Day 5. Blended Learning models

Today the class was mainly dedicated to read and comment some of the cases of study of the book Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation edited by Brian Tomlinson and Claire Whittaker. 

In pairs we read one chapter and talked about it, we read seven chapters in total. Then, separately, we joined one person of the other pairs and talked about our chapter. In the end we told each other about the seven chapters. The last part of the activity was the discussion about the conclusions. So these are the principles learnt about Blended Learning:

• Online learning means less work for the tutor than blended learning.
• Blended learning increases the motivation and the autonomy.
• There is no right 'mix', it is always based on the needs of the students.
• The online stuff is the theory, the face-to-face stuff is the practice and that means flipped classroom.
• The results are similar to traditional learning.
• There is a very strong relationship between the teacher and the students on online courses.
• Retention is higher.
• Technology is optional in a face-to-face class.
• It is very demanding.
• It achieves more.
• The teacher needs to receive feedback from the students continuously.

Two important ideas that we have to keep in mind are:

• Build the language around dialogues and avoid the temptation of keeping throwing more grammar, vocabulary, etc.
• The aims have to be clear and organised. Keep it simple.

An experiment in class: the business illusion.

In this video you have to count how many times the people wearing white pass the ball. Most of us got the times right but we missed the gorilla, the changing of colour of the courtains and that one of the players on the black team left the room. Just a few of us noticed the changes. So, what does this mean applied to learning? It means that:

• There is a narrow focus when blended.
• Multitasking is not evolved.
• Task designing must improve, we can repeat things, but from a different position.
• If you work collaboratively maybe someone will see the gorilla.  

Merdev explained the technology tool Quizlet that enables students to create six types of activities: flashcards, learn, speller, test, scatter and gravity. You can create classes and folders to keep what you create. There is also a mobile version. If you don't have type to create the activities, you can find what somebody else has done and you can take somebody else card. It is not necessary to create things by yourself. we can watch two tutorials on Russell's website. Click on the picture.

 

I talked about how the VLE Schoology works. I showed the benefits of Schoology and how this VLE is more well-organised. Maybe we were a little exhausted and nobody asked questions, probably as we are focused on Edmodo they don't want to mix two virtual learning environments. Russell thinks that this VLE is more for adult students. I totally agree with him, I think it is directed mainly to adults and business or companies if you don't want to use Moodle. Probably, the thing is that Schoology is a little bit more complex than Edmodo, but it is not really difficult to use.

We can also watch to some webinars on Schoology. Click here.

If you can't decide which VLE you want to use, I recommend visiting these two blogs that compare Edmodo, Schoology, the first blog and Edmodo, Schoology and Google classroom, the second blog.

Day 1 - Thoughts on using technology

Today has been our first day on Blended Learning. The first activity was an ice-breaking one in order to know each other in the group. It's a big group, there are 14 of us. I really enjoyed it and I think it is going to be useful for my classes.

Then Russell, our teacher, showed us a tool called TodaysMeet and it was really good for discussions in class. If you click here you can watch some videos showing how it works.

We discussed the advantages of using technology and why we are introducing technology in the language class. These are some of the ideas:

• It's cheap for institutions to run.
• It gives instant feedback.
• It's a way to interact with other people in order to facilitate learning.
• It offers flexibility.
• You can learn anywhere at your own pace.
• It makes learning more memorable.
• It gives more autonomy to the learner.
• It's appealling to the students.
• It keeps up with digital natives.
• It`s engaging and motivating.
• It's a way to attract more students for the companies and distance is no longer a problem.
• It saves time.
• You can have quick access to any information.
• Young people are digital natives.
• Everty learner can find their individual way of learning.
• It offers freedom to choose any kind of resources to learn.
• You don't depend on a timetable.
• You have access to all kind of libraries, open university courses, MOOCs.

The second discussion using TodaysMeet was about what is the stumbling block that causes teachers to shy away from using technology and we reached to the following conclusions:

• They think they are not good at technology.
• Some of them are digital immigrants.
• It's a waste of time due to technological problems.
• It's time consuming.
• They are technophobes.
• There is no equipment in the schools.
• Technology is threatening for some teachers because students know a lot about technology, but they don't.
• Technology becomes the purpose rather than the tool. 
• Students concentration may be disturbed.
• Some teachers struggle to find good stuff.
• Technology is distracting.
• Not all the students have access to technology.
• Bullying might happen.
• Lots of information to choose from and it may be confusing.
• Information is consumed so quickly.

Russell briefly talked about Sherry Turkle who speaks about the power of talk on the digital area. These are some interesting videos about her:

Sherry Turkle, 'Reclaiming Conversation' Google

Sherry Turkle, 'Connected, but alone?'

Sherry Turkle, 'Reclaiming Conversation' the agenda

We also talked about how the delivery of information is more precise when it is on video and Russell gave us two examples, one related to Richard Mayer and another one to Smith and Smith. This is a video of Richard Mayer exploring aspects of the role of the video and the design for effective teaching and learning in higher education.

The last part of the day was dedicated to how to create a blog on blogger because it can be used for different things:

• You can create posts.
• It's like a diary.
• It can be used as a website.
• It can be an e-portfolio (an electronic collection of our students productions: powerpoint presentations, podcasts, etc)
• It is a way of reflection.    

As an example of an excellent blog about technology, this is the link you can visit. It is Nik Peachey's blog, a digital education expert.

And another example of a really good blog is a blog of one of Russell's students at university, Jo Gakonga. Click here to see it.

Finally, in order to review how to create a blog, we can visit Russell's website and click on blogs and wikis. Click here to watch the two videos.

And that was all for today!

Russell Stannard, our teacher