Paul Driver - Cities, communities, memory and culture

Paul Driver, who has been nominated for an ELTon for his game Spywalk, started his presentation by sharing his love of drawing architecture whenever he visits a new city. Whenever he does this, locals often come over and talk to him, telling him their life stories and talking about the place.

There is an inter-twining relationship between people and the cities they live in. Showing a map of New York, Paul talked about trying to understand. City by looking at an aerial view.

Maps, Paul stated are things we often think of as objective, but maps are never objective, they are always subjective and show things that the map-maker decides to show. Maps have often been used for propaganda devices.

Talking about memory and identity, Paul reminds us that memory is often augmented in many different ways - through written notes and latterly, our phones, and even things like smells and tattoos. Our memories are also shared with family and friends, often distributed among a number of different people. Memory I Ali embodied and embedded. If you look at movies, for example Memento, you can see examples of this embodied memory, with the main character, Leonard, who suffers from memory loss, uses photos, notes and tattoos as aids o his memory.

Nowadays there is often a fear that we rely too much on our phones and other devices to remember things. For instance, know many people in the audience now know their own telephone numbers. Many in the audience recognized that they didn't. We are now often experiencing the world nowadays as it is presented to us through our screens.

Augmented reality is an example of

The new aesthetic movement has emerged to categorize and critique this change in society. An example of this is the "cell trance" and the "obsessive checking" of mobiles for messages. Adam Bartholl's change project (http://datenform.de/) is another example of how the digital interfaces with the real.

The yellow arrow project is a new form of city markup that sees people post yellow arrows on things they think are culturally relevant. Another interesting project is guerrilla gardening - a hands-on approach to improving the spaces where we live. Guerilla gardeners reclaim land (http://guerillagardeners.org) and plant food or flowers to improve quality of life.

Paul drew all of these ideas together sharing his Urban Chronicles Project using an app called Moveable Feast ( http://mvabl.com) and finished by showing an example of one of the student's work

Literature strikes back

The IATEFL ltsig Diana Eastment / Travel grant scholarship winners this year are Dimitris Primalis and Chryssanthe Sotiriou, who work in schools that have class sets of tablets. 

They are both interested in how best to get students reading literature using new technology

The speakers first showed 2 examples of literature and asked the audience to think about the following: Layout, lexis, length of text, visual aids, learning styles, skills.

Next, half of the audience  were first asked to listen to an excerpt of the film (http://i.imgur.com/ywKjqEw.jpg) Rebecca while the others blocked their ears. After this those who blocked their ears were asked to watch the same excerpt of the film without sound. The audience then shared notes and talked together.

The idea of doing an activity like this is to stimulate learner interest. The speakers believe that this is the only way to get a ten year old boy to read a novel such as Rebecca. They use http://www.edmodo.com/ to stimulate the discussion and then in class afterwards they were motivated to read the book.

Chryssanthe has used the site http://www.60secondrecap.com/ to help motivate the students. Here there are short videos about books and she has found it is very popular.the speakers have also used Skype in the classroom, inviting authors and other experts into the classroom this way.

Dimitris also uses things like sounds to stimulate interest, first playing some sounds related to a paragraph from a book he wanted the students to read and following up with the actual book chapter (the Day of the Triffids, in this example).

The students also use interactive course books with their laptops. In class, they look at some of the p ages, then the students are encouraged to read at home. There is also videos that go with this too. After reading and watching, the students are asked to respond on a site such as http://en.linoit.com/ or to put their favorite words into a site such as http://www.tagxedo.com/

Chryssanthe finishes by emphasizing that you can integrate technology into your classroom by getting involved and getting Trainner and becoming engaged with it in order to share that literature is something that they shouldn't be scared of, that they can learn to enjoy and learn from.

Flipping the classroom - Lindsay Warwick

Lindsay Warwick also uses ideas behind the flipped classroom method in her own classes, but uses it in a different way to Stephen. Her focus is more on the homework aspect.

She sees that some of. The benefits include students taking control of the learning process, it is very personalized and it helps the students to learn how to learn as well as enabling her to engage more in 1:1 learning. She has found that students are also more engaged with this system and in a 2012 study (Classroom Window) it was reported that 80% of students were more engaged by using the flipped classroom method.

Lindsay started to use this method, but at first it failed. It failed because students had a lack of study skills and were also unmotivated.

Lindsay was then forced to adopt a different approach that involved the students creating weekly objectives, checking each other's notes and setting individual deadlines. The 'naughty' students (i.e. those who hadn't watched the video) would be asked to watch the videos in class times, while the other students are involved in more interesting classroom tasks. This method means that the students quickly learn that it is better f or them to do the homework so they can use the class time more productively.

Lindsay has found that she has time with this method to spend time to help those students without sufficient study skills and help them become better at learning to learn.

The weekly objectives generally were set using 'can do' statements and gets them quickly working in pairs or small groups to discuss why these are important for them to learn how to do. She also gives them a checklist and the students tick the ones they think they need to know. This is used as the basis of the weekly timetable and it means the students feel the lessons are more relevant to what they would otherwise be. The weekly objectives then are explicit and they are shown how they can achieve them. Finally, the students are encouraged to talk about how they think they did.

To get the students to watch the video, she usually gives them a teaser. For example, she shows the students an email and asks the students to say what's wrong with it. After hearing their answers, she neither agrees or disagrees, but asks the students to watch the video to find out.

Another option is using a screenshot from the video, for example, Lily's surprise (http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=RY9kJEurNZo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRY9kJEurNZo   ), encourages the students to watch the video and makes the videos more engaging.

Lindsay uses the method with a pre-intermediate class at the moment and has started a line of progression starting it off in class and then moving towards the students doing more at home. This seems t o be working so far, and the students are becoming better learners too. Her next step is to add an element of peer teaching into the process.

The Flipped Classroom - from theory to practice

Stephen Bukin's is the first of two Flipped classroom presentations during the LTSIG day. Stephen started by talking about the origins of the flipped classroom with Bergman and Sams in the US and the now well-known Khan academy bei the fore-runners.

Proponents of e flipped classroom believe that this model helps struggling students and often helps with poor students. Stephen also believes that it helps over scheduled students.

Why flip your classroom? The model of schoolwork and homework was based on the requirements of the Industrial age and it may be about time for a change.

Stephen started by looking at his own classes and analyzing his own lessons. He is a traditional PPP.teacher but he felt that the students were not getting enough practice in his previous teaching  model. Another problem he had was continuous enrollment and with new students entering his classroom all the time, often with different levels, differentiation was difficult. This was why he thought that a possible solution was the flipped classroom model.

Using this model frees up the classroom time and allows a teacher to have more one-to-one time and can be more student-centred because the students decide how much time to spend on each video. He decided to start by making some demo screencast recordings and he collected feedback from the students and then reflected on the lessons and on what worked well with the videos that received the best feedback.

Although there's nothing wrong with putting a video camera in the classroom, Stephen decided to use screencast software. He started wi Jing, but this has now been discontinued, so he has switched to http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/. Two other tools that you can use are http://www.brainshark.com/mybrainshark and http://www.screenr.com/, although these last two do not let you to share your webcam, which Stephen likes.

Another tool Stephen likes is http://present.me, which shows a split screen with a video of yourself on one side of the screen and PowerPoint slides on the other.

For teachers with iPads, http://www.educreations.com/ is a nice tool. It can also be used on the Web too as it is cross-platform. Explain Everything is Stephen's favorite iPad app. It allows you to use images and move them around on screen in interesting ways and can also be used with students.

Despite these useful tools, it is not about the video, but actually the extra time using the videos frees up in the classroom. There seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence that this method does help with deeper learning in interesting ways, although not much research is available at the moment.

Just Hit pause

The second LTSIG day presentation by Suzanne Mordue and Sirin Soyoz was dedicated to video in the EFL classroom.

Sirin said she is interested in video because of the multiple channels that it allows and particularly emphasises the potential of Youtube, but because YouTube is not available in  some countries, Vimeo and Videojug are two alternative video sharing sites that have general videos.

Top documentary films, TED talks and National Geographic are some other channels for specialized videos at you can use with your students.

As far as ELT specific, Real English (http://real-english.com/)  Randall's video snapshots (http://www.esl-lab.com/videoclips.htm ), ESL Video, Simple English videos and LearnEnglish Teens are all sites with good sources of different videos. Sirin and Suzanne then shared lots of different clips and discussed how best to use them in the classroom.

Filtering relevant information through Content Curation

Carla Arena's presentation at IATEFL was all about digital curation. Carla started by looking at art curation, talking about the role of the curator as someone who gives meaning to content by selecting the best of a body of work and presenting it to the public. Libraries, churches and newspapers also all have lots of content and a curator to help them present content.

Asking the question, 'What has changed in content curation?' Graeme Hodgeson answered that it is now bottom-up, with people everywhere on the Web now curating content for others, and filtering information for different specialized audiences.

Carla mentioned 'Too big to know' by David Weinberger (http://www.toobigtoknow.com/about-2/) and the question 'what happens to knowledge and expertise now that we are faced with the fact that there is way way way more to know than can be known by any individual?' The hypothesis of the book is that 'knowledge and expertise are becoming networks, and are taking on the properties of networks' and digital curation, with networks of people finding and filtering through digital curation.

One of the first tools Carla introduced was Flicr galleries, which allow people to curate other people's photos. Another tool, http://cowbird.com allows for digital storytelling and Carla thinks that the most exciting thing about this tool is the idea of 'sprouting' a story, using your network and writing a story with students that include engaging, authentic  content.

One of the most popular digital curation tools is Pinterest (http://pinterest.com) and Carla uses this to collect photos that can then be used in class to stimulate discussion (e.g. showing a photo found using a keyword and then asking students to guess; or searching on a keyword and asking students to choose the photo that best represents, for example, a country - it can be, Carla believes a nice way to talk about stereotypes with learners.)

Mentor mob (http://mentor mob.com) allows a teacher to create learning playlists for students, so it can be a useful tool to use for homework or in class. Learn list (http://learn list.com) is a similar tool that allows for learning playlists to be created/curated. The same is true of http://theemefy.com, which enables you to create a magazine for you or your students that can be read online or downloaded. The book can be shared with others.

Another popular tool that many educators are using at the moment is http://scoop.it. An alternative to this is htpp://trap.it which allows the content to be pulled to you depending on a series of search terms that you decide on. You can do this with an iPad app or online. Flip Board is another app that can be used (in Mac iOS or Android). Zite is another app that Carla finds interesting. Finally, Carla shared a few links such as Edutecher that allows educators to find out the latest tools and information related tools.

Carla finished by recommending Robin Good as a must for anyone interested in educational curation tools (http://www.mindmeister.com/55395228/content-curation-tools-the-newsmaster-toolkit-by-robin-good-2012)

Implementing handheld learning - Victoria Boobyer

Victoria's session on handheld learning started by looking at the considerations that teachers and schools need to make when considering the use of handheld learning.

One of the first decisions that has to be made is which device. The audience was first asked to discuss the pros and cons of different options (class sets of tablets, bring your own device) and Victoria asked us to discuss the benefits and problems of implementing these decisions.

Obviously, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is cheaper, but not all students have the same devices, so the kinds of things you can do and which apps, etc you use will depend on this. Having a class set of tablets ensures everyone using a similar device, but then teachers need to consider things such as security, payment options (for apps, etc) and it can become an expensive option.

As far as security is concerned, with iPads, Victoria mentioned having to look at worries of device theft and breakage. Victoria's school's solution was to lock the ipads up when not is UNE and to use the app 'find my iPad'. Setting restrictions on what can be bought  or changing email accounts is important (eg nobody except Victoria can access the code to buy apps). Buying a durable cover for the tablet is important too, and in a year, the school has not lost a device and neither have they broken one. Apple will also etch the back of the iPad (for free) with the name of your school and number of iPad, etc.

Maintenance is around an hour a week, and then updates to apps take time too, but Victoria deals with this by taking turns to update each device. Maintenance also includes how/where/when they are charged and by whom. Which new apps to buy is also a consideration. When charging them, Joe Dale suggested using a plate rack to keep them separated and if they are all stored in the same place and charged together that will save time.

Ongoing teacher training is important. Victoria has found that top-down teacher training hasn't worked. Considerations involve finding out if teachers are tech comfortable, and if they aren't, then try to help them feel better about using the technology. Apple also trained all of Victoria's teachers for free. Other things to think of is how often training is done. Once a week for 20 minutes has proven to be popular, initially Victoria did the training and now the teachers are teaching each other how to use the apps, etc. Teachers could also take the iPads home to play with and this helped them feel better about using them.

Apart from the device, and more importantly,  responses from teachers show that the iPads are being used in ways that add to the learning, practice and recycling of language. The students also have given very good feedback about using the iPads in a variety  of ways to increase their use of English.

The next part of Victoria's presentation was looking at how the iPads are being used in class, and she started is by showing a video made with iMovie by the students of one class of a poem that they had written and then put to images.

Photo comic is an app which is popular with both teachers and students.

Questions included whether extra bandwidth is needed. Victoria said that this is true, and that the school have dedicated wifi for this and that if a teacher is planning on using, for example, a YouTube video, then it should be downloaded/loaded previously or (preferably) displayed on a screen (or IWB)