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-post
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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/
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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/
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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-2014
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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/
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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