Presenting at the 39th FAAPI congress in Argentina

Today, I was able to present the Plan Ceibal English project, along with Serrana Muiz of Plan Ceibal, at the 39th annual FAAPI congress in Argentina.

Photo by Maria Paola Sviatschi

Here are the slides from the presentation:

Remote teaching - FAAPI 2014 from Graham Stanley

Joan Shin Kang & the end of the 11th Anglo Congress

The final plenary of the the 11th Anglo Congress invited us to ask ourselves the question 'Are you a 21st Century Teacher?' and Joan Kang Shin started by saying that she believes the most commonly used approach to teaching young learners in the 20th Century led to separation between local and global. 

Joan shared the stunning TED Talk by Eric Whitacre, featuring a virtual choir of 200+ voices singing one of his pieces. This kind of collaboration is an example of what was beyond imagining in the 20th century.

Mentioning Kachru's classification of English as a world language consisting of three circles (1988) and in particular the importance the outer circle has taken, with English being used more by non-native speakers among themselves than by native speakers with non-native speakers, with all that this signifies when it comes to the English we teach in the classroom. 

She encouraged the audience to bring both the local and the global into the classroom through song, first leading the audience through a song about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then giving us a template for a recipe song that she had used to write a song about the Uruguayan chivito.

Among other things, Joan talked about how the tradition of map-making distorts reality and showing students this through tools such as Map fight, comparing it with information displayed on Google maps can encourage them to reflect on the information that is taken for granted and to think more critically.

Joan also suggested getting students to create a time capsule to help them reflect on what is important about their own culture.

Mark Prensky' digital natives, digital immigrants article was cited as an important reason why technology should matter in our classes.

Finally, Joan finished by inviting teachers to participate with their students in the Our Class City Country project, sharing information with students from around the world. 

The end of the Congress

Many people stayed until the very end, for the congress raffle. In the photo (left), Gerardo Vallaza from the Anglo hands out 6 copies of Language Learning with Technology donated by the British Council Uruguay. 

Before the raffle, an announcement was made about the British Council's Action Research Award Scheme, which is an exciting initiative to encourage teachers to become involved in researching their own context. There will be 6 awards across the Americas "for projects of one year duration and £2,000 for projects that last six months." I recommend you take a look to see if you are eligible to apply.

There was also an announcement made about next year's LABCI conference, which is due to be held in Montevideo on July 9th, 10th & 11th. This large conference, held every 2 years is sure to be an exciting event. See you there?

Interactive Stories

I first came across Mark White's Interactive Stories quite some years ago, but I haven't ever blogged about them. 

I did use some of the techniques that Mark outlines on the English Conversations website in class and was impressed at the results. I also did a couple of training sessions with them in 2005, which seemed to go down well.

I'm now revisiting this storytelling technique, preparing to use the ideas as part of a presentation I'm preparing on Storytelling games and activities for the 11th Anglo Congress in Montevideo, in August. For this reason, I thought it would be good to write about it here as part of that preparation. 

What is an Interactive Story?

As Mark puts it, "the technique consists of a story, which includes both sentences and questions so that as one student reads it to the other, the listener can respond to the questions and interact with the storyteller and the story itself by making it up as they go along."

The original idea for using interactive stories was as a classroom speaking activity, to stimulate conversation and imagination. The goal is to teach language in context and also encourage learners to ask and answer questions - it can also be a great way of getting learners to focus on their pronunciation as they read aloud.

How to do it

The students work in pairs. One of them has a handout of the story and reads it aloud, stopping when they come to a question, until the other student replies with a suitable answer. Once answered, the storyteller continues until the end of the story.

An example interactive story

The Big Dream: Part 1 (the Graveyard) is a story by Mark White that I have used in class. You can listen to how it works in practice here (mp3 recording). Each part of this story focuses on different language elements - this particular story is suitable for lower intermediate learners. 

Writing your own stories

After trying some of the stories that Mark White wrote, I ended writing an interactive story of my own to use with a group of learners I had that were studying photography. It was called 'The small town photographer' (link to the story).

Adapting  interactive stories

Other interactive story ideas I have used in class include urban myths and jokes. Now looking forward to introducing more teachers to using this idea at the Anglo congress on the 9th August.

Handout for the conference presentation

Review of Language Learning with Technology

 

Another review of my book, Language Learning with Technology (CUP, 2013) - it's great to see the book being reviewed and, more importanntly, being valued by teachers.

"While I could go on and on about the usefulness of Language Learning with Technology, perhaps my favorite activity is Word Cloud Warmer (6.1), which is genius! Word Cloud Warmer creates pre-reading tasks with any text you would like to use, making frequent words larger, for instance.

What I appreciate most about Stanley’s work is that it is literally written and compiled for every kind of educator – elementary, middle, high school, college, older adults – at all language learning levels.  This book is for the conscientious teacher, whether technological or not, who would like many more tools in the tool chest!"

Engaging Learners Online

I had a lot of fun during my presentation yesterday for the Teachers Teaching Online (TTO) MOOC, with my session 'Engaging Online Learners', splitting the participants into teams and using a quiz format for the presentation.

I wondered beforehand whether it would work and how best to split the participants up into teams. The quiz was designed to get away from a linear presentation format. The idea was to ask the audience to select a category and a question (each had a different number of points) and then jump to that question. In the end, this didn't work in the webinar and I had to do the quiz in a different way (linear), but it seemed to work out well. I asked the participants to choose a colour (blue or red) and to change their text chat and then I asked the questions and the first member of team red or team blue to answer correctly won 10 points. 

If the comments on the session page are anything to go by, participants enjoyed it:

Miroslava Takeva

Amazing lesson showing how interactive and amusing one should be in order to engage online students. Million thanks to Graham!

Mary Ronemous

Yes, engaging and interactive. He modeled what he was teaching. Great presentation! Thank you, Graham.

Zareen Kamran

It was interesting,although RED lost but even than we enjoyed the class.....

Tom Hodgers

A really engaging presentation from Graham.

sue annan

What a fun, yet really useful presentation. The time passed quickly as we were all so engaged

Tauseef Farooq

Really enjoyed the class! Very engaging and interactive!!!!!!

Judy Wong

That was wonderful!! So glad I was able to be here live!! Thanks so much Graham and Jase!

Judy's comments in particular were very encouraging. So many webinars I have attended (and some I have given!) have had so little interaction in them, you wonder if it's worth attending them live or if it might not be done better by recording a video. It seemed to me to be ironic to talk about engaging online learners without doing something a little more engaging than your usual talking head webinar, so I'm glad it turned out well.

The recording of the webinar is available here

Here are the slides (direct link to the MOOC page with comments):

Engaging online learners from Graham Stanley

And here's the text chat. The most interesting comments from this, for me were:

• Valentina: freedom is important when learning under teacher's control
• Chris Holsman:visual non verbal behaviour helps communication
• Kerstin Hendriks: When you're teaching f2f, you are also "on stage"!
• Elisabeth Horn: the audience normally focuses on the powerpoint presentation as well - so (webcam) not THAT important
• Judy Wong:Be careful the kind of room you are in so you don't have echo
• Frances Walker:Planning is good, but be prepared to be flexible
• Judy Wong:You should be careful who you pair up together
• Judy Wong:Or give them a type of pairwork that doesn't mean they are there at the exact same time
• Irina Ostapchuk: it`s great when you have two students like a husband and a wife who want to learn together. or two friends
• Jason R  Levine:Audio files are often more popular than video
• Frances Walker:Listening practice - not always same voice (teacher's) all the time!
• Chris Stanzer:they should hear different accents
• Vance Stevens:...and audio can be made from YouTube video
• Judy Wong:It is important to have the learners invested in the learning process
• Nora Choperena:Objectives and deadlines go together.
• Chris Stanzer:without deadlines I'd never do anything
• Vance Stevens:there are soft deadlines and firm ones
• Kerstin Hendriks:deadlines can help the teacher plan.
• Vance Stevens:but if they are not meeting deadlines, make them feel welcome to complete the work
• Nora Choperena:A matter of culture, also. Don't leave things for the very last minute. 
• Vance Stevens:nothing focuses like a good deadline
• Irma Ramos:yes, most of us are not very proactive so we need deadlines
• Anna Lee Vinson:classes much like this one.Where the student is vested in the class.
• Judy Wong:It doesn't matter if in a school or private. It is always important to make the student feel safe in your venue
• Vera:when learners have the opportunity to participate using voice, they keep more confident
• Irma Ramos:Graham I learn a lot and had a lot o fun at the same time. Thank you!!
• Penny Mosavian:This was so helpful! I really enjoyed the class!!!

The Teachers Teaching Online MOOC runs until 12th July and there are lots of very interesting speakers. Consult the syllabus here. There are also 3577 people enrolled in the course, so it's a great opportunity to meet like-minded people.

Review of Language Learning with Technology

 I was pleased to read another review of my book, Lannguage Learning with Technology:

It's a very comprehensive review.

"All things considered, one could say that the book hereby briely reviewed–Language Learning with Technology–can be seen as a helpful material for language teachers who are interested in using technology for aiding the teaching of second language. The book offers activities that make use of diverse approaches to second language instruction, which makes it useful for different teaching contexts. Additionally, the organization of the book as well as the instructions for each activity are extremely clear, making it relatively easy for language practitioners to nd what they might be looking for. Even though the author does not elucidate the differences between the prociency levels mentioned in the chapters, all levels are contemplated for each ability, which increases the book’s usefulness and direct application in a variety of classroom settings. All in all, Stanley’s book provides readers with a range of insightful ideas for improving second language teaching in technological and pedagogical terms, which may provide teachers with a suitable database of activities that can be directly implemented in the classroom or ‘tweaked and twisted’ as they see it for future implementation."

Gamification: Magic Bullet or Broken Sword?

 A pesentation I did for the following conference:

IATEFL LTSIG & TESOL CALL IS 2nd Web Conference - June 14th 2014

Can gamification be used effectively in language teaching? Or is it just another passing fad? Although at first glance, the 'adding of game elements to non-game contexts' using points, badges, and leader-boards, etc. seems to be an attractive proposition for teachers, there is more to gamification than first meets the eye. In this session we'll look at the meaning of fun and games, examine play and players and explore how different game elements might be used in the classroom and for what purpose.

Gamification in ELT: Magic Bullet or Broken Sword? from Graham Stanley