Day 9

Quizlet Check
Case studies on Blended Learning
Presentations
Moodle

Day 8

What things have you covered in today’s sessions?

Today, we worked on how we can use Quizlet, a great website for learning vocabulary through flashcards, quizzes, and many other activities such as matching, spelling which makes learning and studying vocabulary fun.


What is magnifical about Quizlet is that it gives you the access to a database of flashcards created by users of different interests, teachers of various subjects from all over the world. 

What technologies have you been exposed to?

How might you use the technologies/techniques in your own teaching and learning?

What value would these techniques/technologies add to your teaching and learning?

What challenges do you foresee?

Day 7

What things have you covered in today’s sessions?

Today's course started off with a wrap up of Blended Learning. Edmodo and Moodle serves as main platforms to be used for Blended Learning. They make it easier for both teachers and students to link what they do in class with the things they do outside the class. The tools, software and other resources that can be used are:

• Google Slides / Google Docs / Google Forms
• Youtube
• Blogger
• Screen Capture Technology Software (SnagIt, Screencast-o-matic, Camtasia etc.)

Another highlight of the day was our guest speaker John McMahon, who is also a trainer at NILE. We discussed how we can integrate critical thinking skills and higher order thinking skills to our classes. We started with a video activity that required group work, retelling of the story and discussion. Basically, we were divided into two groups and each group watched only one of the videos below. Next, we tried to tell the story in the video to the other group members who didn't watch it. You can watch the videos below.

Later we discussed how we can use these videos in our classes in line with higher order thinking skills.  The questions that can be used with the two videos might be:

• Compare the two films. Who behaved worst? Why?
• Imagine the shopkeeper in the first video had been honest. How do you think the story would end?
• Imagine the boss comes to the office the next morning. How does he react? 

The activity was really useful in that it reminded us how we can activate students' critical thinking skills. John also shared with us "Bloom's Taxonomy: Teacher Planning Kit", a very useful document for us to review higher level thinking skills. 

What technologies have you been exposed to?

In today's session, we focused on how we can integrate Google Forms for Blended Learning.

How might you use the technologies/techniques in your own teaching and learning?

Google Forms can be used for variety of purposes including

• to create questionnaires, polls for the first day of school at the beginning of the term. The results may shed light on students' expectations, needs, interests, weaknesses and strengths. The results can also be used at the end of the term for students to monitor how much progress they have made.
• to get feedback from students through mid-term and end-of-term questionnaires. This might help the teacher to get a general idea of how s/he is doing 

What value would these techniques/technologies add to your teaching and learning?

What challenges do you foresee?

Day 4

I arrived later than my classmates and my first day at NILE was August 17, 2017. It was a great pleasure to meet our lecturer Russell Stannard, the reputation of whom I know from my previous MA courses on materials design.

After a quick introduction of myself, we stepped up to use 

Day 6

What things have you covered in today’s sessions?

Today's session started with a detailed tutorial on how to create groups on Edmodo. We have also practiced how to create folders and add contents into them for students' access. 

The next task we were given was to create quizzes, polls, assignments just like we did on Friday, yet more detailed and and aimed to a target that is introducing our countries. After completing the task, we shared our group codes with each other and did each other's activities, which was fun. 

We have also learnt how to track our students' progress, in which case it was our friends from the course. We learnt that written feedback can also be given along with scores for the students' written assignment. 

After a little bit of practice of the things we can do on Edmodo, we jumped on how to use SnagIt, a screen capture software. Then, we used SnagIt to create tutorial/instructional videos such as how to create playlists and how to subscribe to a channel on YouTube. 

What technologies have you been exposed to?

We have been exposed to Edmodo on which we did more exercise and we have also done our first practice using SnagIt.

How might you use the technologies/techniques in your own teaching and learning?

Edmodo

Edmodo can be used for a variety of purposes which will in turn will add up to the use of technology in our classes. Through the use of online classrooms students can have an access to sources shared by the teacher, they can share their ideas through discussions, do assignments online, get instant feedback and monitor their own progress.

I believe that it will make the classroom content more enjoyable for students, an will also make it easier for teachers to track their students progress. Below you can see the screen capture of our NILE course on Edmodo.

SnagIt

Snagit can be used for a variety of purposes two of which are, the most important ones for us as teachers, giving feedback and creating instructional videos. We can create instructional videos about course content or anything that is relevant to their interests and share it on Edmodo or Moodle. 

Below you can see a short instructional video prepared by myself on How to Subscribe to a channel on Youtube. 

Or the teacher can use it to give individualised feedback. Another way of using screen capture technology is for teacher training or reflection

What value would these techniques/technologies add to your teaching and learning?

What challenges do you foresee?

Day 5

What things have you covered in today’s sessions?

Blogs

On day 5 (which is my day 2) we started off by checking each other's blogs and with a wrap-up off how we can use blogs in language classes.

Blogs can be used as teacher's blog for reflective practice or as resource platform where lesson plans, ideas, activities can be shared by other teachers. In addition, they can also be used as student's blog in which learning process can be monitored via e-portfolios. In other words, it keeps students thinking about their learning process. 

Watch Russell Stannard's short video below on 5 Reasons to Learn to Blog:

Another idea that can also be implemented might be keeping a class blog by making all students in one class make contribution, however, as Russell Stannard has told us, class blogs can become a complete mess where each student do things differently. I also agree with that. More structured platforms like Edmodo and Moodle can be used if we want our students to contribute in discussions and other kinds of activities. 

The next thing we covered was how to use Blogger, a blogging platform by Google, more effectively by making changes on posts, formatting, labels, gadgets, design etc. A key issue that should be kept in mind while making changes on your posts is consistency about the use of fonts, headings, colors, and sizes of pictures we add. Being consistent and being able to make changes on these will allow you to make your blog look  better and more professional. Click on the following link on how to make changes on your blog by Russell Stannard. 

Free Websites

breakingnewsenglish.com

Another highlight of today's session was breakingnewsenglish.com which is a free website that offers more than 2000 English lessons with various interesting activities. The best part of this website with giant content is that you can choose every single activity in different levels from 1 to 7. The activities cover current topics on World News, Business News, Entertainment, Technology, Science. Almost all of the activities can be done online or some can be printed for classroom use.

listenaminute.com

Another useful free website is listenaminute.com created and run by the same person who created breakingnewsenglish.com. Listenaminute.com also has rich online content made up of 400+ listening tracks and lots of exercises at different levels for each track. The content of the tracks, exercises and the website itself is very similar to breakingnewsenglish.com and very easy to use.

Screen Capture Technology

In the afternoon, we were introduced to Screen Capture Technology and its place in Blended Learning. After having seen some examples by our trainer Russell Stannard, we discussed how we can use and integrate this technology in our classes. 

What technologies have you been exposed to?

The technologies we addressed today are Blogs, Free Websites and Screen Capture Technology

How might you use the technologies/techniques in your own teaching and learning?

As mentioned above, blogs can be used for a variety of purposes including reflective practice for teachers, learning journals for students, teachers' monitoring students progress and students' monitoring their own progress. It also gives an individual a sense of personal space where s/he can share his interests, struggles, ups and downs in his or her learning and teaching.

I can use these free websites, breakingnewsenglish.com and listenaminute.com to add variety to the activities I give to my students in class or out of class. Students are sometimes fed up with dealing with the activities in coursebook, so these websites can be used to add a little bit of spice into our activities, which I think will also be very useful for students.

What value would these techniques/technologies add to your teaching and learning?

I believe that the things I have learnt so far will add up to my teaching skills in terms of preparing effective activities, giving more effective feedback, and exploiting free content that is already there on the Internet.

What challenges do you foresee?

The biggest challenge might be the digital literacy skills of our students. Some of our students don't like to discover something on their own and want to be spoon fed, so using blogs, for example, where they might need to discover things by themselves, might be a challenge. They will probably try to find excuses such as the internet connection problems at their dormitory, not having a decent PC etc.

Also, I believe that I should also plan my lessons in line with the technologies we have learnt so as not to overwhelm them and get them into the lesson. I think it might require a certain amount of time to learn to use the technology effectively and prepare effective lessons accordingly.

Day 4

This was my first day at NILE as I arrived later than my friends due to an exam I had to take. I met our trainer Russell Stannard, an award winning educational technologist. I am really happy to be in his course as I had known him from my previous MA course on materials design in which we had to go through his website teachertrainingvideos.com. I strongly advise his website to all the teachers no matter what subject they are teaching. He keeps you up-to-date with technology with his short but strikingly effective instructional videos on how to use educational tools. 

The day started with an introduction of myself through todaysmeet.com. It was a really fun way of introducing myself because it wasn't a kind of traditional introduction. My friends from the course asked me questions online ananymously via todaysmeet.com and I answered their questions about myself. 

What things have you covered in today’s sessions?

Edmodo

We were introduced to Edmodo, an educational platform resembling social networking sites like Facebook. The difference is that it makes the content appropriate for a classroom and  makes it easier for teachers to promote Blended Learning in their courses. Through Edmodo, students and teachers can reach out to one another and connect by sharing ideas, problems, participating in polls and quizzes, commenting on photos and videos. Teachers can also assign and grade work on Edmodo, which allows them to track students' progress. 

What technologies have you been exposed to?

We dealt with Edmodo mainly. We have also covered how we can integrate content from Youtube, Google Slides, Google Docs, or from any other website or document that might be useful to include in our classes on Edmodo.

How might you use the technologies/techniques in your own teaching and learning?

I think many of the things you can do with or on depends on teacher's creativity because you can do lots of things through integrating other technological tools and educational websites with it. I will definitely use it to create a learning community where students can achieve a sense of achievement, to share content with my students, to track their development through assessments, and to give feedback. 

What value would these techniques/technologies add to your teaching and learning?

I believe that using Edmodo and promoting Blended Learning will promote teacher-student and student-student interaction. I also believe I will be more able to create activities tailored for students levels, interests, and needs. Additionally, it will allow teacher to provide individual assistance. I think I can also achieve a classroom atmosphere where they feel that they belong to a learning community and learn from each other. 

What challenges do you foresee?

The biggest challenges might be the technical problems. It requires PC, laptop and internet connection, so the classroom should be well-equipped in terms of these. It also requires lots of practice on teachers' side along with a considerable amount of preparation time.

Welcome

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog about NILE Blended Learning Course by Russell Stannard.