Blended learning

Hi there! Today I am going to write about blended learning and its impact in Higher Education.

According to Edglossary, blended learning (a.k.a.: hybrid learning and mixed-mode learning) "is generally applied to the practice of using both online and in-person learning experiences when teaching students."

Blended learning occurs then when a student not only attends regular lessons but he/she completes his/her assignment by using Internet as well. It is said to be the teaching of the future since students would learn about the same topics online as they do in class.

There are some benefits and some disadvantages regarding this type of learning. Some people suggest that it gives students the possibility of working at their own pace and time, it provides student with the chance of working individually and with guidance and assistance from the teacher. 

On the other hand, it is not advisable for students who lack self-control and self-discipline since they need constant supervision from the teacher. It might also lead students not to have the neccesary personal attention provided by the teacher resulting into students´ low marks and bad learning.  For some people, this type of learning is also inadequate due to the lack of interactions with a teacher. 

Personally, I support the idea of using platforms to teach and learn, but this should not be the only way of doing so, it should coexist together with in-person teaching to bring out the best in learning.

If you want to know more about this topic, watch the following video!

Sources

Hidden curriculum (2014, August 26). In S. Abbott (Ed.), The glossary of education reform. Retrieved from http://edglossary.org/hidden-curriculum

Video

WEB 2.0 - Didactic Sequence

Hi there! For PW#3 our teacher asked us to create an imaginary didactic sequence including one or more web 2.0 tools. The idea was to organise it following a central task and then to present it to our classmates during a lesson, showing what we would ask our students to do. The grammatical contents to revise were Simple Present, there is/there are and has/have. The vocabulary was 'places in a city' and the functions to teach were describing a city, convincing, inviting.

My classmates and I thought about including videos in the lessons, so we came up with the idea that students, in groups of  3, would have to create a video showing their imaginary favourite city. The aim of the video would be to convince their partners to go to that city by describing it.

After researching into some web 2.0 resources, we found 'Stupeflix', an interesting tool to create videos using photos and adding special musical effects or songs.

We started the lesson by showing students images of Santa Fe city and describing some places, so as to activate squemata, they had a worksheet to match the corresponding pictures to the names of the places as they listened to us describing those places. We checked comprehension by asking questions, for example, Is there any bakery in Santa Fe?. 

Then, we presented posters of places that are and are not present in Santa Fe and in pairs, students had to write sentences telling what places there are and there aren't in the city. The pair who wrote more sentences in 5 minutes was the winner of the competition. We checked by having the pairs reading their productions and asking their mates to say whether those sentences were correct in terms of grammar and meaning.

To finish the lesson and introduce the final task, we showed students a video about our own favourite city; a city we have created with all the places we like.We showed them our production on stupeflix while telling them about the city. Then, we asked them comprehension questions, for example: how many churches are there in our city?.We also asked them if they would go to our city, what they like/don’t like about our city. After that, we told them they would have to make a similar presentation but with their own imaginary favourite city. We asked them to make their city interesting so as to convince their partners to visit it since once presentations were over we would vote for the best city to go to.

Our city was called PARACITY, a city to spend our holidays, and this amazing resource allowed us to create a video using text and photos... you can try this tool www.stupeflix.com, it is really useful when it comes to design videos by using photographs.

Combining reading and technology

I came across the fact that students do not read the short stories or novels told by the teacher. So I was trying to find a way not to leave reading activities aside during lessons. Suddenly, watching one of my students, I realized: Why not downloading the books they want to read into their cellphones or laptops?!We may come to an agreement based on what kind of novel we want them to read and then they can download the story into their cellphones. The idea is that they are able to read it whenever they want to, even when they are travelling to school by bus or before going to bed, just to mention some examples.

I know that you will probably say that they could do it with the printed version anyway, but if we want to engage our students in reading, why not doing so with a device they use everyday?

So I started to look for some reliable websites and I found these:

Obooko, every book you see is free
Goodreads

The books are separated by categories: Romance, Thriller, Young, Teens, Arts, etc. You can see the cover of the book and its review.

In both websites you have to log in, but you can do it but using your Facebook account. In Obooko, all books are free whereas in Goodreads all of them are free but within a period of time (with the exception of the old ones, which have no cost).

I think it is a good and an interesting way of engaging our students. I actually proposed this to a teenager and even though she did not like the reading part that much, she liked the fact that it would be by using her cellphone.

Fun new tools

In class, we were presented digital resources like WordCloud and Voki to make English lessons funnier.

For what I have searched, Voki is a character that can be customized according to the students´ preferences. As the website provides the information (you can have access by clicking the previous link) in a clear and easy way, it is really simple to create your own Voki.  They can be used to engage students´ attention and to make English lessons not that monotonous by making students participate more actively. It is not only useful for students but for teachers as well. Teachers have a whole section called "Voki classroom" (unfortunately you have to pay for it), where they can check their students´ improvement and homework, a kind of Edmodo Platform. But if you cannot pay for it, you can create Vokis anyway and share in different websites such as Facebook, Blogger, Google, etc.

I also wanted to go through the experience of having my own Voki so I couldn´t resist and I created a new one.

Try to create one!!

Wordcloud, on the other hand, is not a character but a tipography tool instead. You can create one by counting words in some text. This could be a Microsoft document, a pdf one or you can introduce the words by tiping or pasting a text. It is a really interesting way to grab students´attention by using something new to teach vocabulary, for instance, and not the typical pictures posted on the wall. The one I chose is free and easy to use.

Source:
Voki
WordCloud

Web 2.0

As I had to leave early when this topic was introduced and I am in the mood to keep on learning everything related to digital technologies; I decided to do some research on Web 2.0.

According to Tim O'Reilly (2003):

"Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform:

• delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, 

• consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others,

• creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences."

  

We are not supposed to know or to use all the new digital tools, the idea is to make use of the Web as a Platform where you can control your own data and not only by publishing it in websites but by participating as well (as we are intended to do when posting something and then commenting on another classmate´s blog, for instance). Some examples of websites that belong to the Web 2.0 era are: Google, Wikipedia,YouTube,Flickr and the one we are using Blogger.

When it comes to Education, Web 2.0 is absolutely necessary since students now work collaborativelly and they are sharing information all the time. If you want to know more about how Education is now seen by using Web 2.0, I recommend you to watch this link: Web 2.0 For Education.

A really interesting webpage is OEDb (Open Education Database) where you can find almost any Web 2.0 teaching tool and its use in Education. There are classroom tools and collaborating tools. The former includes resources such as Teacher Planet in which you can download lesson plans and the latter includes pages like Emodo which is used to share content not only between colleagues but with students as well.

Source:

Tim O´Reilly Webpage

Selfies...what are they?

Having been invited to a workshop on "Selfies" coordinated by Mathilde Verillaud, I first thought "Oh no, here we go again with senseless photographs taken by teenagers" and "Is there even a workshop on how to take selfies?Come on!" I could not be more mistaken. It actually made me think totally different of what selfies are and why adolescents take them, what they may represent in their lives and the importance they might have for most of our students, even though our students cannot realise the importance of taking photographs and uploading them to the web.

Social media and the mobile web have given rise to a strange phenomenon called the selfie, which is a picture of yourself, usually shared on any social networking website.

As Mathilde told us, some selfies are extreme close-ups, others show part of an arm held straight outward and others feature the subject standing in front of a bathroom mirror so that they can get a full body shot of their reflection. There are lots of selfie styles, and these are some of the most common.

There are several reasons why people take selfies, and these reasons were the ones that made me change my opinion regarding this new way of photography. Some of the reasons are:

• To get attention from as many people as possible,
• To get a self-esteem boost,
• To show off,
• To show a message into the Mobile Social Networks.

How can we use them in the classroom? Since selfies are something in which our students are really into, we can come up with different activities so as to engage them and make English lessons funnier. We can also teach them that a selfie is not only a photograph and that it shows a lot more to the eye. We can help them to discover what it actually shows and make them feel free to express themselves through their selfies.

I will leave you with this selfie...what do you think this teenager is thinking of?

Sources
- Verillaud, Mathilde, "Selfies in the Classroom, Really?", presentation at Alicana, Santa Fe, August 2014.
Picture: creative common license

How to integrate technology in our lessons

In class, we were presented two new models related to how integrate technology and teaching, and which main points should be taken into account when using them. It was a really interesting lesson since I have never thought of how closely interconnected teaching and technology are for our students nowadays.

One of the models was TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) which, basically is the interaction of CONTENT, PEDAGOGY AND TECHNOLOGY. The actual fusion of the three is what enables teachers to transform teaching and makes it more accesible to individual learners in their specific contexts. However, it is not only adding technology to the lessons, it also depends upon deep knowledge of how technologies can be used to access and process subject matter and understanding how they can support and enhance learning. If you are interested you can have access to this video in which Koehler & Mishra (TPACK´S theorists) give a conference and provide different examples on how the model should be used appropriately. The picture below summarises, in a clear way, what TPACK is. It also explains the interactions among the components of this model and their characteristics.

        

On the other hand, the SAMR model (The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition Model) offers a method of seeing how computer technology might impact teaching and learning. At the Substitution level computer technology is used to perform the same task as it was done before the use of computers, for example, students who print out worksheets. Then, at the Augmentation level, computer technology offers an effective tool to perform common tasks such as students taking a quiz using a Google Form instead of using pencil and paper. At the Modification level, common classroom tasks are being accomplished through the use of computer technology and finally, at the Redefinition level, computer technology allows new tasks, that were previously inconceivable, to be carried out. Here you have more examples about which activities you can do at each level.

    So it remains to know, which model will you follow?And why?



Sources:http://www.tpack.org/

http://wwSAMR Model Explained for Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

TPACK PICTURE

SAMR PICTURE