blog-efl

The Ceibal English  ( Ceibal en Ingl és ) is a project involving  language teaching via video-conferencing in Primary schools throughout Uruguay.  The British Council Uruguay is managing the Ceibal English ( Ceibal en Ingl és )  project for Plan Ceibal and I was working as the project manager. ( update: I am now Country Director for the British Council in Uruguay ) As it develops, expanding from 500 to 1,000 classes a week in 2013, and doubling again to 2,000 classes a week in March/April 2014, I am recording and relfecting on different aspects of the project.  This page lists all of the blog posts I have written about the programme. Start here: Ceibal English interview  (British Council podcast and transcript) More information:   Remote Teaching for Success Ceibal English - Invitation to feedback session for forthcoming chapter Remote Teaching, distance learning, team teaching or blended learning? (updated) Interviews with Remote Teachers on Ce

When adopting or adapting technology for effective teaching and learning, it often helps to use a framework. One such framework, produced by Dr. Tony Bate s, Research Associate for Contact North , is SECTIONS , devised by the University of British Columbia , and mentioned in Planning for Effective Teaching with Technology ,  part two of the great series of articles Understanding the Building Blocks of Online Learning . SECTONS stands for:- S - Student needs E - Ease of Use C - Cost considerations T - Teaching and learning (your  approach to) I - Interaction for students (desired level of) O - Organisational support needed N - Novelty factor S - Speed with which the technology or materials can be adopted/adapted Rather than just designed to be used at a teacher or classroom level, this framework has been devised "facilitate decisions with regard to choice of technology at both the strategic and the tactical level". How to use the framework: 1

One of the issues we have been discussing in the Ceibal English project is the use of L1 by the two teachers- the CT (classroom teacher) and the RT (remote teacher), and after observing a great number of classes, I can see this varies a lot. Teachers attitudes to using L1 in the classroom varies a lot. I remember when I first started my teaching course, I was told that this was to be avoided at all cost, but when I started teaching young learners I realised that some use of L1 was necessary - mainly to save time and for classroom management reasons. There are some very interesting posts about this. In particular, I encourage you to read what Scott Thornbury wrote on his blog about translation  (and the comments!) and the response by Isabela Villa Boas . In particular, I think the following points are most relevant to the Ceibal English situation: Use of L1 interferes with the development of the L2 system Dependence on L1, at the expense of the learner constructing an indepe