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.