow come up on the screen.


IN LIFE, I use it to keep myself organized:

• I take photos of flight reservation info for quick access when I travel. I believe it's much faster to find it instead of storing the photo on an email or  among so many other photos in my phone gallery.
• I make shopping lists and  lists of chores I need to get done on a daily basis.
• I register some WIFI passwords (from my mom's house, from ours, from my sister-in-law's). It's very useful when we change devices or for guests. It has been a lifesaver.
• I register addresses I will need soon (hotel addresses).
• In other words, instead of using the notetaking app, I use Google Keep for any note I need to keep.

What I haven't used yet:

• Record my ideas with my voice which is then transcribed automatically. It's great for those moments when you have an awesome idea for an article.
• Share a list with other people while planning an event and see when things are ticked and done.
• My notes are usually white, but as we can add colors to them, they might be easier to find if we adopt a color system.
• Used reminders based on location. 

How can we use it with students?

• Students can use it to store photos they take of boards in class and use tags to organize them according to subjects.
• Students can make lists of homework they need to get done and create reminders.
• They can brainstorm topics for class sharing a list with classmates.
• When doing group work and deciding who is doing what, they can make a list which is shared and everyone can see when each item is ticked and things are done.
• Students can create study notes about any subject so that they can revise quickly before a test.

For more reading on GOOGLE KEEP and its features:

• http://ditchthattextbook.com/2015/04/02/meet-google-keep-and-6-ways-it-can-help-schools/
• http://flippedclassroomtutorials.blogspot.com.br/2015/03/using-google-keep-to-take-notes.html
• https://insidetheclassroomoutsidethebox.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/google-keep-for-educators-and-students/
• http://blog.appsevents.com/2014/08/using-google-keep-in-classroom.html
• http://iserotope.com/students-google-keep-evernote/
• http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2015/05/making-most-of-google-keep.html#.Vczc651Vikp
• http://goo.gl/cgVD4Y

In Portuguese:

• http://www.tecmundo.com.br/google/38027-google-keep-saiba-como-usa-lo.htm
• https://www.google.com.br/keep/ 

Reading Collaboratively with Point

This post has the objective to share a tool I've learned about today: POINT.
http://www.getpoint.co/

Point is a Google Chrome Plugin which allows you to quickly share links to websites and videos with other people. And how does it work? You install the plugin to your Google browser, then every time you want to share a link with someone, press the key @ on your keyboard and a small box pops up prompting you to choose the person or email to share it with.

Check the video below with a demonstration.



What I liked about it is the possibility to work collaboratively. By sending the link to someone, whether they are online or not, we can use the chat box which pops up to develop a conversation and reflect together. You can highlight the parts of the text you find relevant and discuss about it as I did with a colleague, Juliana Gense, tonight (we are reading in English but discussing in Portuguese).

You can share and discuss about articles and blog posts:

You can share and discuss about Youtube videos:

And even share and discuss about pdf files which have been embedded to https://www.scribd.com/

Another amazing feature is the possibility to share the whole chat with someone else via email. And how to do that? After finishing a chat, you click the key @ again and type the email. This would be perfect for sharing a chat with the teacher. The screenshot below is an example of what the chat thread would look like after being sent by email.

How can we use Point with students?

Brainstorming uses with Juliana, we imagined some possibilities:

• Have a whole group of students discuss about an article synchronously or asynchronously.
• Divide EFL students in trios and have them get together synchronously to discuss about texts or explore new vocabulary in a text. Then, when they finish the task, the can send the whole chat to the teacher.
• Invite students to discuss about a video they watch together.
• Invite undergraduates or post graduates to analyze academic papers and discuss about the parts they find relevant, then email the chat to their professor or tutor .

Guest Post: Calling an old friend to our classes

I have the great pleasure to have Aysegul Kaban write a guest post about some activities she has tried with her own students. I love reading about real life examples of classroom activities, what about you?

There are many online tools for generating QR codes which you can then use in the classroom. All of these different types of information can be stored in a code: A short piece of text, Website address, Email address, URL… 

Why not try some of these examples? 

Most Smartphones will have a barcode scanner as an app which will read QR codes. I love integrating technology to my classes and I teach English as a foreign language to young adults in İstanbul, Turkey.

This lesson plan was created to revise Past Simple, Present Perfect Simple, and Present Perfect Continuous.

I asked questions about QR codes: E.g. Have you ever seen this? Have you ever used QR code? If yes, where and when did you use it? How do we use QR codes? After getting the answers, I talked about the activity and showed some QR codes and asked the students to solve the mystery of the QR codes on the board.

Although most students had seen QR codes, none of the students were sure about QR codes. Only one of them had a QR code reader on his smartphone. I asked the students to download the free QR code reader. They enjoyed when they first scanned the QR code and asked some other codes to scan.

After doing the first trial, I asked the students to scan the code on the board and do the exercise with their partners. They did the first activity. After 4 minutes, I gave the correct information to the students. Some pairs answered all questions correctly and they felt happy because they realized they knew some information about their teacher’s personal life.

Now that the Students had seen an example, I divided the class into groups of 3 (or 4) and gave each group a self-prepared handout about basic rules of simple past, present perfect and present perfect continuous. I told the students that this was supposed to be a group contest. The winning group of the contest received a surprise at the end. I said I would record the score on the board.

I gave students a handout lacking of example sentences and told students to fill in the gaps. Students started a treasure hunt in the class and when they found they wrote it on the handout. While Students were doing the activity, I observed the groups. I checked answers by asking each group and recorded the score.

You can use QR Codes for many other purposes. Here are some tips for you!

1. You are the best forget the rest badges!

Everybody loves awards. Why don’t we give QR code awards to our students when they achieve something great? Award prizes by having students scan a code leading to an animation or badge. When they accomplish a test on Present Perfect continuous, they can get a special code that takes them to a badge for Present Perfect Continuous Guru!

2. Discovery Stations

You are going to cover a new reading but you want to try something different. Breaking the routine is always good for us and our students. You can put codes in different areas of the class that will take students to different online activities, videos or content. You can use it as a warmup activity or reading activity.

3. Answer Fortuneteller

Have students check their answers by scanning the QR code after completing a test or assignment. As a teacher, you can visually confirm when students are checking their work and can also check in to see how they are doing. Creating QR codes for difficult topics and attaching them to students’ homework. If they get stuck, they can scan the code and watch a video of you working through the problem step-by-step.

4. Provide Extension Assignments

A great way to provide optional activities for students who want to improve is to simply put the code on the class assignment and let them follow it to the extension activity or question. It won't take up much space, and might facilitate a little excitement about the extension assignment. You can give URL of a beautiful song with present perfect continuous tense as a warming activity as a homework.

5. Compile Research

Discovering new things is always exciting and by QR codes we give a chance to discover. You can ask students to make a research about their favorite star and have students create codes linking to start discovered during research. These could be posted in class wikis on a specific topic, or on a wall in the classroom. It helps give them ownership of the research process and literally creates "walls that talk."

Bio:

Aysegul Liman Kaban works as an English Instructor at Bahçeşehir University. She has finished her BA in TEFL and MA in Interpersonal Communication at Marmara University with distinction. She has been recognized by various entities, such as the ELT BLOGATHON Awards, The German National Agency Teacher Trainer Scholarship, and IELTS Morgan Terry Memorial Scholarship 2013 as an innovative, technology integrated project creator. She has been giving talks and workshops at international and national conferences, especially focusing on Mobile Learning, Google Apps, E-portpholio, digital learning apps. She is also Newsletter Editor of IATEFL TEASIG. She shares regularly on eslaction.wordpress.com and on Twitter (@Aysegul_Kaban).

The importance of Social Presence in Online Courses

People frequently criticize the online environment for being cold. They say that during online courses they feel lonely and demotivated to learn.

And why is that?

Studies about Social Presence might help us understand about an important aspect in online courses.

What is Social Presence?

According to Menezes (2014), Social Presence is how people perceive their own presence and the presence of others in a virtual interaction and the willingness to build an interpersonal relationship in order to learn collaboratively.

To me, Social Presence depends a lot on how participants choose to take part in an online course. Of course, it also depends on the opportunities of interaction provided during the course.

Let's compare two students:

Student A studies alone. He uses books and the internet to build knowledge.

Student B is taking a course with other students. Besides learning via the material suggested by his teacher, he likes exchanging ideas and discussing about what he's been learning with his classmates.

In the virtual world we can have a similar situation. We can choose to act like Student A, focussing on developing tasks on our own or we can behave like Student B making use of the opportunity to work with the group exchanging ideas and making connections.

We should bear in mind three kinds of course content we can learn from:
- The content proposed by the teacher.
- The content suggested by participants.
- The content built by participants during the course.

When we study alone during an online course, we might be missing the opportunity to learn more with one another.

Here are few tips on how to develop your presence during online courses:

REFERENCE:

MENEZES, A. M. C. A vivência da presença social: histórias de um curso online para professores de Inglês. (2014) M.A. Thesis. 186 p. Universidade Federal de Uberlândia. http://goo.gl/kNyAck

SUGGESTED READINGS:

REVISTA TECNOLOGIA EDUCACIONAL
ISSN 0102-5503 - Ano LI - 200
Janeiro / Março - 2013
Revista da Associação Brasileira de Tecnologia Educacional v. 31 
http://www.academia.edu/3764280/Revista_abt_2013_artigo_p_62

GARRISON, D. (2006)Online Collaboration Principles. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks. Vol. 10, No. 1, p. 25-34. Disponível em <http://tinyurl.com/6r9bjwz >, acesso em 16/04/12.

GUNAWARDENA, C. N. (1995)Social presence theory and implications for interaction and collaborative learning in computer conferences. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, p. 147-166.