[communityadmin]

“Ways I can use different technology in my lessons.”

What is some of the technology available to you in your teaching situation? Do you have access to computers? Internet? A video camera? Mobile phones? What are some of the ways you can incorporate the available technology in your lessons?

Post your ideas in a reply below and comment on other teachers’ ideas.

 

[Larissa]

What is some of the technology available to you in your teaching situation? Do you have access to computers? Internet? A video camera? Mobile phones? What are some of the ways you can incorporate the available technology in your lessons?

I have internet connection in most classrooms, my own lap top and the class projector, also most students have a smarphone.
I have though about using cell phones in class, either through educational apps or in-class activities that required internet, but I have mostly used slide projection and youtube videos.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Barb Admin.

[Maria Teresa Continanza]

Hi Larissa!

Depending in the place you work, it is if you can use technology or not. In most of Argentinian´s school internet connection doesn´t exist so teachers have to plan very carefully the way to teach using technology. You have to download videos or tech resources before hand, bring your own computer because schools don´t provide them to you. So, it is hard work for us but we can do it.

Tere

[Larissa]

Hey, I have been reading a lot about blended learning, trying to work out a way to engage students with off-classes materials and activities, but they always have very mixed reception. Some students access them, some totally ignore them unless I ask them to bring results for our next class. Technology requires a different learning culture maybe.

[Larissa]

Do we need classroom technology?Yes, the world relies on technology and it becomes part of one’s professional life just as part of our daily routines. It takes time though to plan and incorporate devices and resources into daily teaching when the institution and the students themselves find that learning and technology are not a good mix.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Larissa.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Barb Admin.

[Theodora Papapanagiotou]

@Larissa I also believe that some kind of blended learning can be useful for both teachers and students. Technology makes lessons more interesting for students and saves time for teachers.

[Vhanessa Barbosa]

I remember the days when I was exhausted to use technology, I mean I actually had no time to employ the use of technology at all in my class, no videos, no instructional games, just plain reading and answering activities in the book. The students were getting sleepy everytime they do that and when asked to sit erected, all they do was slouching and it made me so frustrated.

I mean yes, we cant avoid to encounter this sometimes but what I basically realized is that, even without technology,we have to be creative in everything we do. We have to be resourceful enough to adapt the materials available around us. But ofcourse, and definitely, we need to utilize technology in our classroom activites. The use of this will help our students get engaged to the topic and they wont find it boring at a certain time. Also because by having instructional videos made by the teacher, instructional games, they will always get excited to look forward for the next lesson to be conducted. They will somehow be motivated to learn everyday.

[Theodora Papapanagiotou]

@Vhanessa Doing only one thing can be tiring. I mean if we always use the book and its activities, students can get bored very easily as you mentioned. But also using technology for the entire lesson could be a bit distracting as well. Keeping a balance is the best in my opinion

[Thuy Hang Le]

Classroom technology has played an important role in online teaching and e-learning due to school lockdown when the coronavirus keeps spreading all over the world. However, it is undeniable that technology cannot replace pedagogy.

Therefore,when it comes to online language teaching teachers are supposed to plan their lessons just like their face-to-face lessons with regard to lesson aims, stages of the lesson.materials (links, websites, apps),language analysis ( pronunciation,form,meaning),procedure, possible problems and solutions ( technical issues). In fact, it is all about connecting ( building good rapport), communicating , and challenging students.Some rapport building questions like “What did you like about where you grew up?” or “What places do you most want to travel to?” really work in certain contexts.

To improve communication in class there should be such interactive activities as: role-playing,doing a class survey,guessing the missing words, or asking different types of question with the help of video clips, short films, picture cards,…

Challenging students means varying ,creating  tasks related to functional language.For example, ask students to look at the photo of foods or watch a short video clip about different types of foods , the teacher then asks them to list six fruits they can see (remembering and identifying them in the picture,find something which isn’t a fruit or vegetable ( comparing/contrasting), group the foods ( dividing/classifying),and create a recipe from the food in the picture ( creative thinking).

In short, it can be said that classroom technology can help make teaching and learning more meaningful and integrating technology jn language teaching also helps students stay engaged. Nevertheless, teachers’ activity ideas , teaching techniques and methods are  factors which affect teaching quality.

 

 

[Maria Teresa Continanza]

I believe technology is very important regarding the world we are living now. Our students need to be connected more than ever.

I use technology in the classroom a lot. I have three computers and I divide my students into groups to use them. Sometimes they use their smart phones if they have.

Making videos, watching youtube songs or interacting with students from different parts of the world using English as a bridge are some of the activities we do using technology.

Now, with this quarantine the use of technology has increased a lot  due to online classes. Last week I connected Gaza Strip´s students with mine using a zoom meeting. They could exchange experiences, talk about their lives and their culture! It was amazing and the students were really engaged to do it.

Tere

[Ruben Pignataro]

Look at this in the Lesson of adjectives ending in ING or ED

2. satisfied or satisfying
The students worked hard and learned a lot. They were   (satisfied) / (satisfying ) students.
I guess both answers are possible here – a) They were satisfied (with themselves, for the work they had done and the lot they’d learned); b) They were satisfying students (to their parents/teachers) who may be proud of  their children’s/students’ performances. Am I wrong?

[MONA HAFEZ]

Technology plays an important role in engaging students these days . I love using technology in skills teaching classes  like speaking and reading .

Once I had to teach the story of Jack and Beanstalk and I knew that my students are fond of using Power point app in their school projects ,so I designed the story using effects , motions and my voice to create an energetic version of the story depending on students skills and prior knowledge . After studying new vocab , listening and reading activities , then comes the preferable phase for me and my students, and it was that  each group of five received a lap top or PC with an electronic copy of the story . They had to retell the story from another character point of view . They were able to change the events , background and voices . Each group uploaded their story to class face book page and discuss ed with others about their product

[Ruben Pignataro]

The technology available to us in public schools, the ones that most of our students attend, is that basic one that lets the governments fill pages in the newspapers with words saying what they have done for the “future generations”, all those dreadful things that followers applaud in meetings. Anyway, we, the superteachers come to action and walk into our classrooms with bags full of fantastic gadgets and create there (and in the students’ minds) a world of fantasy that can hardly be imitated.

A bit better is the access to technology in private schools. Internet almost always works and if it does not, all of the students have their smartphones and things can go as planned.

One of the things that help me with those who are shyer, is to ask them to record themselves with their phones in some guided activities such as introducing themselves, introducing an imaginary friend, describing some situations, pretending they are reporters. The truth, it works, but, as with any other activity, there are always students who do not cooperate and I have to look for some other kind of task to engage them.

I also use You tube videos, and, in case internet does not work at school, I always give them the link of the video for them to watch or download at home. They are well aware that the task on that day will be based on the subject matter of the video. Again, as drawbacks always come up, there are those who come to class without having watched it.

As we can see, it is not technology what will decide on the outcome. I think it may be what a piece of chalk was in the past or what a book turned out to be after Gutenberg in the 1400s. The outcome is based on the students’ will. The teachers, the books, the technology in any form are just means to help achieve the desired goal.

 

[Ruben Pignataro]

How do I use technology? An activity I had thought it woult not be rewarding but resulted in something surprisingly worth for creativity and use of language, was the “comic re-creation”. I had the students in pairs looked for old comics in magazines. They scanned two or three pages of the comic and deleted the dialogues in the captions (I guess they used Paintbrush or Photo Shop). Once they had only the images, they had to create a new story. They could use the dictionaries to look for the words they needed but they were asked to use a determined grammar point in any part of the new story. Again, they used editors to complete the captions and printed the stories.

The results surprised me, mainly because both students in the pair worked, not only one of them, and some of the dialogues were those of adults but spoken by Garfield, Bart Simpson or Mafalda (a famous Argentinean character). Higher order thinking was achieved in teenagers. Questioning about important things (at least for them) arose. And satisfaction could be seen when they exhibited their work and read their dialogues using different voices pretending to be the characters.

[Branka Daceski]

I work in a village school, we have wifi in school, but it is not very good, so I mostly use my own phone internet to play videos or whatever I have to do.  Students also use their own internet when I ask them to do something, but not all of them have internet on their phones.

There is one computer per classroom because from this school year we have to use eRegister, where we write all the lessons and grades, but, as you can imagine, most of the writing I have to do I do from home, because of the wifi that is not working properly.

We have projector that we can use, but there is only one and we have to move it from classroom to classroom. This takes a lot of time to prepare everything, so I usually use my tablet to show whatever I need to show (I have up to 10 students in a class, so this is possible).

Now, this is situation in small, village schools. Schools in the city are better equipped, and many classrooms with projectors and computers already set and ready to use. And, there are about 30 students per class.

During the past period, we had online classes, like the whole world, and it was interesting to learn about how many “digital natives” actually don’t deserve to be called this – it reminds me of what I said about English – huge discrepancy – there are students whose English is almost native level, and there are students whose English is really bad. The same goes for technology – either they are so great with it they can help you and teach you many  things (for example, a student of mine helped me with a video in which I had to blur the faces of students), or they need tutorials in order to be able use even google classroom. I have been joking during this period that I am going to become a you tuber, that’s how many tutorials I have recorded 😀

Anyway, this is just one thing, there are so many things I have learnt from these lessons.

Here are a couple of ideas of the way I incorporate technology in my classes.

Instead spoon-feeding students with information, let them search for themselves – for example, we were supposed to read some poetry by Robert Frost, and instead of telling students about Robert Frost, I asked them to google about him on their phones. The information they got was the same I would have told them, but in this way, I believe, it was more memorable. One girl, a big fan of Game of Thrones, found out that the writer of the book was a big fan of Robert Frost, and Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice” inspired him to write the book.

Using QR codes  – in the same lesson, I created QR codes which contained one poem each. So, the students would scan the QR codes in order to read the poem hidden in it. This was much more interesting to them.

Creating memes – in one class, one of the activities was to take pictures (in the class) and create memes (on the topic we were doing).

Writing a story – students work in groups of 4 or 5, each student chooses one picture from their phone. They put the pictures in whichever order they want, and write a story based on those pictures.

Create a short movie about their school – These are my students (in 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTupVDjB-gU

[alyaska20]

Nowadays usage of technologies is a part of teaching process due to this situation. But before this situation there were many teaching organizations and schools have already been using different  technologies. They are one of the best ways to be used in the classroom. They are great opportunities to make our lessons more interesting and modern. In Armenia we use zoom, skype, Microsoft, whasapp. messenger and of course different websites such as quizizz, socrative, etc to conduct a lesson

[Theodora Papapanagiotou]

@alyaska It’s great to be able to use technology, not always in an emergency situation like this, but in every case. Technology gives us the chance to communicate with our students and colleagues when we don’t have to work, organize projects and activities, have a place for students to exchange ideas and contact the teacher and so much more!

[Pravita Indriati]

I’m lucky that the school where I teach provides sufficient technology, such as audiovisual, interactive whiteboard or smart TV, computer, and wifi access because they develop their own curriculum and computerized learning tools. We have our own lesson videos, presentations, online activities, and online self-study and homework apps.

Thus it’s my opportunity to incorporate them in my lessons and add extra activities, like playing Kahoot! or Quizlet as a warmer activity, using Wordle or Mentimeter during the class discussion, doing some writing activities using apps on their mobile phones, like WhatsApp or Instagram or even just a simple online research.

However, with all the curriculum ready, it’s usually hard for me to add those extra activities in my lessons, due to the class time duration. I am also aware of the use of mobile phones in class, I, myself, asked students not to use them during the class. I only allow them to use when it is required, like for some particular activities and online research.

In my opinion, classroom technology is really helpful, makes things easy and complements education nowadays. But we can’t always rely on the technology, as there are some occasions when the internet is not available. That’s when we have to be creative and go back to the old ways before the technology exists. That way students will know how real education is, our struggle, and hopefully, appreciate the teachers’ work more. 🙂

[Theodora Papapanagiotou]

@pravita Kahoot and Quizlet are my favourites too!! My kids love them!!

[Thuy Hang Le]

Using videos in the classroom is popular in the language center where I have been working for as videos are likely to provide a strong context bringing reality to teaching. The other day I had a chance to teach a group of young learners aged 7 to 9 a lesson about Colors. I first used real objects (realias) to present the seven colors ( yellow, green,red, blue,pink,purple,orange). Then I asked students to look at the TV screen and play -ed the British Council video of the song ” I can sing a rainbow” . After that I played the first part of the video for students to repeat,practice pronunciation in chorus and groups. I also put some colored pencils /crayons on the table and asked students to call out the words by turn taking. Students then listened to the song  and named the colors they heard. They listened to the song again and put the colors in order.Students listened for the third time and checked. Students were asked to look at the TV screen and mime the actions. Finally, I played the song again for students to sing along and act out.

In fact, my young learners enjoyed the song and the activities a lot since the video has created a child-friendly context and an enjoyable learning environment that helped bring the outside world to their learning.What is more important here is that they find learning is really fun.

[Theodora Papapanagiotou]

@Thuy A lot of teachers were obliged to learn how to cope with technology during lockdown, othrewise they could lose their jobs. In order to work right though, the teacher needs to carefully find / create the right material for their students.

[Larissa]

totally, which doesn’t mean teachers are satisfied with the change because they didn’t have the time to feel sure and comfortable about these new platforms and resources.

[Steven Herder]

Living in Japan, I have access to just about everything I could ever imagine. However, I’m also comfortable with just a pencil and paper sometimes. Technology can add to lessons, but also it can ruin lessons. The core must be about language, and many times before the Internet was stable, I had to abandon an Internet lesson and switch suddenly to the analog version of the same thing. I seem to remember that I was caught woefully unprepared once when the Internet connection died, and I almost died, too. I didn’t have a back-up plan, and I was seriously looking for somewhere to hide. After that, I always invested time into a Plan B incase something went wrong.

Here are some technology-related apps, websites, and tools that I have been using over the past few years:

YouTube
Nas Daily
https://www.youtube.com/user/nyassin14/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid

Some Good News
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOe_y6KKvS3PdIfb9q9pGug/videos

TED-ED
https://www.youtube.com/user/TEDEducation

Upworthy
https://www.youtube.com/user/upworthy/videos

Soul Pancake
https://www.youtube.com/user/soulpancake/videos

AsapSCIENCE
https://www.youtube.com/user/AsapSCIENCE/videos

TOEFL TV
https://www.youtube.com/user/TOEFLtv/videos

NY Times Video
https://www.nytimes.com/video

This took a while to find. I’ll continue again with more soon.

Steven

 

[Budi Azhari Lubis]

In my class, I use a few technology or apps in my classes. I only use a laptop and a tv screen. I mostly use PowerPoint materials to be used in class. I also use some videos or Youtube clips to teach some vocabulary or some grammar points. It might be limited, but I think students enjoy something more visual.

During the outbreak of Covid-19, I began to use meeting platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet, Whatsapp to teach the students online. At first, It was frustrated since these techs are something totally new for me and only a few students are able to use these. I learn from youtube videos on how to use them and improve the materials used in class. It is not perfect yet, but I am learning.

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