ICT in the Primary Classroom MOOC

I've just joined the Coursera MOOC ICT in the Primary Classroom: Transforming children's learning across the curriculum and am going to use this blog to reflect on the content as I follow the course. 

The lead tutor on the course is Diana Laurillard, who I saw give an excellent plenary at the IATEFL Conference in Glasgow in 2012 on 'Supporting the Teacher as Innovative Learning Designer' (see video recording of her plenary below).

It's the first week of the course, and people are introducing themselves in the forum - already I've come across some familiar faces and have reconnected with some people from the past as well as making some interesting new connections. There's been a lot of criticism of MOOCs (e.g. here and here and here) by many people who point to the fact that few people who sign up for them actually finish the course and get the certificate. I think this is missing the point - I am not taking the course to necessarily complete it, and if I don't get to the end of it, then I won't consider this a failure of the MOOC or a failure on my behalf. I am the kind of person who enjoys dipping into these courses, although I suspect this is one MOOC I'll be trying to follow until the end as it is a subject that I am particularly interested in and will make time for, just as I did for the Gamification MOOC.

Language Learning with Technology: Skills Course (July 2014)

I've decided to run a free month-long course in July based on four of the units in the handbook for teachers, Language Learning with Technology. Here are the details:

Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening with technology.

Join me in July 2014 for the free pilot month-long course in Language Learning with Technology: Skills. 

During July, participants will be examining good practice when using technology to help students with the skills of reading, writing, listening & speaking. We'll be examining different ideas and approaches and then share our experience in the course forum. At the end of each week, participants will write an activity for the language classroom as an assignment.

Upon completing this course, participants will be able to be in a better position to know how best to implement technology in their classroom situation to help their students with skills work. Please note, we will be using the handbook for teachers 'Language Learning with Technology' (CUP, 2013) during the course, and so participants should have a copy available to refer to.

At the end of the course, all participants will receive an e-booklet of activities produced by the group and a course certificate.

The idea came after watching a discussion on EdTech Weekly this morning entitled 'Whats the best home base for your course online?' During this discussion, the platform Eliademy was mentioned, and as I started taking a look at this platform, which allows you to 'create your online course for free', I decided that I liked the look of it and that I wanted to investigate it further - the obvious way of doing this was to set up a course to do so. Within 30 minutes, I'd set it up and had advertised it on the Facebook page for the book. Now, it's evening and 36 people have signed up for it already, which I'm really pleased about - getting excited about the actual course now!

Use of L1 in Plan Ceibal English

Recently there has been much discussion of the use of L1 in the English classroom. One of the impulses to this has been the handbook for teachers by Philip Kerr: Translation and own language activities (CUP, 2014). In the very first part of the introduction to this book, Kerr (2014:1) cites from some blog posts relating to the theme from eltcommunity.com (2009-10) that shows the strength of feeling for or against the use of the learners' own language in the ELT classroom:

• No matter what nationality you are, Mother tongue is always there interfering in our lessons
• (Translating in the classroom) got so out-of-hand that even I was looking up Spanish and (heaven forbid) writing translations on the board. After a few months of this, I realized that this has to stop and STOP now
•  We treat the mother tongue as a problem because of the stupidity of our immersion methodology

Kerr goes on to state that although this is "a contentious issue" which has largely been ignored in both the most widely used in-service training manuals and on UK based pre- and in-service training courses, it has recently become an important issue that needs to be revisited. Kerr's book is a timely attempt to readdress the balance, which argues for principled use of L1 in the foreign language class.

Using L1 in the classroom

There was also a recent #AusELT chat on the subject of using L1 in the classroom, with a number of interesting related links, including:

• Patricia Ryan Tedx talk, Dubai - Don't Insist on English
• Isabella Villas Boas - L1 in the L2 classroom
• Guy Cook Translation in Language Teaching (OUP)
• Schweers, CW (1999) Using L1 in the L2 classroom (pdf), English Teaching Forum

L1 in the Ceibal English project

Which brings us back to Kerr (2014:5) who states that the "most significant resource that learners can bring to the language learning task is their existing linguistic knowledge." He goes on to state reasons why, at times, L1 should be actively encouraged: 1) The learners' own language is a point of reference 2) The growing voice of the non-native (or ELF) speaker teachers' discourse in English language teaching.

We are currently analysing the use of L1 in remote teaching and this is surely going to be a subject I will return to. 

Plan Ceibal update - May 2014

During March and April 2014, the Plan Ceibal English project expanded to just under 1,000 classes a week

The Spanish version of this video is here