Thursday, April 4, 2019

Post-6: Credit Test Requirements

Dear All,

here is the explanation of the requirements you need to meet to receive a credit test for this course:

1. A post which explains the essential features one of the digital literacies that are necessary to function adequately in today's world, which were introduced during the first session we had. Here is a link to this post for your convenience.

https://bit.ly/2UtqkXx

Your tasks are as follows:

A. summarise the information about the literacy of your choice in 350 words. Your post should contain the links to the resources you should use in your explanation.

B. choose 2 activities from those I have shared with you during the course:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YEMiKeJm8Ry1dVcSdR2YQq5Yt_nYWmtS

Complete them in the role of the student first. Then reflect on your experience in the role of the teacher by answering the following questions:


What skills will the Learners develop?
How will they benefit from each of these activities?
What kind of problems/difficulties do you foresee the students can have when completing the tasks (if any)?

What is your plan B? Plan B means that either the resources you planned to use have become unavailable or there are some technical problems, such as, for example, slow speed of the connection or broken equipment that can make completing the activities as you originally planned them impossible.

Any additional comments?


Here is a link to my presentation about Reading and Writing Online 


C. choose a lesson from the textbook you are familiar with and explain how you can incorporate one of the activities I have shared with you in your lesson for the development of one or several skills  

You should explain the Teaching Sequence you will follow


Post-5: Listening-and-Speaking Activities

Dear All,

today we are going to practice doing a number of activities for the development of the learners' listening and speaking skills.

The first task is for us to prepare a tour of your favorite website the purpose of which is to let them learn about an interesting and useful resource and combine it with the development of the Learners' study skills.

To illustrate, I'd like my learners to get acquainted with the website: HEADS UP ENGLISH which has a broad selection of topics for discussion in the categories listed below

A Few Questions for Christmas
A Habit is a Nasty Thing
All About Illnesses
Change with the Times
Crimes
Danger and Risk
Dreams and Nightmares
Food for Thought, Thoughts on Food
Happy New Year!
Heroes
Ireland, Irish, and St. Patrick's Day
It's Time to Relax
Lies and Ethics
Money
Natural Disasters
Politics
Reality TV
Science and Technology
That's Entertainment
The Family
The Future
The Olympics
The Past
What If...?
What's Your Personality?

for my tour I have chosen the topic Change with the Times and what I'd like my learners to do is look through the questions listed on this page and choose one to talk about. They should talk continuously for 1 min, record their answer and upload it into the course's blog.

Next, the students should listen to the recording one of their peers prepared and share their reflection about what they will have heard in the course's blog thread or record their answer and upload it on the course's learning environment.


Questions:

What skills do you think the Ls will develop?
How will they benefit from this activity?
What kind of problems do you foresee (if any)?
What is your plan B?
Any additional comments?

Thursday, March 14, 2019

Post-4: Reading and Writing Activities

Dear All

Today we are going to discuss a number of activities to help the students master their reading and writing skills. I've uploaded the materials on my google drive so that you could access them from there

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YEMiKeJm8Ry1dVcSdR2YQq5Yt_nYWmtS

First, I'll give you an overview of these activities and then we'll decide which of them you would like to try out. It'll give you a chance to get acquainted with some principles and techniques you need to take into account when preparing such activities.

After that, we'll do several of your choice in class together.

Hope you'll find the activities and tasks useful and will enjoy doing them.

See you in class shortly.

Here is a list of resources for today's class:
Classic American short stories
Great short stories, from one word to more 2048
Very short novels (299 words maximum)

http://davidbdale.wordpress.com

Choose one of these 4  

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Post-3: Suggestions for topics for discussion

Dear All,

you have attended this course for a month now and I hope you have received a good idea about the content of the course and the activities you are offered.

I'd like to ask you to think about a couple of topics you would like to learn more about in its context. What I mean what tools and resources you would like to study closer and what kind strategies and techniques associated with ICT tools you would like to investigate.

Publish your suggestions in the thread.


Post-2: A World Without Magnets (LP)

Dear All,

Today we're going to read and discuss and LP A World without Magnets designed by Nik Peachey.

The Topic of this Lesson or rather a series of lessons is the World around us, with the focus on Magnets, I am aware that you major in Linguistics but thought it might be a good idea for us to discuss a topic from a different field because you never know what groups of students you might teach.

Here is a link to the LP:

https://bit.ly/2Tuzh2q 

First, look through it to get an idea about its overall organization and then we are going to discuss it and do some of the activities. After that we'll share our feedback on how it all went and discuss your observations about various aspects of teaching this kind of lesson.

The lesson starts with infographic about magnets: let's have a look at it at
http://tinyurl.com/zvdrzjt 

Here is a good explanation of what it is: https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/infographics

It's actually a very popular way of presenting information nowadays.

I have explained to you the features of infographics used in this lesson. Would you use it in the same way as I demonstrated to you? Why yes or no? Explain in your comment in the thread.

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Post 1: Introduction. Digital literacies.

Dear All,

welcome to the course of ICT Methods in ELT!

This course will help you learn about the approaches to using the technology in the classroom. You will have a chance to learn about the tools and resources that can help use different tools and techniques in your classroom.

The purpose of this course is to help you get acquainted with a number of approaches and techniques used nowadays in the Language Classroom  that rely on the use of different types and kinds of technologies from blogs and wikis to podcasts and more.

To start your introduction to this course, think about 3-4 tools and techniques that you have used yourselves to enhance your learning AND those some of your Ts use in the classes they teach you. Share your answers in the blog that we created for the course of ICT in Linguistics. I’m going to publish the tasks for you in it, while you will have a chance to complete your own tasks and get acquainted with the tasks your peers have completed. It’ll help us to have a broader perspective on the issues this course is devoted to.

Now let's get acquainted with the current understanding of what literacy is. Do you know what the literacy definition was last century and before? And what is it now?

Below is a list of literacies as they are I'd like to discuss with you and make familiar with what you and your students must be able to do to be considered literate nowadays.

However, before you read about the literacy you have chosen answer two questions

What do you already know about it? and
What would you like to know about it?

Let's start with getting acquainted with the article by M. Pegrum that gives an overview of the current state of digital technologies:

https://markpegrum.com/overview-of-digital-learning/e-learning-with-web-3-0/  (accessed 16.02.2019)

After that you should choose one of the literacies from the list below and get acquainted with the materials about it.

A. Print literacy

B. Texting literacy

Explained: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/407022/literacy-and-text-messaging/

Can you decipher the following txt msg: My smmr hols wr CWOT?

Do you see any danger in the Ss' use textspeak? What can an inappropriate use of textspeak signal to? Some researchers see it as a signal of rebelliousness (Pegrum, 2009) or sloppiness and lack of education (Baym, 2010).

Do you know what code-switching is?  Crystal thinks that it can be sometimes taken in the classroom as slang. What is your opinion about it?

Can you guess what netspeak and textspeak are? What should our entitlement to them in the classroom should be?

Weiberger (2009a) expressed an opinion that if textspeak is a new linguistic register, hyperlinks are a new form of punctuation, requiring the dev-t of text literacy. It is defined as the ability to process hyperlinks appropriately and to use them effectively to enhance a document or artefact.

C. Hypertext literacy: the ability to process hyperlinks appropriately and to use hyperlinks effectively to enhance a document or multimedia artefact

D. Multimedia literacy

Here are some definitions:

Following this link below, access the article by Renee Hobbs (Temple University) Multiple Visions of Multimedia Literacy: Emerging Areas of Synthesis 

https://bit.ly/2ItAsuR

and the article

Literacy - Multimedia Literacy in Education Encyclopedia  on StateUniversity.com  at 

http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2186/Literacy-MULTIMEDIA-LITERACY.html


-What is the role of visual elements in today's communication? Can you give an example of how you approach processing a multimedia text?

Discuss the following opinion expressed by D. Crystal about the changes in communication because of the new possibilities provided by the multimedia:

In a multimedia world, it's not possible to focus exclusively on the spoken or written element, treating everything else as marginal - as non-linguistic extras. All the elements combine a single communicative act, and their joint roles need to be considered. (Kindle location 4164).

What are the key tools Ss should be able to use?

-podcasts: Here is a very useful article about 9 different ways of using podcasts in language teaching https://bit.ly/2V89IkG

-vodcasts: here is a research article about vodcasts that I found on academia.edu that I think might be useful for you to read if you are interested in using them in your classroom.

-animation services:
Dvolver (http://www.dvolver.com),
Voki (http://voki.com)
Xtranormal (http://www.xtranormal.com).

What are the key techniques?

-Visualization: infographics:

Using infographics

-Transmedia storytelling: A research article Towards a Transmedia Learning Approach in ESL Context (2017) by José Bidarra and Patrícia Rodrigues at https://bit.ly/2GQImMg

A variety of social sharing sites:
-Scribd: http://www.scribd.com
-Flickr: http://www.flickr.com
-Picasa: http://www.picaseweb.google.com
-Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net
-Video sharing: http://youtube.com

E. Gaming literacy  NB! Add the links to resources about these literacies; Ss will add theirs too (20-27.02.2019)

A research article about different aspects of gaming literacy by Patr´ıcia Rodrigues and Jos´e Bidarra you can access at https://bit.ly/2GSMo6E (accessed 19.02.2019)

F. Mobile literacy
A research article about different aspects of mobile literacy with the focus on information literacy by Alice Schmidt Hanbidge, Nicole Sanderson and Tony Tin
https://eric.ed.gov/?q=mobile+literacy&id=ED571443  (accessed 16.02.2019)

G. Code literacy: an article about it by Douglas Rushkoff published in Edutopia
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/code-literacy-21st-century-requirement-douglas-rushkoff  (accessed 16.02.2019)

H. Tagging literacy

I. Search literacy
an article by Wilson, M. and Ye, Chaoyu and Twidale, Michael B. and Grasse, Hannah and Rosenthal, Jacoband McKittrick, Max (2016) about search literacy
Search literacy: learning to search to learn
http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/35662/ (accessed 16.02.2019)

G. Information literacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbe6xBibOL4 (21.02.2019)

K. Filtering literacy: an inflection of network literacy, this is the ability to reduce information overload by using online social and professional networks as screening mechanisms

Follow this link to access the definitions of all the literacies listed in this post (https://markpegrum.com/overview-of-digital-learning/e-learning-with-web-3-0/

L. Network literacy:
Ibid.
M. Participatory literacy
Ibid.
N. Intercultural literacy
Ibid.
O. Remix literacy
Ibid.



What should you do with this information? You need to choose one of these literacies and read about the one you have chosen and complete the following task with it:


After you have finished reading the information you have chosen answer the questions below:

a) What is the essential information you learned about the chosen literacy?

b) What would you like to learn more about it?

c) What is not clear?


What additional questions would you like to get answers to after you have gotten acquainted with the information from the resource you have had?

Lesson plan from Nick Peachey with the focus on developing the literacies we have been discussing: Location my Memory Stick: Lessons in Digital Literacies

A World Without Magnets. We’ll read the LP, discuss it and complete some of the tasks, depending on your choice.