Going Mobile

What do you do with students’ cell phones in the classroom? Do you take them and keep them in a box? Or do you allow students to use them?

This has been a controversial topic since new technologies started to capture our students' concentration in the classroom as well as in their everyday lives. Many educators see this attitude as something that hinders learning more than  supporting it.

On the contrary, there are others who think that technologies have become an essential part of our lives and that we have to adapt to new realities; also, this will help us (teachers and students) to be prepared for what will come in the future.

We would like to introduce you to someone who supports the idea of including new technologies in the classroom to improve students’ learning and to develop digital literacies, her name is Nicky Hockly. In case you’ve never heard of her, she  has worked in the field of face-to-face and distance language education since 1987. She is well-known for delivering famous international workshops and courses on the application of technology to language teaching. (For more information about her, click here).

Just a few years ago we had the chance to attend to one of her highly valuable workshops here in Santa Fe. She gave us examples of many activities in which we can use mobile devices in an attempt to avoid using old-fashioned teaching and to engage students.

We will now mention some activities she proposed for you to take into account. One very interesting task would be to have our students take a photo of themselves (a selfie) at a given time (for example, at 8pm) and send it to a Whatsapp group or upload it to a Facebook group. In this way, they will be able to practice past continuous or past simple the following meeting (I was going to the cinema. I went to the cinema). When it comes to innovating, we will see that many options come up in connection with this activity in particular. For example, we can have them taking a photo of their favourite dish, of what they ate the previous night, or even of a place they've been in order to give directions if we ask them how to arrive there from school.

She then suggested activities like selecting some pictures from the photo gallery of our phones and talking about them with a partner. Students will use a wide range of vocabulary, and also different tenses and aspects by just showing a photo they could choose according to what they wanted to say.

As you can see, the possibilities are unlimited, you can use you creativity and, with cell phones in the classroom, innovation comes up in many different ways. We are really interested in hearing (or reading) about your own experiences, so please leave your comments on this topic!

Teachers are still necessary!

Throughout this blog we have constantly mentioned the need for teachers to incorporate technology in their teaching experience. But which is the best way to do so?

You may know that studying online is one very chosen option nowadays. “Distance learning” appeared some years ago and, as the name suggests, new contents are explained through uploaded materials (books, activities and so on) and through videos attached by teachers delivering a lesson themselves.

As you can see, the only contact students and teachers have is by having students looking at the teacher on a screen; but on the teacher’s side, she/he is not able to see students. She only reads their posts and emails, among others, but she never sees their faces. So, is it good to make use of technology and virtual classrooms exclusively?

Sophie Partarrieu explains why there is still a need to incorporate face-to-face teaching in the digital age, and why it “has an essential place in today’s education”. The idea we would like to give more emphasis to is the fact that it is the best ‘path’ when having to “form emotional relationships, empathize and respond to the needs of individual students”.

On the other hand, there are some benefits of applying online/ digital teaching. According to Sebastián - a person we interviewed who is experiencing this kind of education -  one of the advantages is that you can organize your timetables, to the extent that you can read or study at your own pace, and watch teacher’s videos as many times as you want. Also, you can study at home in a comfortable environment and take breaks at any moment you want.  

So far, we have shown the strong points of both kinds of teaching/learning. The idea is to get some profit from them. But how do we do that? A concept that has been recently introduced is BLENDED LEARNING. What is blended learning? Basically, a way of tutoring “where a portion of the traditional face-to-face instruction is replaced by web-based online learning”.

We think that this type of education still places teachers in an important role as regards education and, at the same time, challenges many people’s idea that technology will eventually replace humans - teachers included. What can we recommend?  We suggest you have students watch your videos explaining the theoretical part of the topic being dealt with, and then clear up doubts and practice during face-to-face teaching in class so as to optimize time and foster interpersonal relationships. This model we've just mentioned is called "flipped classroom".

Why don’t you give it a try and then tell us about your experience?