Ten Steps for a Successful eTwinning Project

Infographic by eTwinning Europe

How to start a blog from scratch

How to start a blog from scratch de Ana Figueiredo

Sports & Healthy Eating Habits across Europe

Visit our eTwinning Project 
@ https://twinspace.etwinning.net/52703

To know more about this Project, click here.

eTwinning Zarco Project 2017/2018

Visit our new project on Sports & Healthy Eating Habits across Europe here. 

At Zarco we are working with France, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Romania, Poland and Turkey!

If you're interested, you can check all the data on the project here.

The importance of creating an audience for school tasks

To check some example ways of making it happen, as far as ELT is concerned, please visit T&L pages based on Google Sites:

- WRITING TASKS;

- BRITISH & AMERICAN FESTIVALS AND HOLIDAYS.

10 Reasons to Go Google in ELT

eTwinning Quality Label for our Project @ Zarco

The project "Let's get to know each other" developed by the 11th grade professional courses @ Zarco Secondary School in Matosinhos has been awarded the eTwinning Quality Label.

An immense THANK YOU to all the participants.

You can access all the work here.

Let's Get to Know Each Other powered by eTwinning

The eTwinning project "Let's Get to Know Each Other" was developed in the English classes at Zarco Secondary School, through an online partnership with schools of Spain, France, Italy, Turkey, Poland and Hungary, with a total number of 246 students and 14 teachers from 7 different countries across Europe.

The students created an e-magazine on different aspects of each country's identity. Together with the crucial intercultural contact, a special motivation for written tasks in English has been created by using the Twinspace as a web 2.0 tool for active learning.

You can see all the project clicking here:  https://twinspace.etwinning.net/30405.

Social Networking as a Tool for ELT

Advantages of Social Networking

found pic @ ATL&S

- Educational tool:  most students nowadays are fluent in Web and social networking technologies. Teachers must leverage this knowledge to enrich the learning experience. With social media, educators can foster collaboration and discussion, create meaningful dialogue, exchange ideas, and boost student interaction, especially when they are moving inside a new linguistic code.

- Enhance student engagement: students who rarely participate in class may feel more comfortable expressing themselves on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. Social networking platforms enable teachers to establish “back channels” that foster discussion and surface ideas that students are too shy or intimidated to express themselves.

- Improve communication between students and teachers: Facebook and Twitter can enhance communication between students and teachers. Educators can answer students’ questions, post homework assignments or lesson plans, send messages and updates, schedule or announce upcoming events, and share interesting Web sites or multimedia content. Students can use Twitter to get help from instructors or other students. A great way for instructors to give participation points in addition to in class participation is by having students tweet about something that was discussed in class.

- Preparing students for active life: students entering the workforce can use social networking sites to network and find employment. With LinkedIn, students can establish a professional Web presence, post a resume, research a target company or school, and connect with other job seekers and employers. Students should follow professional organizations on Facebook and Twitter to be updated on new opportunities.

Disadvantages of Social Networking

- Social Media can be a distraction: tools like Facebook and Twitter may actually divert students' attention away from what's happening in class and may be disruptive to the learning process.

- Cyberbullying: While social networking sites provide a way for students and teachers to connect, they can be a weapon of malicious behavior. Teachers who use social networking tools as part of their activities must be aware of potential dangers and plan to intervene on minor incidents before they become more serious.

- Discouraging presencial communication: while real-time digital stream may create a safe harbour for students who are uncomfortable expressing themselves, students are missing valuable lessons in real-life social skills.

Now more than ever before the role of social media in education is under discussion. Advocates point out the benefits that social media provides for today's digital learners while critics call for regulation. Finding a middle ground has become a challenge. As an educational tool, social media enriches the learning experience by allowing students and teachers to connect and interact in new, exciting ways. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn provide a platform where users can dialog, exchange ideas, and find answers to questions. These sites are designed to foster collaboration and discussion. Despite these benefits, critics argue that there are serious risks to using social media in the classroom. The main issue is: do these risks outweigh the potential for opportunity?

While the discussion goes on about the pros and cons of social networking in ELT, no one can argue the influence ICT has on our students. This new-millenium generation conducts much of their life through social media. They are already using YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter as tools for learning. They expect their schools and their teachers do it, too! Let's not forget that a new reality should be faced with a whole new attitude.

21st Century Skills for Students

Infographic credits: Digital Schools

Beware the 'digital native' stereotype

found image @ Academia Marketing Digital

Technology teacher Mary Beth Hertz writes on Edutopia that teachers need to beware of the "dangerous" stereotype that all students these days are ‘digital natives’.  There are a lot of dangerous stereotypes out there. "Asian students are always better at math." "Boys are always better at sports." And perhaps the most dangerous of all: "The current generation are all digital natives." Hertz says that just because students know how to use technology doesn't mean they understand how to "create, read critically, use online content responsibly," and be respectful of others in the digital world. And those skills are necessary to be truly digitally savvy, she contends.

Mary Hertz cites a study in which the nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child left pre-loaded tablets with illiterate children in remote Ethiopian villages. The children quickly figured out how to use the applications and began teaching themselves to read. Within a few months they'd overridden the software meant to freeze the desktop settings, and customized their devices.  But Hertz says this proves her point that being able to use technology does not make you proficient:

“Sure, we can place a tablet in the hands of children who have never seen a package label or a sign, and they will learn on their own. But what happens when and if those children become connected to the larger, global online community? It is not guaranteed that they will be ready to navigate etiquette and intellectual property rights on their own. “

Instead, Hertz writes, we should call students "digital citizens," which implies a more complicated relationship with technology—not innate proficiency.

She is not the first to argue that teachers cannot assume students know how to properly navigate the digital world. Jody Passanisi and Shara Peters said in Scientific American that students struggle with basic Internet searches, and a majority of teachers in a recent Pew Research Center survey said students need more training in finding credible information online.

Perhaps Hertz' claim boils down to semantics. Aren't 'digital natives' simply those who've only known a world in which electronic devices are the primary means of accessing information? The term brings to mind this video.

Source:  Education Week Teacher (slightly abridged and adapted)

Using online portfolios in the class

Our digital world is transforming the way we learn, and today's teachers are tasked with the challenging job of sifting through the deluge of educational technologies and creating a meaningful learning experience for students.
Next-generation education portfolio platforms - such as Digication, Pathbrite, Taskstream and Epsilen - are one way for teachers to start early and educate students about how they can manage their own academic and professional accomplishments. From using portfolios for giving students educational feedback to the portability of transcripts and official academic documents, new opportunities exist for lifelong learning and sharing.
Here are five best practices for implementing an education portfolio platform in any K-12 or college classroom.

image credits: Carbon Made Portfolios

1. Build in Opportunities for Peer-to-Peer Learning
Focus on the goal of increasing students' digital literacy by fostering a collaborative learning environment where some of the more tech-savvy students can guide and help others learn. These practices can generate trust, offer problem-solving opportunities, and deepen peer-to-peer learning on the educational lessons taught in the course.

2. Create Lessons That Foster Data and Knowledge Curation
Sifting through the endless hoards of information on the Internet is becoming a necessary skill. Students need to learn how to find reliable sources and how to conduct research in an organized and discriminating way. Eleventh-grade English teacher Amy McGeorge of Leadership Public Schools, a high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, began using next-generation education portfolios in the classroom to teach the literary classic Catcher in the Rye. She assigned a digital literary analysis and asked students to create an online portfolio that included what they learned about the characters. The results showed better-than-ever student engagement and understanding of the story.

3. Engaging for All Levels of Learners
One of the biggest challenges for today's large classrooms and high student-to-teacher ratios is offering high-performing students engaging activities that won't hold them back while the teachers focus on students who need additional support. Online portfolio projects are a stimulating activity that allows learners of all levels to deepen their knowledge on a subject matter or assignment while maintaining a common ground with their peers.

4. Develop Organization Skills and Plan for the Future
Instead of sorting through crumpled assignments in the bottoms of backpacks, students are able to login to their online portfolios and find everything in an organized manner. Using tags for common subject areas helps students sort through all of the information they have collected so that they can see the "bigger picture" and be reminded of all the work they have done in a specific area. I saw one example from a graduate level course at the University of Illinois in the School of Library and Information Science. Here, students were given the assignment of creating an online portfolio that showed digital materials reflecting theoretical concepts on gender, race and sexuality learned in the course. Not only did student understanding of the concepts far surpass the classes that weren't using online portfolios, but students also reported high levels of satisfaction with their ability to share their class portfolios with professional and personal contacts beyond the classroom.

5. Not All Online Portfolios are Created Equal
When picking an online portfolio, look for portfolios where the creators remain the owners of the data compiled. It's important that students and users have access to the content of the portfolio beyond the course or college education.
Using online portfolios successfully gives early adopters in the classroom the latitude to teach peers how to master the technology. Learning can be accelerated through the process of independently curating new knowledge and can also be extended beyond the classroom for a long-term collection of academic and professional successes.

By Heather Giles @ Edutopia - Technological Integration (slightly abridged)

Top 200 Tools for Learning 2016

Top 200 Tools for Learning 2016 from Jane Hart

Suggested by The Blog Teacher

21st Century Classroom Infographic

21st Century Classroom infographic

Multimedia in ELT

image credits: Robert Campbell

Integrating multimedia tools into teaching English supports the implementation of high-quality instruction and explores new issues in higher education. It fosters the pedagogical orientation from instructor-centered to learner-centered instruction. Multimedia tools like audio software, power point presentation, flash animation, and video are used in teaching English. The need for analysing these tools is becoming crucial nowadays.

English Language Teaching is one of the fastest growing sectors in the world. The use of new technologies is an integral and driving component of this growth. Computers deliver multimedia presentations for entertainment, advertising, or education. Edutainment is the term used to refer to the applications which incorporate multimedia entertainment with educational objectives. Multimedia incorporates text, audio, graphics, animations, or real video into English lessons.

Curriculum developers and instructional designers collaborate with skilled teachers and subject experts to create effective, integrated learning strategies which strengthen teachers’ professional skills, make optimal use of classroom time, and broaden student access to learning materials. Audio Streaming, Power Point Presentations, Flash or Java Animation, Video, etc. are the different multimedia tools used in teaching English.

image credits: opened web

Vision and hearing are the dominant senses. Multimedia can provide a sensory and real learning experience; it presents a greater potential for learning. Audio software contains options like play, stop, record, etc. It does not contain images or animations. Power point presentation contains text and images. Audio files can be inserted, if necessary. Flash animations contain text, audio, images, and animations. Videos can be played in any media player. It contains sub-texts for easy understanding of the conversations.

Multimedia plays an important role in all the stages of second language acquisition. Multimedia tools are used widely by second language learners. The different multimedia tools available to teachers include video and data projectors, videos, Internet, and course management programs.

There are many advantages of using multimedia tools in the language classroom. These include more active learning, diversified teaching methods, better student attention, less time and energy for professors, and visual stimulation. However, there are some downfalls to using technology when teaching the courses. They are equipment failures, need for back-up plans, anxiety for teachers, time spent learning new technologies, etc.

The advantages for using technology often outweigh the disadvantages. Many of the problems with using technology and learning materials can be overcome by testing the equipments beforehand and learning how to properly use each multimedia tool. Multimedia has the potential for much more than text-based communication of ideas. It alleviates the loneliness of books, because it is interactive. Multimedia enables text, images, sound, and video to be combined into one and plays an important role in teaching English.

Why choosing multimedia resources?

Multimedia is becoming indispensable in the classrooms. It allows teachers to diversify their lectures, display more information, and enhance student learning. It helps them save time and energy; it allows for more attention to be paid to the course content. There are different multimedia tools available in the market. Audio streaming, PPT, animation, and video are quite familiar with the teachers and students. Pronunciation, accent, vocabulary building, note-taking or note-making skills, reading comprehension, writing skills, etc. are taught using the multimedia tools. There are different purposes for analysing the multimedia tools:

• To decide whether the multimedia tool has had the intended effect;
•  To identify what effect the multimedia tool has had;
• To justify future courses of action;
• To identify areas for improvement in a multimedia tool.

Multimedia tools prove to be effective in teaching English. However, they are not tailor-made. Teachers should analyse them predictively and retrospectively to use them effectively in the classroom. Feedback from the teachers and students can be utilised to improve the efficiency of the multimedia lessons. Multimedia tools should be used appropriately and frequently to increase the scores of the ESL students.
To sum up:

Cognitive models for multimedia learning with animated pedagogical agents (image credits: db-thueringen)

You may also like to have a look at Richard Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning.

Source: "Multimedia in English Language Teaching", Jaya Parveen and V. Rajesh, Journal of Technology for ELT(slightly abridged and adapted)

Web 2.0 Tools applied to Primary School Teaching

Teaching English, and even History, to Primary School children doesn't have necessarily to be primary and Web 2.0 technologies applied to class activities and tasks may well be the answer to put it together.

This cute and interesting video was created from drawings by primary school children from Shapla School and special effects by young people from the Renaissance Foundation.

On Saturday 31st May 1533, Anne Boleyn was taken in procession from the Tower through London to Westminster where she was crowned the following days, find out what happened on that day! ;)

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy and ICT Tools

Many teachers use Bloom's Taxonomy and Bloom's Revised Taxonomy in developing and structuring their teaching & learning experiences. Bloom's Digital taxonomy is an attempt to marry Bloom's revised taxonomy and the key verbs to digital approaches and tools. This is not a replacements to the verbs in the revised taxonomy, rather it suppliments and supports these by including recent developments, processes and tools.

Many of these tools that are FOSS (Free or Open Source Software). Click here for a comparison between Traditional and Digital approaches.

So what is Bloom's Taxonomy?

Benjamin Bloom developed, in 1956, while working at the University of Chicago, a theory on Educational Objectives. He proposed 3 domains or areas:

- Cognitive - person's ability to process and utilize information (thinking), this is what Bloom's Digital Taxonomy is based on;

- Affective - This is the role of feeling and attitudes in the learning/education process;

- Psychomotor - This is manipulative or physical skills.

Bloom's Taxonomy is a taxonomy of activities and behaviours that exemplify Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) and Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS). Bloom's allows use to rank and structure different classroom activities and plan the learning process. In 2001, Lorin Anderson and others revised Bloom's original work, creating Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.

Bloom’s and Revised Bloom's give us a learning process:

- Before you can understand a concept or fact you must remember it;

- To apply a concept you must understand it first;

- To evaluate a process you must have analysed it.Each layer builds on the previous. The creative process naturally incorporates these elements. You must remember (even if you are learning as you go), understand and apply these principles and concepts, analyse and evaluate the success of your design, the process and concept.

However, we don't need to start at lower order skills and then build piecemeal throught the taxonomy towards higher order thinking like creativity. By providing a suitably scaffolded task, the lower order skills of remembering and understanding become inherent in the learning process. By challenging our students to be analytical, evaluative or creative, they will within these processes develop understanding.

Bloom's Original taxonomy		Bloom's revised taxonomy
Evaluation	(HOTS)	Creating
Synthesis		Evaluating
Analysis		Analysing
Application		Applying
Comprehension		Understanding
Knowledge	(LOTS)	Remembering

HOTS is an abbreviation for Higher Order Thinking Skills and LOTS for Lower Order Thinking Skills.

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. This diagram details Bloom's Revised Taxonomy with some of the original verbs.

Diagram of Bloom's revised Taxonomy showing the flow and process of learning. - A Churches

If you want to learn more about Bloom's Revised/Digital Taxonomy, read here.

Web 2.0 Tutorials

Without a doubt one of the best resources on the web for web2.0 Technologies is the commoncraft show. Lee LeFever's productions are clear, simple and to the point; most of all they are "In Plain English". Here are the links:

• http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter
• http://www.commoncraft.com/photosharing
• http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english
• http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networking
• http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english
• http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_show
• http://www.commoncraft.com/blogs
• http://www.commoncraft.com/video-googledocs
• http://www.commoncraft.com/mylocation
• http://www.commoncraft.com/wetpaint

SOURCE: Educational Origami