Day 9, 24th august

After going through a checklist (in Edmodo, Folders, Day 8) to check our ability in the use of Quizlet, we moved on to read , individually, different articles from 

"Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course design and Implementation", edited by Brian Tomlinson and Claire Whittaker. (available online in pdf)

The book shows different situations in which Blended Learning was used to make both teaching and learning more motivating and effective.
We had to create Google Slides that we shared in our class in Edmodo ; Russell was supervising our work and keeping in touch with us thanks to the chatline (so we could ask questions, receive his comments on the slides that he could see).
Later we presented our cases and Russell took the opportunity to make some further comments:

Day 10, 25th August 2017

We started the day  having fun with with  Kahoot  playing games in the form of a quiz on our mobile phones.

Day 8, 23rd august 2017

Quizlet!!!

Russell promised we would enjoy this new tool and he was right!!

We started the morning from Quizlet website where we looked for content (Simple Past, Means of Transport, Numbers, Conditional type 1...) and we got a high number of sets of card that we might like and for each one a great variety of activities are provided: Learn, Flashcards, Write, Spelling, Test, Match Gravity.

Once teachers have created their own account, they can select one or more sets of cards , copy them (first button on the left), give them a new name (Fruit by Paola Primavori, to make them sound yours!!) and create a new set (button at the top, on the right). At that point the set of cards is definetely yours and we might decide to add or remove items. In case we decide to add new items vocabulary, for example, quizlet will provide us with a number of definitions we can choose from and even a picture!!

A new window will open giving you a link that you can share with your students on Edmodo so that they will be able to use the set of cards to practice their English.

It is also possible to create a class on Quizlet (Create a Class, on the left), giving it a name, of course.

If we click on Members, at the top, a code will pop up and we just need to share this link on Edmodo with our students to invite them to join the class and use our sets of card.

Easy peasy like a lemon squeezy!! (repeted by Russell several times every session to encourage us).

Now, the questions.

What things have you covered in today’s sessions? Quizlet

What technologies have you been exposed to? Quizlet

How might you use the technologies/techniques in your own teaching and learning?
It will be a nice funny way to encourage students to practice their grammar and their vocabulary at home.

What value would these techniques/technologies add to your teaching and learning?
The sets are ready-made for us, once you have created them you can reuse them many times with different classes; I guess students will have fun while learning and the activities provided cover different skills.

What challenges do you foresee?
None, for the moment.

Blended Learning at NILE with Russell Stannard

Blended Learning

Day 1

Wow! Here I am, in this lovely city, Norwich, to start the teacher training course on Blended Learning at NILE, with Russell Stannard,

one of the best- known expert in the field of ICT integrated into the educational process.
I am sure that, apart from my personal experience of a training course with him, you will find his website very helpful and clear whatever new technology you wish to integrate in your teaching.
A part from being professionally very good, Russell is highly involving, super-dynamic and definitely passionate about what he is doing. 
He is also trying to make me and my 3 classmates, Alla from Ukraine, Aga from Poland and Hüsnü from Turkey, self -confident and positive about the results we are going to reach. He event told us that we are not miles behind (as I think I am) in using technology in class!

from  left to right: me, Husnu, Aga and Alla

So.....here we go with my first blog!


What things have you covered in today's session?
The day began with a simple get-to-know-each activity using drawings. We drew objects or scenes meaningful to us ( airplane, mountains, books...) to show our hobbies, country, family... and then we shared the info with the different partners. Russell set the example first.
What technologies have you been exposed to?
Russell started the lesson introducing Today's Meet, a very interesting tool to be used in collaborative learning. It gives the possibility to create a room, for a limited period of time, where teacher and students can share ideas or ask each other questions. We started by asking questions to get to know Russell a bit better and then we did it a second time writing down the names of different fruit and then talked about how to classify them . (For example,where they are from, what color they are, are they summer or winter fruit? )
In fact, RULE N. 1: always use the assets (meaning create activities that have a final goal).
Here ' s Russell's short video about it:








Next we went on working on Google Slides; In groups we discussed two questions:
What are the advantages of using technology in class?
What is stopping teachers from using technology in class?
It was brain storming and discussing very interesting topics and write down short sentences in slides that can be shared and integrated by the other groups. This is a short video by Russell about how to and why to use Google slides :

Finally Russell taught us how to create a blog so ...this is what I'm doing now!!




I think this video by Russell Stannard
will be very helpful.
Now I'm going to do my homework and answer the questions . But not before writing down the 3 Golden Rules which always have to be respected when introducing technology in our lessons:
1. think of the added value of using technoly in class.
2. always use assets
3. more about outside class


How might you use the technologies/techniques in your own teaching and learning?

I think these new techniques/technologies will be very useful once I get more familiar with them and they can be used in a variety of situations while teaching both English and Literature.
Italy is slowly moving towards cooperative learning and project-based learning and both Today's Meet and Google Slides can be very helpful in letting the students cooperate without moving around from town to town.
The teacher can have complete control over the students' activities and at the same time be available to help .
Today’sMeet can be used in a great variety of situations: students might be asked to jot down plenty of questions to one of them about the past holidays (revision of the Past Simple), about plans for the next holidays revision of the Future Tense), or about hobbies…. The answers given will create an opportunity for comments, discussions, surveys…..
In addition, I can ask the students, in group, to select one of the holiday destinations mentioned in the discussion and create 3 slides each : one showing a meaningful picture, the second including a video and the third one giving five fact about the place ( limiting the number of words in order to prevent students from copy-pasting from the net).
With higher classes,I might ask the students to read a poem or an article and write down their impressions, comments, doubts on Today’sMeet..; the next step will be a discussion about it and finally I might ask the students, divided into groups , to create slides about the writer or the poem or the context.
What value would these techniques/technologies add to your teaching and learning?
Apart from being highly motivating for the students, I think the great advantage in using ICT is the fact the learning time is extended outside the classroom in a pleasant way. Moreover, ICT offers a great variety of resources and tools that highly facilitate the learning process.
What challenges do you foresee?
The main challenge is a personal one. I think I need to get familiar with all these new Techniques and technology , which implies a lot of (enjoyable!!) work at home before starting to use them in class.


Final reflection
What I really enjoyed about the lesson is the fact the theory was totally integrated with the practice so we actually did some exercises that we can easily use in class, of course focusing on different topics and/or skills to develop.

Day 6, 21 August 2017

We started the lesson working on Edmodo.
Each one of us created one own group/class (depending on the
participants) which is given a code. We need to name the group so that it is easily identified by the partecipants.
When all the participants have logged in our group/class (through the code) , we can lock it (so that nobody else will join in).
The next steps were: create an introduction to the course (“ hello
everybody! I am Paola Primavori and I will be your teacher on this
course. I really hope you will like it and I am sure we will work very well together.” Possibly add a picture.
Next we created a poll with 2/3 questions (have you ever been to Italy ? Yes/no; Which part of Italy would you like to visit? North/South; Which city in Italy is you top destination? Venice, Milan Rome, Naples, Bologna, Florence).
Next we created a quiz. A quiz can be made up of different types of
questions (true/false, multiple choice, short answer, fill in, matching) .
We must remember that short answers are not corrected and assessed by Edmodo. We had better use “assignments”for an open question (write a paragraph of about 150 to describe your favourite place in Rome “).
So….. short answer questions are not very used .
If we make a mistake in one question, the best thing to do is delete it immediately . If we have given the quiz or poll a title which we Must!!!, it will be easy to retrieve it as Edmodo automatically saves everything produced. Once we have retrieved the question we can edit and correct it.
It is possible to create quizzes related to , for example a video that we will insert.
The same is true for “assignments”. These tasks must be corrected and assessed by the teacher .
Edmodo is mainly used for homework.

Finally each one of us entered the others’ group/class and took the polls and quizzes. We immediately got the results!!
In the afternoon we started to use SnagIt.
First Russell showed us all the possibilities it offers and then gave us some tasks:
1. Make a video of you testing SnagIt and upload it on Edmodo ;
2. Make a video to show your students how to create a playlist on
YouTube and share it with Edmodo;
3. Make a video to show students how to subscribe to a channel,
save it in your Google Drive and share the link on Edmodo.
Unfortunately, there was something wrong with my computer (probably with Media Player) and even though I could create the video, I was not able to reproduce it! :-((
…. So I guess I will have plenty of work to to tomorrow in case we find a solution to the problem. I really do hope so!

Day 5, 18th August 2017

Let s revise Blogging!
There are 2 types of blogs:
· Personal blogs (not usually shared with other people) for reflections, comments, telling about personal experiences….
· Class blogs , used as a diary but sharing with students has often proved to be a disaster! These blogs are not used for Class activities. There are other much better tools for them( Edmodo, for example). If we want our students to work on blogs we should ask each one of them to create one and then give them tasks to perform. This way, their blog could be a collection of all the digital
assets they have created and be a sort of e-portfolio.

The main steps to the creation of a blog are:
1. posts,
2. labels,
3. Formatting When you copy and paste from other sources, you may copy also the format so that then it is difficult to go back to your original choice. There is a tool (top, left) to eliminate all formatting so you can do it again as you wish.
4. extra pages,
5. gadgets,
6. Design (never have a background image as it makes the blog really difficult to read)
7. Settings
We will learn more about design and settings later on .
Very important!!!! CONSISTENCY : All the titles, pictures should have the same size (200x300 for images).
....and never forget..CONTENT IS KING!!!
So on the left, you should always have the list of your posts first, than the labels, then your profile then all the gadgets you want.

Next , today we moved on and did some challenging activities from
breakingnewsenglish.com , an astonishingly rich website with plenty of activities for different levels. The activities are automatically generated so not everything is perfect but in general two activities are great: Text Jumble and No letters.
The same author also created a similar website for lower levels (PET students): listenaminute.com
The two websites provide teachers with an incredible amount of activities that can be further combined and developed .

For example: listening activity + note taking. Now, in couples, discuss what you heard. Then, second listening.
While organizing activities, let’s keep in mind they should be:
· Communicative
· Engaging
· User-friendly
· Contextualized
· Personalized
· Affective
The last one is particularly meaningful: at the end the students should be asked to make the content “their content” (write an email to a friend who suffers about a disease about the latest scientific discoveries about his/her problem, write a poem, find a picture about this and be ready to describe it)

Teaching tip:

1. when you have group activities like these, COMPETITION is highly motivating so teachers should create it.
2. The cut off point of an activity is when the first group has finished (unless you have another connected activity planned ).
3. You can also set a fixed time. Not important if the students haven' t finished it. The can do it for homework.

Now, some new technology! SCREEN CAPTURE
What is it for? It is/can be used in many situations.
In education , mainly for audio feedback (by the way, this is what Russell Stannard got many prizes for!!!)
What possibility does it offer?
We can receive our students’ digital text texts , give them a oral feedback (grammar, vocabulary, spelling, text cohesion, content…) highlighting the text in a different colour and recording whatever we do on the screen.
What are advantages of this type of feedback? Many!!!
· It is highly individual
· Motivating
· You can also give a general feedback to the class when same mistakes are repeated by many
· These general feedbacks are reusable for the teachers!!
· Students feel they are important to the teacher!!!
· While getting the feedback they will be listening and reading at the same time
· A big amount of feedback can be given
· It is a form of distant learning but students will feel the teacher’s presence
· It tells much more than a simple “good”
· Negative feedbacks can be made softer , more polite, less direct

Where else is screen capture used?
· Tutorials about technology
· Online courses
· Pronunciation activities (to improve accuracy and intonation)
· Describing pictures
· Flip classes
· IMPORTANT: students can record themselves while presenting a
PowerPoint presentation. The recording can be sent to the teacher who will give feedback.(feedback question list is in Edmodo/folder/day5 by Russell Stannard)
By the way, let’s not forget that in any PowerPoint presentation we must at least show attributions (“the images are from www……”)
· Give instructions about exams (PET, FIRST…)
· Explain grammar rules
· Record any lesson they want to give

How can we get this Screen Capture technology?
Some is for free: Jing, Screencast-o- matic, Camstudio;
Some have a cost: SnagIt (30 $ , once in a lifetime), Camtasia.

Day 3, 16th August, 2017

Today I will be a good student and start answering the questions from the very beginning. Well, there's only one question that applies to today's lesson (ending at 12.45)

What things have you covered in today’s sessions?

We started the lesson revising the main ideas :

-Collaboration with /among students is possible thanks to Today's Meet and Google Docs or Google Slides.

-a Blog can be used for assessment, reflection, writing.

-plenty of content is available on YouTube and Images .

Next we moved on to Platforms.

What is a platform? A central location where everything is organized. They are Virtual Learning Environments (VLE).
Platforms are repository (meaning you can keep contents in them) but also you can create activities.
Two very famous platforms are Moodle and Edmodo.
What is the difference between the two?
Edmodo is free while Moodle needs to be paid for.
Edmodo is better for short courses while Moodle is a big technology which has everything in it and tries to be the solution to all the problems .
Sometimes teachers get lost in it and also students are overwhelmed with technology!
Edmodo is easier to learn, it does not provide everything; for example it does not give blogging opportunities but you can create a link to blogs.


Following our requests, we spent the rest of the lesson focusing on the loads of content we have approached so far. Russel gave us some tasks to perform to check that we can actually prepare materials, use the technologies we have been exposed to . And….. we succeeded!!!!

Day 7, 22nd August 2017

Russell started the lesson reminding us that Edmodo, Moodle and many many others are repository tools to organize the students' learning materials especially at home.To these VLE we can link whatever tool we want (YouTube, Google Slides/Docs/Form, SnagIt, Blogger....). This way the platform will be more powerful.
Blended Learning is using the platform and linking it to other technolgies .a practical example of Blended Learning would be : create a slide on Google Slides about your favourite book and share it on Edmodo.
Probably the two most powerful tools for Blended Learning are SnagIt (price $30 but definetely worth it!) and Edmodo.
The platform is the very centre of Blended Learning; of course, it always has to be connected to Face to Face teaching.
If we think of the limited amount of lessons we have and the high number of students in our classes , we understand the importance of organizing/structuring their work at home.
At the same time we must be careful not to overwhelm students with activities!
Moreover, for sure our students will have to use these technologies at work!
Of the different tools we have faced so far, probably Today'sMeet is the only one we can use in class. All the others are perfect to organize activities as homework.
How are online courses delivered? There is a platform , virtual classes are created and the connection between the two is possible thanks to Skype or similar devices.


Screen Capture is very useful even for high level students:whenever an essay is given as an assignment, the teacher might give them a model essay ("you should start your essay..., then makesure you cover the following point....").


Self-evaluation: a very important issue!!! Ministries of Education seem to think it is always the teachers who MUST evaluate students but self-assessment would be a great aim to reach!!


Now let's move on to another technology: Google Forms!!
Google Forms enables you to create questionnaires (with short answers, multiple choice, true/false...) which can be used in a variety of situations: beginning of the school year to find out about students' expectations, mid-term questionnaire to monitor their learning, end of the term questionnaire to get their feedback: We could use it at the end of a project when we want a feedback from students, parents....
The teacher can create the questionnaire, share the link with the students who will complete it , send it back and the teacher will have the results in the form of a graph.
Another interesting speaking activity might be the presentation of the graphs mad by the students.
Google Forms is used to carry out surveys and collect data.
Next Russell asked us to create a questionnaire about a particular topic and I chose Travelling.
Please feel free to have a look at my questionnaire and maybe take it!!
Now a few tips about how to create the questionnaire:
- you may need to insert a new section: last button on the right,
-you may want to limit your students to take only 1 questionnaire: you can do it from the settings.

Not sure I have answered all the questions....let's check!

What things have you covered in today’s sessions? yes

What technologies have you been exposed to? Google Forms

How might you use the technologies/techniques in your own teaching and learning?
Plenty of ways! as I mentioned before, beginning or end of the school year, mid-term questionnaire to evaluate progress or difficulties, students can be asked to carry out surveys themselves, we can collect data from colleagues, feedback after projects, create self-evaluation questionnaires (can you do this? can you do that? If not, we had better revise this point...)

What value would these techniques/technologies add to your teaching and learning?
We can easily collect data, shown in a very clear form, about our teaching process, contribute to the collection of data about the different extracurricular activities carried out by the school, use the results for speaking activities in class encouraging the use of specific language (percentage, pie chart....).

What challenges do you foresee?
Once again plenty of time will be needed to get familiar with the tool and tp prepare the questionnaires, but I suppose many of them can be reused or simply slightly modified over the years.

Day 4,17th August 2017

Today a new teacher from Turkey joined the class. His name is Ugur and he seems to be a computer geek (just like his friend Husnu)!!!

Welcome Ugur! (impossible to pronounce!)

What things have you covered in today’s session?
Russell started the session trying to make it clear what Blended Learning is and how it all started.
Teachers moved from “F2F” lessons to “F2F” lessons integrated with plenty of new technology (videos, podcasts, forums, chats, wiki, blogs…). This meant that the amount of content would double and students felt overwhelmed; to overcome the problem , sometimes the length of the course was reduced to give space to the new contributions from ICT.
Students worked at home on their own and in class. This is NOT Blended Learning.
Blended Learning is when we create a link between what is done in class and what is done at home, remembering always that all the assets MUST be used in Class.
We could say this the Golden Rule n. 4: always create a link between class and home activities.
Finally, (for the moment), Golden Rule n. 5: let’s not overwhelm the students with content ; in fact we should keep the amount of content under control.
Whatever home assignment is given to the students , it needs being reused in class (either in a discussion form or creating a contest…)


What technologies have you been exposed to?

Edmodo: this platform , like all the others, is both repository (it can store materials) but it can also create activities.
After signing up an account with Edmodo, the teacher can create a group , with a name, which will be given a code. The students can log into the group thanks to this code.
The group can be locked, so that nobody from outside can log in.
Apart from posting videos, documents, links, images , Edmodo provides teachers with the possibility to create activities (multiple choice, true/false, matching , short answers, fill in the blanks) that the students can do (within a limited period of time or even at a certain time decided by the teacher and that will automatically corrected by the platform. The teacher can also decide scores to be given for every question so that the final result will be available to the students, with no efforts from the teachers.
The platform even keeps records of the results of the individual students in the different activities so that it will be possible to have the progress in learning that the student has made.
Obviously , the assessment of the Edmodo activities MUST be integrated in the general assessment to avoid students thinking the use of technology is only secondary .

How might you use the technologies/techniques in your own teaching and learning?

We have experienced a number of ways: we have created a quiz, a poll and we have uploaded a video and a picture and created questions about them. All of these activities can be more easily done individually at home while the follow-up will take place in class and involve the 4 language skills (commenting, orally or in writing, imagining what comes next, identifying the context….)

What value would these techniques/technologies add to your teaching and learning?I reckon this technology quite involving and helpful once you are familiar with it and have created a number of activities that you can use over time. Of course current affairs will need continuous on-going production of materials.
Edmodo promotes interaction, makes the lesson more motivating, creates a sense of community among the members of the group, it saves time and paper.
Moreover, you can prepare activities tailored on that particular group.

What challenges do you foresee?
Personally I think creating tests (especially true/false, multiple choice) is quite difficult . The risk is to have questions that are too easy or subject to different interpretations.

Day 2, 15th August, 2017

We started the day practising Today'sMeet . Husnu was given the task to create a room , we all entered the room (of course he needed to give us the name of the room ) and asked him plenty of questions about his life, career and country. He answered the 4 most interesting ones .
I got to learn a lot about Izmir.


In this activity we used all the 4 language skills.



Next Husnu was given the task to be the editor of Google Slides on 3 main cities in Turkey.
Pretending to be at home so speaking to each other was strictly forbidden, each of us had to create 3 slides: one with a picture, one with a video and one with 5 facts about the city.
The editor gave us clear instructions about font size, image size (ideal between 600 and 800 pixel) and video lenght.
How can we create slides?
here you are , with Russell's video about it.
Final reflections about the activities:
important to match groups and slides (group 1 slides 1,2, 3; group 2...)
groups must keep an eye on the chat and answer questions from editor or other groups;
to prevent sts from copy-pasting, give a limited number of words in the written texts.



While creating the first slide we learned about how to find pictures on Google. I personally discovered TOOLS which is a way to filter the images (colour, size, type of drawing...).
Something very important is the copy-right matter.
"Strictly speaking"every time we use a photo or video from the net, we "steal" someone else's property. In practice, this is done thousand of times everyday by teachers and students alike with no consequences because we use them for educational purposes. It's always better, anyway, to inform the students about this problem and encourage them to use "reusable pictures/videos" (labels).

Next we concentrated on our Blog.
Some basics:

1. when we add info (text, photos, videos) , it all goes on the blog.
2. we can add extra pages. These will stay the same unless we decide to change them. To create a new page, first of all we need a new gadget: from Layout we can add the menu system and then select PAGE. (only the first time).
3.Now, let's create a new page clicking on + . It's very important always to give a title to the new page.
My new page will be :"My Teaching Career".
3 date stamping: the blog automatically adds the date when every new post is introduced in the blog. The different dates are then listed on the left so that it is extremely easy to research one particular adding.
4 Something else which is extremely important is labelling. We Must label the content of our blog posts very clearly, using even more than one words, to let readers find the content more easily.
For example: I will label today's post , which is about vocabulary, with the words "vocabulary, lexis, words". The more specific I am, the better.
Blogger will automatically create a list of all the labels on the left so that readers looking for some info will just need to click on the label and all the posts related to that word will be shown, from the latest to the oldest.

Now, YouTube Channel!
What can we do with it?
1 subscribe to channels we are interested in. This way I will be informed about every single new video that is added into the channel. How? There is a list of channels I am subscribed to on the left and a number will be displayed meaning the latest new video introduced. Let' s watch Russell's video about it and he will make it clear.


2 Create playlists. What are they? They a a collections of videos, from different channels, all about the same topic.
Creating a playlist is very easy. At the bottom of a video you are interested in, you will have the possibility to "add to a playlist" or "create a new playlist". Here you are, now you will have all the videos you are interested in together, in the same "box".
To check your playlists, you have the "Library" on the left of the screen.
Sometimes we do not have the time to watch a video . At the bottom, on the left of the video there is the "watch later" button. If we click on it, the video will be in the "watch later list' on the left of the screen.
3 it is also possible to upload your own video .


Sooooo .... here are my answers to the questions:

What technologies have you been exposed to?
Today’s Meet, Google Slides, how to use of images , blogging and Google YouTube.

How might you use the technologies/techniques in your own teaching and learning?

YouTube offers a great variety of opportunity to practice the 4 language skills: from listening to songs and filling in blanks, to listening comprehension (songs, speeches, videos, advertisements, interviews…) and each of them can be followed by discussion in class and probably written tasks as home assignments.


What value would these techniques/technologies add to your teaching and learning?

In my teaching career, I have been struggling with pictures a lot!!! The size, the pixel, …. Now inserting an image in whatever document I want to produce will be definitely much easier!
A blog can be a really useful for teachers as they can upload their own videos and documents, they can insert links to newspaper articles, video interviews , they can also use it as a form of a diary registering the different class activities (for absent students). The blog can be shared with the students who can contribute to it.
YouTube is an incredible source of materials which are extremely valuable both for our teaching activities and our personal interests. Havingt hem well-organized and structured will save plenty of time. Moreover we will be kept updated with the latest production so it is a way to try to keep up with the students.

What challenges do you foresee?

I am afraid it will take me some time to practice and get familiar with blogging while I am sure I will use the different tools offered by YouTube quite intensely.