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8/10/2019 Timeless Teaching Techniques for the Digital Age
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18/11/2014
By Sylvia Guinan
BY SYLVIA
G UINAN
TIMELESS TEACHING TECHNIQUES FOR THE
D IGITAL AGE
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Introduction Why this ebooklet?
What do your webtools say
about you?
Reflective essay & sharing
experiences
List of blanket macro -
tools
Foundation tools for digitalizing
content
Transform your
coursebook
Transform print & test into
multi-media
Storytelling tools at a
glance
Storybird
Mindmapping in education imind, coggle, popplet,
Comics in education Pixton, Comic Life, Bitstrips
Animation Goanimate, Voki
Interactive posters Glogster
Social flyers Tackk, Storify
Infographics Piktochart, Easel.Ly, InfoGr.Am
Quiz tools ClubEFL, Quizlet, Quia, Google
forms,TedEd
Blogging Wordpress, Edublogs, Kidblog,
PB worksPodcasting Sound cloud, Vocaroo,
Voicethread, audioboo
Multi-media Interactive learning & creativity
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Introduction
This ebooklet has been put together to share my experience
and insights with teachers around the world who want towork more directly with educational technology. For me its
not just about new tools and new environments. Its mostly
about new mindsets. How you think and feel about your
work, action research, and new projects will shape the
evolution of your courses and relationships with students.
Technology can bring us back to ourselves in a paradoxically
primitive way. You can really zone in on your purpose and
rediscover your true values as an educator by choosing the
right tools to deliver your message. Contrary to what people
may think, building up a specialized app. library will not
spark your primitive fires, but choosing simple yet powerful
tools will.
Why do I say primitive?
Well, because no matter how new or fancy you may think
your technology is, the creative process is natural andevolutionary. Your best tool is your own mind and
imagination.
Tools that help you take your own creativity to higher levels
ar e a great advantage, but every era has its tools. Its
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important to put yourself first and know that you will own
your technology and not the other way around.
This is not as easy as you may think. If you end up choosing
the wrong types of educational technology tools, or if you let
technology do all the work for you then the extra spark will
be lost.
What kinds of simple, powerful tools am I
referring to?
Im referring to the kinds of to ols that give you a blank
canvas to create. The kinds of tools that are easy to use. The
kinds of tools that feed insights into your creation by virtue
of their clever layouts and features. Laterally enhanced
design forces new strains of creativity to emerge that you
wouldn t otherwise access. These kinds of tools turn
normality on its head for you and then you create new
lessons or content in these intuitive or should we say
counter-intuitive spaces.
The results are content, ideas and products that will surpriseyou and your students.
Many of my ideas are inspired by teaching exam English or
business English but I have experience with literature,
secondary schools and primary schools too, so the ideas are
for everyone.
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Tools, environments and teaching ideas.
This little ebooklet will introduce you to thoughts,
experiences and very practical ideas to get you started off onthe right foot with technology enhanced learning.
After you have read some of my essays, blogs and related
content, you will be in a position to transform your
coursebook with the help of your students.
What do your web tools say about you?
Here are some tools that make a great difference to me:
(As seen on my Linkedin publishing page )
1) Prezi
Prezi is the new power point. It's very different from
power point in it's lateral design and visual-style
templates. It's a free tool that also comes with an educator
licence, so it's completely accessible to teachers. It's
already one of the favourite tools used by tech-savvy
teachers around the world.
What I like about the visual templates is that they are verysymbolic and eye-catching. They are metaphors, striking
psychological attention grabbers, and they help you to tell
your story.
The intuitive layout and tools provided within the Prezi
interface help you come up with unique concepts and clear
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141115170943-208183451-what-do-your-favourite-web-tools-say-about-you?trk=prof-posthttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141115170943-208183451-what-do-your-favourite-web-tools-say-about-you?trk=prof-posthttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141115170943-208183451-what-do-your-favourite-web-tools-say-about-you?trk=prof-post8/10/2019 Timeless Teaching Techniques for the Digital Age
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messages. It's very easy to use once you get over the initial
learning curve, which isn't very steep as there are many
video tutorials to help you learn the ropes. It also has
flexible embedding options and ways to play with layers of
design through zooming and re-sizing which takes you
beyond the basic, more linear features of power point.
As an online teacher I still use power point a lot as Prezi
still cannot play directly from virtual classrooms, but I
compromise by mixing and matching presentation styles.
Power points can be imported into Prezi and Prezi styles
can be added to power points. Prezi can also be used from
your website, blog and for asynchronous courses beyond
virtual classrooms. Students projects using Prezi can very,
very creative indeed and it's one tool they should beintroduced to. Prezi was originally created for the
business world, so imagine what kinds of business courses
you could teach using Prezi and what kinds of practice run
presentations they could make.
2) Present.meI think I first learnt about this from Russell Stannard. This
is a very effective tool for self-paced courses as it
combines video with power point presentations. It feels as
if you're in a virtual classroom when you're creating your
talk because as you speak you've got the presentation
right beside your video. It's extremely easy to upload the
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power point, click record and make a lovely presentation. I
think that this tool would work magic in the hands of
students. Imagine the combinations of power point
imagery and video talk they'd come up with. It's like an
extension of You Tube as it has both your video and the
presentation running simultaneously. It can't be
embedded onto You Tube itself but you can embed your
videos onto your website or in a virtual library of your
choice such as Pearl Trees or Symbaloo.
3) Pearl Trees, Symbaloo, Listly, Diigo and Tackk
Every teacher's tool set must include curation and sharing
tools. A place to store and collect your favourite links,
videos, lesson plans, blogs and presentations.
The five tools above do all of this and more. The addedextra is explosive. The extra feature is the social aspect for
sharing links or adding to lists collaboratively. They are all
similar to each other, yet boast different features. In a way,
whichever ones you choose as favourites from the above
will also speak volumes about how you like to organisethings and how you like to share and communicate.
Apart from curating and organising as a teacher, I see
these tools as being virtual libraries for courses. For this
reason I prefer the interface of Pearl Trees and Symbaloo
because they are visual, attractive and can help students to
keep motivated and organised.
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I use Diigo for more detailed or personal curation but
prefer the more attractive layouts of Pearl trees or
Symbaloo for creating virtual libraries for students or
colleagues..
As for Tackk, I have 50 things to say about that; )
I also think that students should learn to use these
environments for their own self-organised learning
spaces. They can upload their own multi-media projects
and share with other students. This could lead to further
collaborations, remixes, mash-ups, blog challenges or
whatever. Attractive sharing spaces are highly social and
highly motivating. I invite readers to try out these
different spaces for their own curation and online teaching
needs.How we self-organise also tells us a lot about ourselves.
We should keep note of what we are doing and if our
organisation style helps or hinders us and our students.
Self-organisation one of those must-have digital skills that
we can all improve upon.4) Wordpress
This is like saying what your favourite kind of house is.
Your website is your online home. Whatever you build or
share anywhere on the web usually ends up somewhere
inside your home. Wordpress is a user-friendly choice for
anyone who wishes to blog or have an online presence.
http://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/50-ways-use-beautiful-interactive-pages-teaching-sharing-online/http://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/50-ways-use-beautiful-interactive-pages-teaching-sharing-online/8/10/2019 Timeless Teaching Techniques for the Digital Age
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The best thing about Wordpress is the rich array of special
plugins that let you do anything you want with your
interface to create an interactive website experience.
Our blogs and websites say everything about who we are.
From the colour scheme, theme and design, to your
teaching niche, content, personality, networks,
professionalism and teaching values. It's fun, social,
creative and inspiring. Teachers can help students to set
up their own blogs too.
5) Jing, Camtasia or Camstudio .
It's amazing how important screen-capturing is. I use my
Jing contantly. It's a little tool that sits like a sticky little
yellow blob on the side of your screen and you can drag it
across the screen to take snapshots of what's going on - itmight be a website or a webinar in action. In our teacher
training courses we moderators take screenshots of
webinars - they turn out beautifully with photos of
presenters and their creative powerpoint visuals. Then we
share the class highlights on our social networks or storethem for future scrap-booking or video mash-up projects.
There are many video tools out there but it's good to have
one power-horse of a tool that can enhance all of your
other videos. Camtasia is a screen-capturing tool and a
multi-media engine for creating videos with all kinds of
special effects. It takes time to learn how to use this one,
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Prezi
Present mePearl Trees
Symbaloo
Listly
Diigo
Tackk
Wordpress
Jing
Camtasia
Camstudio
You Tube
Transform your coursebook :
Reframe typical coursebook exercises such as phrasal verbs
lists, grammar and lists of confusing/related vocabulary
items into brain-friendly multi-media formats.
Tool sets:
Storytelling, mindmapping, infographics, interactive posters,
flyers, blogs, social streams, video-making tools, animation
tools.
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Skills sets:
Speaking, listening, writing, use of English, reading.
Challenge:
Explore and isolate the best tools for you to help you
transform course book activities and exercises into digitally
enhanced
content created by teachers and/or students.
Digital Storytelling.
Storytelling has shaped my online teaching work more than
anything else for many reasons. It seems to be my
communication set point, partly because of my background
in literature and partly because I love reading,. But as a
professional teacher it goes much deeper than that. The
whole truth is that Ive found storytelling to be thefoundation stone of all communication when it comes to
language learning.
When you work online you leave the world of giant
publishers behind. You start to create your own courses and
content. This process make you realize what you truly careabout as a teacher and where your teaching values lie.
I found that humanism was behind all of my beliefs and
inspiration. My professional heroes from early teaching days
were Mario Rinvolucri and Penny Ur.
Psychology has been my study hobby for the past ten years
also, and the more I learnt about psychology, my own
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so much more than you would have originally
envisioned.
4) As you become more creative, you become a role model
for students who will want to join you in experimenting
with language and multi-media.
5) Once you join forces with students many practical ideas
for transforming the flat landscapes of lifeless course
books will evolve collectively.
6) In practical terms, any text can become a podcast, a
video, a blog, a comic, cartoon, infographic, mindmap, a
song or a movie.
7) The bones of any text can come from your teaching
objectives and curriculum as laid out in the course book.
How many ways can students experiment with phrasalverbs for example? How many ways can you present
phrasal verbs? I have presented phrasal verbs in comics,
on infographics and in multi-media quizzes. All of thee
have been in story format.
8) Whether students are learning phrasal verbs, huge wordlists, grammar or pronunciation, it can be contextualized
in story format.
9) The context also provides the social and emotional
engagement necessary for students to connect deeply
with the content.
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10) All of these contexts and multi-media stories can be
created by students themselves.
11) Allowing students to create their own content is the
greatest gift you can give them. This gift alone is worthy
of a separate book on the subject. Lets just say, for now
that you can change their lives by reaching beneath cold
language objectives into the true soul of learning
through creativity.
12) Mistakes made by students in their multi-media
creations become inspiration for creative error-
correction techniques and they can be fed into new
content. Therefore students are leading the course
through their own natural and creative needs analysis.
You are constantly in tune with their needs and throughrecycling, remixing and improving upon their work you
create an evolving linguistic reinforcement machine.
13) Psychologically speaking, storytelling shapes the brain
cognitively and emotionally. It aids memory, builds
brain muscle and increases empathy and socialintelligence. The right focus makes us resilient and
inspiring learners as well as leaders.
14) Storytelling integrates different parts of ourselves so we
dont need to worry about tapping into so many
different sides of our students minds the storytelling
does it for us.
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15) Stories lead to stories lead to stories( Lambert J, Digital
storytelling)
Storytelling Tools At A Glance
(Some curated from Teacher boot camp by Shelly
Terrell)
Heres the link and descriptions as well as her collection
of 50 more on Pearl Trees.
Storybird
Zooburst
Little bird tales
Simple booklet
Story maker by British
Council
The art of storytelling
Dr. Seuss story creator
Domo animate
Animoto
Smilebox
Mindmapping in education
Mindmapping has become an integral part of the business
world and education. In English language teaching, ideas for
language and grammar are being created by teachers all
http://shellyterrell.com/2013/02/18/20-storybook-creation-tools-and-apps/http://shellyterrell.com/2013/02/18/20-storybook-creation-tools-and-apps/http://shellyterrell.com/2013/02/18/20-storybook-creation-tools-and-apps/8/10/2019 Timeless Teaching Techniques for the Digital Age
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over the world and are even becoming viral on social
networks.
So, what is it about mindmaps and why do we want to use
them?
1) As laterally-designed mapping spaces, mindmaps are
powerful visual aids for brainstorming. Thats why they
are so popular in business meetings, for example.
2) They work by association. We have one central key
word and brainstorm some associated key words,
arranging them on key branches. Then we build up more
associations and sub branches from the main branch.
3) It builds up into a visual network of associations and
ideas that can give us new insights into problems. These
branches are potentially never-ending and it gives youthe sense that your ideas in infinite.
4) Creating mindmaps for various purposes in education
makes teachers and students more organized and more
creative at the same time.
5) Mindmaps allow us to see the bigger picture and thesmaller details simultaneously.
6) They are perfect tools for planning essays, blog articles
or books.
7) Theyre great for vocabulary presentation s or revision.
8) They can be a visual basis for story-telling.
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thing to do is have a comic chapter per course book unit
from lower levels so that students learn transformations and
tenses like this withou t even realizing that one day theyll
come up on the exam paper. Comics can kill the exam blues
with kindness.
Many of the storytelling ideas and points made in the
previous list also count for comics, as comics are visual
forms of storytelling, like songs, music and other types of
creative media.
The impact of visuals and comic-style media on memory,
motivation, creativity and personal development are widely
recognized in academia. In fact one academic called Nick
Sousanis wrote his whole dissertation in comic form and has
inspired many of my ideas for teaching with comics.
Animation
Some tools allow for voiceover effects and movie-style
animated productions. The most user- friendly one Ive found
is Goanimate. What I like about this tool is that a movie canbe made very quickly and student practice pronunciation,
writing, character-building and storytelling.
The benefits of animating lessons and transforming books in
this way are cognitive, social, emotional and psychological.
Interactive Posters, social flyers and infographics.
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These are all simply beautiful tools for transforming the
coursebook into social, multi-media works of art. They are
also simple to use. Students can use their imaginations to
depict language through image, video, audio and all kinds of
embedded media to recreate what language means to them.
They can proudly display their work on class blogs or on
teachers platforms like Edmodo.
These tools are powerful enough to become something like
interactive magazines and pave the way for future blogging
and even publishing student-created ebooks.
Quiz tools and blogging
I put these together as quizzes can be embedded onto blogs
for a multi-media effect or the blog could be a quiz-making
platform, such as ClubEFL a safe learning space wherestudents blog, vlog (video-blog) and even make their own
quizzes.
Quizzes are best when students use them to test themselves
and try to recreate real exams by creating multi-media
questions, fill- in the gaps, and so on.
Multi-media
1) Students learn and revise vocabulary through writing
their own short stories and comic strips.
2) Students learn to understand confusing vocabulary sets
through comic strips.
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3) Students re-write their own stories using confusing
word sets.
4) Present phrasal verbs on comic strips or infographics.
5) Students write their own phrasal verbs and stories on
comics strips.
6) Students practise speaking, pronunciation and
vocabulary by creating story podcasts.
7) Teachers model pronunciation and creative thinking by
creating story podcasts for students.
8) Teachers transform story podcasts into interactive
quizzes using quiz-making tools.
9) Students make up very short stories through simple
video-making tools.
10) Students collaborate on chain story projects using storyboarding tools.
11) Teachers take typical grammar rules or exercises and
present them visually on infographics.
12) Teachers create blank comic strips and students have to
write dialogue in using certain tenses to be practise.13) Teachers create jumbled comic strip stories for students
to sort out, retell & redesign.
14) Teachers use comic strip captions and bubbles to
transform exam test sentence stems.
15) Students practice pronunciation by creating stories with
animation tools and voice over effects.
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16) Create real life task-based activities for exam English by
challenging students to create posters and flyers related
to global issues such as the environment.
17) Use blogs, forums and flyers like tack with social
streams to encourage commentary and citizen
journalism.
18) Create infographics for business English vocabulary sets.
19) Create topic based visual boards on Pinterest and use
them for speaking practice, and as visuals to aid
mindmap building, vocabulary extension and fluency
development.
20) Have students transform literature extracts into multi-
media projects.
21) Have students create broadcasting newscasts usingvideo and interactive poster designs.
22) Have students build up stories from vocabulary prompts
on mindmaps.
23) Students create mindmaps from movie clips
24) Teacher map tenses onto mindmaps and thencreate blank tense maps for students to fill in.
Here are some of my slideshows and publications to do
with creativity, educational technology and teaching
ideas.
25) Try these ten ideas for teaching with movies and
mindmaps.
http://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/brainfriendly-ways-to-memorise-creatively-rscon-2014http://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/brainfriendly-ways-to-memorise-creatively-rscon-20148/10/2019 Timeless Teaching Techniques for the Digital Age
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26) Try these ten ideas for teaching with poetry and
experiment with multi-media & poetry.
27) Check out 50 ideas here for using Tackk for teaching and
sharing with technology.
28) Watch this presentation f or more interactive storytelling
ideas28) Check out more thoughts on teaching with
comics here
29) Heres a detailed look at social and emotional
approaches to teaching with technology.
30) Learn about fun online spaces that you can create for
students here.
31) Link to article on motivation & teacher belief
------------------------------------------------------------------------------You can read more at
www.sylviaenglishonline
and
http://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/author/sylvia/
For each and every storyteller, we are focused on creating astory that feels unique and powerful. Unique in that we hear
the author describe the events and issues of the story in a way
that is only theirs to provide, that the perspective feels that it
emerged from honest self-reflection. Powerful in that we want
the stories to give an intimate glance at the struggle the
author faced when reacting to events, how the events changed
http://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/poetry-for-english-language-teaching/http://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/50-ways-use-beautiful-interactive-pages-teaching-sharing-online/http://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/interactive-story-telling-for-english-exams-finalhttp://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/comics-in-education-31244470http://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/comics-in-education-31244470http://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/social-and-emotional-approaches-to-teaching-with-technology-learningpptx-updatehttp://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/social-and-emotional-approaches-to-teaching-with-technology-learningpptx-updatehttp://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/how-to-turn-your-learning-management-system-into-an-online-playgroundhttp://eltnick.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/how-do-you-motivate-young-learners/http://eltnick.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/how-do-you-motivate-young-learners/http://eltnick.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/how-do-you-motivate-young-learners/http://www.sylviaenglishonline/http://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/author/sylvia/http://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/author/sylvia/http://www.sylviaenglishonline/http://eltnick.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/how-do-you-motivate-young-learners/http://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/how-to-turn-your-learning-management-system-into-an-online-playgroundhttp://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/social-and-emotional-approaches-to-teaching-with-technology-learningpptx-updatehttp://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/social-and-emotional-approaches-to-teaching-with-technology-learningpptx-updatehttp://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/comics-in-education-31244470http://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/comics-in-education-31244470http://www.slideshare.net/thalassini2013/interactive-story-telling-for-english-exams-finalhttp://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/50-ways-use-beautiful-interactive-pages-teaching-sharing-online/http://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/poetry-for-english-language-teaching/8/10/2019 Timeless Teaching Techniques for the Digital Age
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them. Put another way, we want to help storytellers move
though a process of self discovery about the why of their
story.
(Lambert, J., Digital Storytelling, capturing lives, creating
communities)
The End