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 4. Learning languages and a moving story

Russell had a very peculiar way of starting the class today. He talked in Chinese and French and I thought to myself 'Oh my God! this morning I can't understand a word in English' Well, I'm only joking. This was just the introduction of the activity he prepared  for us.

He told us about how he learnt French and I was very amazed when he said that he had a speaking B2 level and an A2 writing level and that is because he learnt the grammar when he needed it, and his main aim was learning to speak the language. But what I really found out is that he had something that most of the time our students don't have, which is motivation, enthusiasm and he was really willing to learn, not just get a certificate.

In groups we answered the question: How do you learn a language? and these are some of our answers:

• Exposure to the language.
• Living in the country, but always being receptive to learn.
• It's a matter of wish and motivation.
• It's all about communication and talking to people.
• You learn the language by speaking and listening.
• It's a kind of survival.
• The target is to be determined to learn a language.
• You also have to have language aptitudes to learn a language and good habits in terms of language learning.
• A piece of advice that somebody told us from one of his/her teachers was pick any bit of English that gives you away.
• You need to have a good aptitude to autonomous learning.
• You should try to give meaning to language and learn the grammar when you need it.
• The best speaker of a language is somebody who reads a lot because although reading is not so essential, it is a part of improving your learning.

When we think about Blended Learning we always feel the pressure of using all the tools that we learn, but Russell advised us that we don't have to feel that pressure because as teachers we will find the ones that are best for us to teach our students. Every blend is different, so hold on your principles because instead of having the tools that we used to have, now we have more tools to facilitate the way we want to teach.

And then, after all this thinking, Russell told us a moving story that I actually came out in goose pimples. He told us about when he met Russell Stannard who is a retired high-energy physicist. It was a coincidence and what it is amazing is that both have a lot of things in common.

      

Now it was the turn of the screen capture. It is a tool that records anything on your computer screen as a video. You can talk over a picture, a graph or some power point slides. It is a very useful tool to give feedback to the students as you can open their work on the screen, mark their mistakes and explain where they were wrong giving some advice. You can also give an overall feedback to all the students in a group after marking their work. You give feedback, but always referring to the marking scheme.

Talking about giving feedback through screen capture we can find advantages and disadvantages. 

ADVANTAGES

• Students can watch the video several times.
• the video is richer in content and detail.
• The assessment is formative, it is not a question of correcting mistakes, students are going to learn from it.
• It is dialogic.
• It is more personal, the students like listening to the teacher.
• The language is much more natural.
• It can save time.
• The students can focus on the text and listen to why they made a mistake.
• You can extract good and bad things from students work and share with the group, that means peer feedback and makes the learning being collaborative.
• It can be useful for self-evaluation sending a video to the  students with the things they should do and then they have to predict their mark and write comments explaining why. Finally the teacher gives them their real mark.  

DISADVANTAGES

• It's time comsuming.
• It may not be effective for lower level students although you can decide the language you want to give the feedback.
• Administration: it's necessary to reach an agreement with your head of studies or headmaster.
• The consistence of the feedback. Some teachers give good feedback and some others don't.
• The language ability of the teacher.
• Too much feedback (just a few things to correct, it's not necessary giving feedback on everything.
• Privacy can be an issue, but it's often exaggerated.
• For a second marker video feedback can be a problem because he/she has to watch all the video.
• The review is not so easy as in paper.

From Russell's research on feedback, we can obtain the following conclusions:

• More information was conveyed.
• Students liked the multimodal forum of feedback.
• Students felt the feedback was clearer and easier.
• It was a good listening practice since the feedback was written in the L2.
• It was more engaging than written practice.
• It was much more personal.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT about video feedback

• It's summative.
• It works better on longer pieces.
• It is perceived as conferencing.
• It needs to be used at certain times.
• It probably works best as indirect feedback as it processes the answer.
• It needs to be carefully introduced.

Russell showed us a new tool called SnagIt for screen capture. The only disadvantage is that is not free and you have to pay 30 dollars for it, but I used it on the Flipped Your Classroom course and it is worth it. In groups we thought about all the things we can do with this new tool and here are some of them:

• It can be used as an update for absent students.
• You can do mini presentations (pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, etc).
• You can record tutorials.
• It can be used to record instructions for assignments.
• It can help feedforward.
• It can promote students' contribution.
• It can be used to make up classes.
• It's a good tool to support students with special educational needs.
• You can use it with mixed ability groups.
• It could also be good for hyperactive students.
• It is useful to give peer feedback.
• It can be good for self-reflection.

Russell gave us some ideas about how to give feedback to our students and I liked a lot the idea of a feedback sheet, for example, they record themselves once a month during five month and they assess themselves with the feedback sheet and choose the one they want their teacher to correct.

We can find the following videos on Russell's website in order to use screen capture tools:

• SnagIt and JING
• Introduction to SnagIt
• SnagIt and YouTube
• Free trial of SnagIt
• JING free screen capture software
• Camtasia free trial

Click here to visit Russell's website. 

Today we had two presentations of two technology tools. Aysun showed us how voicethread works and I think it is a very interesting tool I can use with my students and these are some of the advantages that I can find:

• You can use it for discussions as a blended learning tool because other users can comment on the pictures.
• It can be used for book talks or reflections.
• It's good for shy students.
• It's easy to embed and share.
• In each file you can comment more than one picture and in groups students can comment one picture each so that's collaborative learning.
• You can make up to 50 recordings for free.

     

And then Radek explained to us about EDpuzzle. Although I found it a bit complicated tool because the website it's not intuitive, I think it's a really good tool to improve my students listening skills. It's just a question of practising a bit because practice makes perfect.   

Day 2. Using technology in and beyond the language classroom.

Our second day started doing an activity in groups of three and we chose one technology tool, resource or idea that we normally use in class, explained to the group what it is and how we use it and then we talked about the advantages of using it and said if we had any tips. As a feedback, we shared all the different technologies, ideas or resources with the rest of the group and I really discovered very engaging ones to put into practice.

One tip that we learnt today is that technology has to be in the right place at the right time. And we have to try to learn the right tools to use in our classes.

But the main question today was: 'What is Blended Learning?' Most of us said that Blended Learning is a combination of face to face learning and online learning and we reached to the conclusion that Blended Learning is NOT a combination of face to face learning plus lots of technology that is what we actually do in our classes.

Some of the main tips for a Blended Learning course are:

• You have to organise what is essential for the course.
• The pedagogy comes first because that will help you to use the technology. Whenever a new technology appears, there is something which is called the 'wow' effect. However, we should not be seduced by the novelty, we should always focus on the learners' needs. We should ask ourselves whether the technology will improve  teaching and enhance teaching. We mus ensure that the teaching is driven by the pedagogy and supported by the technology.
• Sometimes less is more.

To put all this in context we watched two videos, one about how to make Blended Learning work in our classrooms and another one about Blended Learning and technology integration as integration is a key concept because if there is a close correlation between the content of the lesson and the online materials, the online materials will be used more enthusiastically.

Blended Learning working in your classroom

It was very shocking listening to one of the students saying ' I have learnt more today than I have just learnt in a whole year'. Watching the video you can see that it looks very different in every classroom because everything depends on what the students need to learn. The students participate in the learning process and they record podcasts during class time, but it is not online. The important thing is the access at home because the evidence may take place at home. In this video we can see two parts:

1. The deliver of information watching Khan Academy videos, although the studenst say that they prefer to listen to their teacher.

2. The process of learning through screen casting technology.

What was really new for all of us was the statistics, the process that seems to be working and the use of a different activity for each group.  

Blended Learning and Tecnology Integration

In this video we can learn that Blended Learning is about instructional design and it is not using technology in class. Blended Learning has a collaborative component added to student's integration which means delivering and careful instruction planning.

Russell Stannard explaining Edmodo

In the afternoon we worked on a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) called Edmodo which offers lots of possibilities for a Blended Learning course and for a Flipped Classroom. It didn't take a lot of time to learn the ropes of Edmodo as we are quite an homogeneous group in terms of technology. But the question is where does Blogger play a possible role on a Blended Learning course? It can be useful:

• to use it as a VLE;
• to use it as the online classroom;
• to use it as a class blog;
• to deliver information;
• to process information
• and to work individually or in group.
• It is certainly a great technology for trying all together.  

Working in class

After the classes, NILE offered a cultural tour around Norwich and this is a short story I have written based on a ghost story from this city:

THE LAVENDER HOUSE

'Plague. Death. The authorities ordered to check if the people living in the house were dead. No sign of life. In order to avoid the smell, they put lavender on their masks, they painted the red cross on the door and sealed it as well as the windows. After three weeks, they came back to pick up the corpses, but one of them had moved. The youngest daughter was not dead the first day they came, she was asleep, but three weeks later, she was and she didn't die of hunger.'

Based on a ghost story from Norwich