Cross-Cultural Project Work Using ICT-ELT

The idea that English faculties in any institution can successfully blend and work easily with others is every good school principal's dream. Unfortunately, the reality is most teachers on both sides are rather swathe to commit for a whole host of reasons.
Therefore, it is left to certain teachers to try and make it happen for their students without stepping on any of their colleagues toes. The following project outlines an activity that includes material from possibly four different departments, and shows how it is possible to do it under one "ELT" roof without bruising or putting a blemish anywhere near sensitive people's tootsies.

QR Codes have been around for several years, and they have been getting a lot of publicity lately. This post aims to further promote this technology, which we have found to be exciting, quirky and student-engaging.

This image of QR codes is from the assignment we did with our students in Istanbul down in Tunel, Istiklal and Galata.  If you point your QR reader (available on smart phones and ipad type devices, you can see their own flip books of the assignment.

The decision to give our students the opportunity to explore other subject areas in ELT came from the reader we are doing at the moment, TIMECAPSULE, by Robert Campbell. It tells the story of a fourteen year old girl who makes a time-capsule for a school history project. She is then magically transported back in time. This part of the narrative was when my colleague and I started to think we had a great opportunity to grasp by getting the students to do something history related in English.

We organized the students to go down town to three very historic areas of Istanbul: TUNEL, GALATA and BEYOGLU. We went with them to make sure the trip went smoothly, but realistically the students were left to complete the task themselves.

FIRST: They had to take pictures of buildings and landmarks, views and the people so that they would have their own research materials for the project assignment.

SECOND:  During the holiday break, the students had to interview an elderly member of their family and ask ten questions of their own choosing related to the three areas visited on the walkabout, and the 1970s era to link with the reader and associated context.

THIRD:  Using the new pictures, and having found old family photographs, the students had to make a ten slide powerpoint. The questions would be stated on each slide, then the comparable pictures displayed.

FOURTH:  Once completed, instead of saving the ppp as a presentation, the students had to save their slides as a PDF. This is so they could turn the slideshow into a FLIPBOOK.

FIFTH:  The students then upload the pdf to www.flipsnack.com and turn it into a flipbook. Check out this video tutorial of the process.

SIXTH:  On returning from the holiday, the students made their presentations to us. We were blown away, to say the least, hence I felt inspired to share the outcomes, and maybe you can do the same with the ICT opportunity and your students.  The flipbooks are behind those QR codes at the top, so if you take a look, you can see a few of the codes and feel inspired to do something similar with your students.

To put closure on the assignment, we introduced COMIC LIFE to the students. This program offers many templates we all associate with comics and comic books. The students then slide their own pictures and speech bubbles onto the template, save and print. We had the students use their pictures from that awesome day down in Tunel, Galata and Beyoglu. Here is an example of what our students produced.

Google Docs #2: Ideas for the Classroom

In this second post on Google Docs, I would like to begin by asking you to imagine this situation: Let's say that these two students in the picture just to the left are your students.  One is a hard-working, nerdy-type of student, and the other is more of a middle-of-the-pack kind of student, who is completely capable of doing well, but chooses not to because he sees school as a chore.  

By a stroke of luck, these two students have been paired up together to do a homework assignment, which is to find new vocabulary items for the text they are currently working on in English class.  Both students are required to find 10 words, write out the definition and then use each of those words in a sentence in the correct context.  They could do this independently, of course, but the idea is to get them to work together and review each others' writing before submitting it to the teacher.

How should they go about completing it?  The first option would be for them to meet up somewhere after school, but this is highly unlikely.  Not only do they surely not want to be seen in public together, but also perhaps they don't live anywhere near each other.  Thus, the next logical step is to complete the assignment on the computer via Word and then e-mail the document to each other.  So, they indeed choose this route, and let's just count how many steps it takes to complete the homework:

1. The nerdy student duly begins and finishes his part as soon as he gets home after school.
2. He opens his e-mail, attaches the Word document and sends it to his partner.
3. The partner, of course, is out doing other 'more important' things at the moment and might do his part when he gets home.  However, let's say that he does it.  He then has to open his e-mail and download the document.
4. He checks the first part from his partner and then writes his own part.
5. Next, he has to compose another e-mail, attach the new Word document and send it back.
6. Finally, the partner, who has been patiently waiting all night, again opens his e-mail and downloads the new attachment.
7. He then checks the entire document for any errors before turning it in to the teacher the next day.

After all of this, your students are, without doubt, totally disengaged. We take it for granted because this is the normal procedure.  However, what if there was a way to drastically reduce the number of steps and make group work truly manageable, and even somewhat enjoyable, for your students?  You can with Google Docs!

The Benefits

Google Docs is an office suite of tools similar, but not as extensive, as Microsoft Office. You can create documents, presentations, spreadsheets and forms for free.  While there may not be as many features when compared to normal office tools, Google Docs comes with its own set of benefits.  For starters, because of its location in the cloud, your documents are automatically saved and you can access them from any computer, tablet  or smartphone, 24/7.  You no longer have to transfer files from one computer to another via a USB flashdisk.  Furthermore, with Google Docs, you or your students no longer have to send e-mails back and forth to each other.  Students can simply create a Google document and share it with whomever they wish.  The person they share the document with simply clicks on the link that automatically sent to him or her and away they go.  There is no more attaching or downloading! On top of that, students can even work on the same Google Doc at the same time.  They can see what each other are writing in real time.  Now that is collaboration!

Taking Group Work to Another Level

So, how can you use Google Docs in your classroom?  There are countless ways to do so, but to begin with, I will use a classic ELT activity, Literature Circles, and I will show you how Google Docs can take it to a new level.  Literature Circles is such a famous activity in the ELT world because it focuses on autonomous task-based learning combined with the importance of teamwork.  Typically, while studying a short story or novel, a teacher places students into small groups, and then gives each student a different task.  For example, in a group of three, one student could find new vocabulary in the text; the second could write a short summary; and the last student could build a plot pyramid of the major events in the story.

So, without Google Docs, students would normally complete their assigned tasks by writing in the notebooks.  The problem with that, though, is how are they going to share their findings with each other and to have something that they can keep to study for the exam?  Secondly, how can they properly present their work to the class?  It is not really possible with traditional notebooks.  Then, you could use Microsoft Word, but then you face the problems of e-mailing and engagement loss, as mentioned above.

With Google Docs, however, Literature Circles become even simpler and more collaborative.  If all of your students have a computer, then one student in each group creates a Google Doc and shares it with the other group members.  After that, all of the group members can work on the same document in real time.  Thus, you don't have students waiting for their turn or looking over each other's shoulders.  On top of that, students are able to help each other from their own computer.  Moreover, by being able to see what each other are writing in real time, you can stress the important of peer review.  We told our students, for example, that they will all receive the same grade, so they had make sure that each part was completed and language-checked. Finally, once the assignment has been completed, it can be easily shared with you, the teacher, who can then project it for the entire class to see and critique.  

As as example, here is what one group of our students was able to produce.

The brilliant part about it is that not only is it neatly organized and aesthetically pleasing to the eye, it is just as easy for the students to complete at home as compared to the classroom.  So, if you run out of class time, you can have your students complete it at home and simply share the link with you that night or the next morning. They can just as easily work together from the comfort of their own homes as being in the classroom together.  Furthermore, they don't even need to take their school computers home with them or use a flashdisk to transfer their files.  The students can reach their Google Docs from any computer and continue right where they left off at school.

This is only one way that Google Docs can be a magnificent web tool for you! Stay tuned for the next post on Google Docs where I will show how students can make presentations with ease!

An Introduction to Google Docs

This post is going to start with one simple question, ‘What does Google mean to you?’  Over the past few days, I have asked colleagues and students alike this very same question.  While I did receive some different answers, such as Gmail and Google Chrome, the majority of the people questioned referred to Google as a tool for searching on the internet.  Granted, this was not a scientific study by any stretch of the imagination. I was just curious to see how many different kinds of answers I could get now that Google offers so many applications on the web and on our mobile phones.  Nonetheless, with an estimated 3 billion internet searches taking place on Google everyday, it is no wonder that is what it is still famous for since its inception in the late 90s.  Google, as a search engine, has simply become a part of our digital lives.  Even the verb 'to google’ is now officially recognized in the English language.

The goal of this and upcoming posts, however, is to tell you that Google is much more than just a search engine.  I would like to introduce to you a Google application that perhaps doesn’t get as much attention as its other programs, but one that is fast making headway in the field of education.  That is Google Docs.  Both teachers and students, to whom I have introduced Google Docs, have been amazed by the speed, the ease and the opportunity for increased collaboration not only between teacher and student, but also between the students themselves.  For instance, just have a quick look at what some teachers and students from the United States have to say about Google Docs...

Over the course of four posts, including this one, I would like to share some of the methods and activities that my colleague and I use in our ESL program with Google Docs.  I hope that, after reading this post, you can take something away with you and start to use Google Docs in your own classroom.  All you need to do first is sign up for a free Gmail account!

Just click this link to take you to Gmail!

 

Making Lesson and Weekly Plans

When I first stumbled upon Google Docs, admittedly, my first thought was not about the students or what kind of assignments or projects they could do on it.  It was rather about how my colleague could collaborate faster and simpler when we are away from school. It may sound a bit selfish, but David and I lives miles apart, and it can be difficult trying to check each others' work. So, with that in mind, we first began using Google Docs for creating our weekly plans and essential questions.

Every weekend I make a brainstorm about the lessons and activities for the upcoming week. Indeed we have a yearly UbD plan that we follow, but as you know, things change and time needs to be readjusted from week to week. Therefore, we simply make a list of the major items we plan to teach that week. Before discovering Google Docs, the process of making the weekly plan went something like this : I made a Word document, opened up my email, attached the document to an email, and sent it to my colleague. He, in turn, opens his email, downloads the attachment, modifies the Word document as needed, then reattaches it to an email, and finally sends it back to me. In practice, it all seems pretty straightforward, but when you explain the entire process, you realize that there are way too many steps involved.

What if I told you that Google Docs can reduce these number of steps by at least half? Would you be interested? With Google Docs it goes like this: Again I make a document, but this time on Google Docs. Then, I simply share that document with my colleague, and automatically a notification is sent to him. My colleague then clicks on the link in his email box, modifies the document as needed, and that is it. All I have to do is open the document again, and all the changes made by my colleague have already been saved. 

Here is an example of a Google Document.

So what's missing? Well, with Google Docs, the major improvement is the process of attaching a document to an email and sending it has been removed. Therefore, your colleague doesn't have to download and send it back to you either. Everything is done in the cloud automatically. You see straightaway what your colleague has changed, and in fact, in one were so inclined, it is even possible to write the document at the same time with Google Docs! With whomever you share the document with, you can see what they are typing in real time!

Sharing is quick and doesn't even require sending an e-mail.

With Google Docs, even with only this one method of using it, just imagine the thousands of ways you can create, share and edit documents with your own colleagues. You could write lesson plans, draft letters to staff or parents, create worksheets for your students, make an online quiz, just to name a few. Granted, it may not have all the functions that Microsoft Word has, but all the basic functions are there. The huge benefit, however, is the time that you are certain to save and the improved teamwork between you and your colleagues!

Please stay tuned into the blog as the next blog post in this series will be about how you can use Google Docs with your students in the classroom!

 

NOT DEATH, LIVE by POWERPOINT!

"Death by Powerpoint" is a phrase that everyone who has  a career in teaching is only too aware of.  The amount of erroneous, unnecessary and downright horrific meetings and conference plenaries and keynotes we are all expected to sit and "enjoy" boggle the mind.  They visit schools and head-up conferences then roll out the Microsoft text-laden and corporate-based presentation slideshows to extremely bored, disengaged and utterly fed up audiences all over our teacher-world. 

So, when I started to present regularly at conferences I wanted to make sure that my own presentations followed some basic principles to avoid the ppp-grim-reaper: dynamic images, and little or no text that followed the concept that less is better on the screen.  I came across www.prezi.com, which had some impact on me, but that also got complaints from audiences because it was too motion-friendly and very distracting.  As a presenter, I personally felt that prezi was also just a pain in the neck due to very time consuming presentation prep.  Then the brilliance of Microsoft's office suite came alive, and turned it all around for me with Office 2010.  The updated version far outweighs its predecessors, and hopefully 2013 can take it even further for innovative tools, add-ons and great outcomes.  However, I am writing this in response to general presentation pitfalls we all should try to resolve.  It could act as a starting point for teachers, students and unfortunately, presenters as well. 

There is no excuse for bad presentations anymore, and below I offer some suggestions of how we as teachers can start to eliminate bad ppp practices if we follow some fundamental steps, and educate ourselves first, then our students, so future generations of audiences can enjoy going to conferences, meetings, lessons and allow us all to watch decent presentations.

TIPS for SUCCESS...

•  Don't assume your students even know how to make a powerpoint.

Far too many teachers are unsure themselves about how to use the technical aspect of the tool.  Therefore, they hope that when the students get up in front of them that everything will be fine.  We must go through several scaffolded steps to highlight what is bad, and what is good for the audience.

• Show the students what it is that makes a bad powerpoint.

Students tend to take everything they have brainstormed, researched or written down in class, and simply cut n paste it on to the slides.  We need to teach them about paraphrasing, summarizing, important points and the message they want to relay.

•   Do not read at length from the slides.

This  has to be the most annoying, irritating and practice-for-boredom aspect of all bad presentations.  Since when did people actually think we like being read to as adults or teens for that matter?  Since when was it possible to read faster to someone than to let them read by themselves? If you do need to read slides and slides of bullet points and extensive prose, you really are unsure of what it is you are saying. Print off and distribute to the audience so they can read later.  If they don't, it means the information wasn't important to them in any case, and you could have saved yourself the trouble!

• Make what you are saying extremely visual and legible

The correct size of an image, or the best font for the subject matter is also really important.  So many times I have seen students put text on top of a busy image, thus making it impossible to read.  That is very frustrating for the audience.  The full use of the slide is also important, so move the image up, down or to either side, and place the text there.  It is also very affective to leave parts of the slide blank.  Have you ever watched an Apple presentation or video?

• Direct them to Google images.  

So much of what is being presented can be shown in a picture.  The need for text outside facts, figures and highlighted information can be told better with an image.  This then acts for a springboard to more verbal exposition.  ESL teachers can promote this as beneficial for practice in L2 to their students.

• Recommend the use of video embedded in the slides. 

Now with YouTube pumping an insane amount of videos for everyone to use, it seems daft not to use them.  For impact, a hook, and general respite from yammering, video certainly fits the bill.

• Students practise and prepare well before hand.

The need for better preparation is the bane of all students, and it is something we must focus on as teachers.  Otherwise, the 3 minutes deteriorates into a babbling and confused stuttery mess.  Not to mention, the learning outcomes are seriously undermined for the self-confidence of the students and future presentations.

These SEVEN fundamentals for scaffolding in the classroom can lead to better and more enjoyable presentations for everyone.  There are hundreds of lists showing the DOs and DON'Ts of presentations.  This list is no different in its message: Make your audience interested and engaged.

I would like to end this short blog post with one of the funniest videos ever, of a very bad presentation.  The presenter does everything wrong, that a presenter could do,  And this is without a powerpoint.  Perhaps, if he were to have used one, he would have had a better time of it...

Video Fridays on Blendspace

Showing videos in class has such a negative reputation in education. I recently watched the unbelievably awful film, Bad Teacher, with Cameron Diaz. In typical Hollywood fashion, Diaz shows up to school on the first day of the year hungover. She walks into the classroom and directly proceeds to turn on a film for the students to watch. She doesn't give any instructions or objective to the kids, just slumps on the teacher's desk and goes to sleep.

For certain, there have been numerous scenes in films showing bad teaching practices over the years. Ben Stein's scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off is an absolute classic. Nonetheless, we cannot blame Hollywood for tarnishing the video in class paradigm because, honestly, teachers do it themselves. Far too many times, I have seen students watching videos or films without any objective or outcomes besides the teacher getting some rest and relaxation.

This post is about how we can improve the reputation of short videos in the classroom through an activity that we call Video Fridays. In a nutshell, every Friday we show a short video to our students. These videos range from 30 seconds to a maximum of 5 minutes, and there is a different topic each week. Some of them include the reemergence of talent shows, greed, the environment, the negative aspects of technology, just to name a few. We generally find the videos on Youtube, and then we prepare a tutorial on Blendspace with a major focus on essential questions, or 'Why' questions.  We create questions about the video that will personalize it for our students and then lead them to think more critically about the message. When class time arrives, we simply open the tutorial, and the video and questions are all in one place. We watch the video, have a discussion, and finally the students write about the video and essential questions over the weekend on Penzu.

While to some, this activity may seem like an escape from the normal curriculum of grammar and novels, we can assure you it is not. There are several educational benefits behind it. The first is that you can explore different themes and topics than the readers that you are using in your program. You could show short videos about what is going on in the world today, so that your students will be aware of current events, especially ones that might have an affect on them.  Secondly, the short videos will without doubt lead to a lively conversation in the classroom.  As long as the rules of respect are set out beforehand, your students will greatly benefit from voicing their own opinions, as well as listening to others.  Furthermore, as the leader and facilitator of the classroom, your prepared essential, or 'Why', questions will lead your students to think more critically about what's happening in the videos.  Finally, if, like us, you choose to give a writing assignment over the weekend about the video, it will, of course, lead to an improvement in your students' writing skills.  The picture to the left shows an actual student's writing at the beginning of the year compared to the progress she made by the end.

Procedure

The following steps explain how we go about preparing the videos for the classroom.  It begins with how we choose videos to how we introduce them to the students.

Step 1: Find a video on Youtube or any other source, such as Vimeo, that provides a message or controversial topic to talk about.  Again, the video should never be any longer than 5 minutes, or your students might begin to see the activity as just 'watching a video'.  The video should just be a springboard to get the conversation and critical thinking going.

Step 2: Make a video tutorial Blendspace, which is an extremely easy-to-use website that allows you to create video tutorials in a snap.  Once you register for a free account, click on the large blue button on your home screen.  You will see that Blendspace tutorials are divided into boxes.  


Our suggestion for creating a video tutorial is as follows:

In box 1, we include an engaging image to give our students an idea of what the video is about.  Images are not absolutely necessary, but it makes your video tutorial more attractive and engaging for your audience. Plus, on Blendspace, it only take a few seconds as there is a Google Images and Flickr tabs on the right side of the screen.  Simply type in your topic in the search field, and drag your chosen picture into one of the boxes.

Then in box 2, we provide a short introduction to the video.   

In box 3, we include the video.  Again, by using the Youtube tab on the right side of the screen, search for a video, and just drag it over into the box.

In box 4, we write up some comprehension, or 'surface' questions to help the students follow along. These questions typically focus on the setting, characters, and what is happening in the video.

Then in box 5 we include another image, and in box 6, arguably the most important part, we come up essential questions that try to lead the students to understanding the message of the video. These questions are going to be the basis for the class discussion and weekend writing homework for the students.  These questions should always be open-ended as you want the students to form an opinion and their own comments about the video.  You should always shy away from 'Yes/No' questions.

Step 3: When class time arrives, open your video tutorial, and introduce the topic to your students.  You can certainly have a short discussion at this point about what the students think the video is about.  Next, watch the video, and, if needed, help students along by stopping the video and asking questions about what's going on.  After that, have a class discussion and make notes on the IWB of what is talked about. Take a picture of these notes and upload them to your PLN, such as Edmodo, if available.

Step 4: In addition, post the Blendspace tutorial to your PLN, so that the students can watch the video again over the weekend, as well as review the questions for they need to answer in their writing.

Below is the PowerPoint video that we show to our students to introduce the concept of Video Fridays at the beginning of the academic year.

Video Fridays, in all honesty, have been a real success in our ESL program.  We purposely choose videos that we know will be engaging and thought-provoking for the students, as well as giving them something new and different to write about each week.  For instance, at the end of the year, our students present us with their three favorite aspects of the program, and one of the most-talked about items was Video Fridays.  It truly showed us that if you place and consistently adhere to a structure, that showing short videos in the classroom can be a huge benefit for any program.