Plan Ceibal - Dario Luis Banegas

Dario Luis Banegas spoke in this session 'Learning English through remote learning' about e British Council's role in Plan Ceibal, which has rolled out XO laptops to all Primary aged children throughout Uruguay.

Dario spoke about his role as project manager and how one of the key aspects for him is the relationships between the different roles (lesson plan writers, materials designers, classroom teachers, remote teachers, e-moderators, children, parents and educational administrators).

In the project, classroom teachers in Uruguay are supported by remote teachers, mainly in Argentina in order to teach children English. Video conferencing is used to transmit the image and sound of the remote teachers into the Uruguayan classrooms and the classroom teacher facilitates. The lack of English of most of the classroom teachers is the reason why this is done, but the classroom teachers are undergoing an English Programme in tandem, supported by e-moderators, who also talk to them via Skype and help with the planning of lessons.

Dario showed videos of actual classes in progress and spoke about the challenges and successes of this interesting project, which is increasing in intensity this year from 250 lessons a week to thousands across the country.

This world in which we live in

David Crystal's very entertaining opening plenary at the IATEFL conference in Liverpool started with a line from Paul McCartney's song 'Live and let die' (the blog post title) that contains a double preposition.

He then looked at other examples of this in newspaper reports and popular media. David Crystal also looked at other examples of non-standard grammar, including double negatives in Beatles songs.


David then told the audience that 'blends' such as 'within how long did it take...' , a combination of 'within what time period' and 'how long did it take' also occur in lectures and he then proceeded to use examples from his own recorded lectures that showed everyone ends up doing this in speech.

Examples of blends rarely appear in public writing, usually, because it is the job of the editor or copy-editor to rephrase any blends that are found. However, some blends do slip through the net. On the Web, in particular, there are examples to be found in social media, Wikipedia, blogs, etc. Taking examples from the top UK blogs, David Crystal showed examples of blends.

The next point David Crystal made was that grammar helps people remember things, and he showed us with examples of strings of numbers of one then two syllables. He also showed examples from ELT, including writing from a 15-year-old.

Over the next week, there will be opportunities to watch (live and recorded) a number of other presentations from the conference as well as interviews of those taking part.

Addition:

The recording of David Crystal's plenary and the follow up questions can be found below and on the IATEFL Liverpool Online site, http://www.iatefl.org/liverpool-2013/liverpool-2013.

Joe Dale - IATEFL LTSIG PCE

Joe Dale started his rapid-fire presentation off with information about information about the changing world of technology, with the proliferation of mobile devices and the rise of the Martini generation (i.e. learning any time, any place, anywhere) meaning educators need to pay more attention to possible uses of mobile devices in the classroom.

Joe shared a list of different ipad apps he recommends for language teaching and learning, and also recommended a book by Chris Smith (http://aneducatorsipad.com/) for any educators looking to use iPads in the classroom.

QR codes and how they can be used in the classroom was mentioned. In particular, the use that Kelda Richards (
http://keldarichards.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/le-mur-parlant/) makes of QR codes for her 'Making your walls talk' stood out as an innovative way of making use of them in the classroom.

Joe mentioned a number of different sources of evidence of the value of using iPads in the classroom.

Models Joe mentioned were:
- http://www.tpack.org/
- http://msad75summertechnologyinstitute.wordpress.com/beyond-substitution/
- http://teachwithyouripad.wikispaces.com/Blooms+Taxonomy+with+Apps

This was the last presentation of the day, to be followed by a panel discussion by all speakers and our special guest from TESOL, Deborah Healey. The recording of this, which is to be live streamed, along with the other presentations of the day, can be found along with links to all. Of the presentation slides on the LT SIG website: http://ltsig.org.uk

Kristina Smith IATEFL LTSIG Liverpool PCE

Kristina Smith is our first presenter of the afternoon and her focus is 'Autonomy in Online and Blended Learning'

one of the first suggestions from Kristina was that the teacher should start by considering the culture of the learners, considering the interaction between content delivery and deeper learning, individual and social (i.e. group work), teacher led and self directed learning online.

One of the issues that Kristina cam across with one group of teachers that she worked with was that they were not allowed to ask the children they taught personal questions, because it was an invasion of privacy and it might embarrass some of them.

Kristina started asking the audience to consider where they stand on a line between humanistic and behaviourist teaching, then looking at Tassinari's dynamic model of Learner Autonomy (see http://sisaljournal.org/archives/march12/tassinari/)

When it comes to the environment a teacher teaching online should consider the learners, the other stakeholders (the school, the management, etc).

Digital literacy is another issue with some of the teachers Kristina works with, and some teachers do not know how to copy and paste a URL or how to take a screenshot. The key to dealing with this is patience and not making assumptions, helping the teacher in different ways (how to videos and PDF instructions). Kristina uses http://www.screenr.com/ to make instructional videos for the teachers.

Join the IATEFL ltsig live online from Liverpool for the last of our speakers at the PCE - see http://ltsig.org.uk

Paul Braddock - The Flipped Classroom (IATEFL LTSIG)

The photo shows, live from Liverpool, Paul Braddock talking about the Flipped Classroom and leading a discussion about what it is and the pros and cons of reversing the role of what you ask learners to do in class and what you ask them to do at home (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_teaching).

One early definition of the flipped classroom was the idea to invert traditional teaching methods, delivering instruction online outside of the class and moving "homework" into the classroom.

Paul said that this definition of the flipped classroom adheres to a behaviorist view of teaching and learning and perhaps it is more suited to a subject with content rather than teaching a language.

One point made by an audience member was that, as a student of literature, she was asked to do a lot of reading at home, and what she ended up developing was the skill of being able to talk about books without having read them. She said that the danger with our students is that they end up doing something similar and then not getting the input.

A more updated definition has the flipped classroom 'providing initial input outside of the class' and 'promoting more output in the classroom', which Paul says is more relevant to language teaching and learning.

Join the IATEFL ltsig live from Liverpool today by connecting to our livestream (see http://ltsig.org.uk for details of the programme and how to join)

IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG PCE - Huw Jarvis

Today in Liverpool, Huw Jarvis kicked off the IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG Pre-conference event talking about  'From Learner Autonomy and CALL to Mobile Assisted Language Use (MALU)  and e-acquisition'

After setting the context with a look at the history of  Learner Autonomy and CALL, and assumptions wrongly made in this area, that paper-based material is no longer preferred, that learners no longer like self-access centres (SACs), Huw presented research showing the move learners are making (from CALL to MALL).

It is no longer about explicit teaching and learning, or just realized in SACs, but learners are routinely multi-tasking and are more and more  informally connecting with other English speakers using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Often this communication is based on hobbies (football, gaming, etc) that learners share.

Huw shared Stephen Krashen's 1982 research that distinguishes between learning, which is conscious, and acquisition, which is unconscious. Both, Huw believes are personal, social, academic, global and mediated through a range of digital devices. The rise in informal learning and mobile devices  are the keys to understanding how learner autonomy and technology is changing.

Join us live from the PCE in Liverpool using the live stream (see http://ltsig.org.uk for details)

IATEFL Liverpool Online registered blogger

I've just signed up to be one of the IATEFL Liverpool Online registered bloggers, which means I can repost video content from the 47th annual IATEFL conference on this blog.

I'll be in Liverpool for the conference, and have decided to try and blog about the experience as much as I can this year. I'll be starting off at the IATEFL Learning Technologies SIG Pre-Conference Event on Monday, which is dedicated to Learner Autonomy and Technology. You can see the programme and find out more about the speakers here: http://ltsig.org.uk/