Smart board

The Smart board is an interactive whiteboard that gives you a great deal of resources to use in the classroom. It works just like a whiteboard which you can write on with a pen. It also works like an giant Ipad that you can write on through the computer or by hand. The Smart board have all the benefits of a whiteboard and on top of that access to Internet and a lot of lesson plans made especially for the Smart board and all of it´s functions.

When you are getting a Smart board you need to buy the concept from a retailer. It´s rather expensive to invest in Smart boards depending on size but it is well spent money. When you buy a smart board you get the specially adapt whiteboard, a interactive projector and a computer program, Notebook, that you can download on every computer. When you buy the Smart board you can also buy especially made programs suited for the classroom. One more thing, if you buy the Smart board from the retailer it is often included further training and free updates on the software.

                                                    
The smart board can be used by the teacher to make lesson plans, to save material and to share whit other teachers on different sites on the Internet. There is also lots of pre-made lessons that is offered in every school subject. A lot of educational publishers makes adapted material to use on the Smart board. It is a great way for the teacher to save material and to re-use and to repeat for the pupils whats been said on earlier lessons.

For the pupils its it´s an easy and very useful resource to use. It completes a lot of the aims in Lgr11. The pupils can learn how to handle the digital tool in many ways for example to type, make photo- and picture adjustments, make presentations and make movies. A big benefit with the Smart board is that if one pupil is absent for the day the teacher can save the lesson notes from the board and send them home directly from the smart board so that the pupil can catch up with what they have missed during the day.

 I think that the Smart board is a ICT tool that both teachers and pupil will benefit of and the pupils will get a lot of ”free knowledge” in using this ICT resource that they can use in their further studies and working life.

Stockholm iPad project

I work at Årstakolan in Stockholm where we have an ongoing project using iPads as an ICT resource. My school sent an application to the city applying for iPads specificlly for elementary school students to be used as a tool for reading comprehension learning. Our idea came from a Norwegian idea where studies had shown that levels of reading comprehension increased when students used the iPad to type their texts instead of focusing on their writing by hand. The idea was that they will learn to read at a faster pace by first and foremost developing their fonteical knowledge of letters.

The brilliance of the iPad is the immediate response. Students can create words, letters and sounds without holding a pen. The result is that first grade students have the ability to read earlier with the help of the iPad that can also read the text back to them.  By using the iPad as the writing tool, we have seen the results that the comprehension over text increases and their knowledge of letters is cemented. The students also worked with illustrations to their text which motivated the students to challenge themselves in reading and also producing a greater amount of written production.

However, I am a secondary school teacher working only with grades 7-9.  I searched the internet to find how working with iPads would be helpful for me to have the similar idea and effect with my students. I found that iPads were rarely used for this age group and that not much has been attempted in this direction. My idea was to help them with their artistic interpretation of literary writing. My goal was to develop their skills to focus on the potential reader of their productions, aiming to motivate them into finding their own voice.

We started out by reading a book, aimed for this age group, with the theme of life and all its difficulties. After reading and analyzing the book, they were asked to write short stories on themes such as fear, childhood memories, bullying and love. To present their work they made a short film with voiceover, reading their own text. The results were brilliant. Students worked hard connecting imagery to the message of their story. I have never seen students this engaged in presenting their work to an actual reader.

When finished, the films were published on the school’s own website www.bibblis.se and they are now open for public viewing.

ICT & LITERACY

Some days ago I heard my 5 year old son talking mumbo jumbo english by his computer; he was imitating a Lego Star Wars-video conversation he just had been watching (and evidently listening too, 10 times or so...). His pronunciation was english but what he said didn't make any sense, well, once a while he dropped the phrase "Star Wars..."

A couple of hours ago he showed my a small Lego poster of HERO FACTORY and asked me (in swedish) "Dad, does it say here (reading in english - a skill he often says he isn't able to do in swedish... - with his index finger pointing out the reading direction) 'HERO FACTORY'?"*

Learning how to read is globalized today, thanks to the ICT possibilities; foreign languages support the native language in children's reading comprehension - a prospect that just 10 years ago was limited to kids with bilingual parents or kids attending bilingual education.

* I don't remember if I answered his question, maybe I just nodded (or maybe my Vygotskian presence was enough) during my process in thinking of the history of the development of reading and writing. I think anyway he announced "YES" (he often does...) and went back to his computer keyboard knowing what to type (a skill he often says he isn't able to ...): ”HERO FACTORY”, in the adress bar of Google Chrome...

BrainPOP ESL

BrainPOP ESL

I got introduced to BrainPOP ESL by a new colleague, she has used it with different groups and has succeeded in capturing the interest of even the students that sometimes can be hard to capture. I´ve started introducing it with my students that need extra assignments. We started at level on and then clicked our way onwards to find the level suited for the student. The layout of the site is welcoming and attention grabbing, the reason for that could be that it is very colorful and have lots of different choices to click on. It’s filled with different animated activities. BrainPOP ESL is the creation of Naomi Prawer Kadar, Ph.D. (1949-2010), she was a language teacher teaching both ESL students and students studying to become teachers.  

BrainPOP ESL is divided into level 1-3 and each level is divided into 6 unites. Each unit consists of 5 lessons and every lesson starts off with watching a short animated movie. With every lesson there are exercises for listening, reading, speaking and writing. There are different ways to work with words on the website like flashcards and visual words where words are shown animated to clarify their meaning.  For extra activities or games the students ‘can find exercises by clicking on Play it. Under Warm Up! you´ll find exercises to prepare for the quiz that you find by clicking on You Can Do It!   When using the quizzes that you access by clicking on You Can Do It! the students gets their result right a way and find out what they need to work more on. There is also a section called Teaching Tools, here teachers can find things like lesson plans and extra activities.

To find out more by watching a short animated introduction, please follow the link below.

http://www.brainpopesl.com/support/tour/

One side to BrainPOP that could be could be a negative is that it is not free. There is some free stuff on the site that you can use and there is also the opportunity off trying the website out for free before signing up. The free stuff you can find by clicking on Free lesson and Free game.

The cost of subscribing to BrainPOP ESL depends on how many computers you want to be able to use it on at the same time. The subscription usually runs for a year at a time, for classroom use the fee is $115 and then you will be able to use  BrainPOP ESL on your Smartboard or be able to be logged in on three different computers at the same time. One of the other options to subscribe is to do it so that your entire school including parents can use it, which would cost $495.

You´ll find BrainPOP ESL by following the link below.

www.brainpopesl.com

There are other types of BrainPOP that you can find online that are created for native speaking students. They can also be an interesting way of teaching English and working cross curricular.

www.brainpop.com

Answergarden.ch

Why Answergarden? This utility is not tied to English, but can be used in all subjects. The reason is simple: it's free, easy for students to understand / use, and I think that the tool gives the shy pupils a chance to make their voice heard in the classroom. You can also publish your material / class website / blog if you want, where both students and parents can take advantage of what you have done. Answergarden is suitable for many tasks. How can you work with Answergarden? In English, I have used it to write words / statement / phrases homework without putting any weight who wrote what, but understanding what the pupils know/think. I have also used different English words such as "my room" - where they can write things they have in their room (furniture, colours, windows, doors) - after it can be discussed in groups based on different aspects. We also talked about who had what words from the list, and after that they had to put words into sentences and verbally tell each other. In other subjects such as history, I started a new area such as the Vasa dynasty. I posted this in the Answergarden and the pupils wrote their anwers to: What they know about the Vasa dynasty? What do they think is interesting? What should we immerse ourselves in? What we have to work with as curriculum says? I can even make my own answer in Answergarden and compare this with their and see the similarities / differences. What I have noticed is that discussions around a topic could be increased significantly by this tool. How can the pupils work with Answergarden? The pupils can also do their own research and see what their classmates thinks. The pupils can post their own course evaluations by Answer Garden. Disadvantages of Answergarden? It is difficult to judge by their words / sentences they write, because you do not who wrote it (if you do not know it, or find out of course). What do you need? In my class, we are 1-1, so a personal computer with Internet connection is required. How do you get started? No registration is required and the website can be used as many times as you want. So, you "create" an account, type your question, select if you want the answers to be limited number of responses / unlimited, if you want to, you can give out a password that they need to answer your question, and finally, you can send it as an email. When the question is set, a URL comes up with a numerical code at the end. Write this link in the address bar of the Internet browser and the students can write a response. Please test it, it`s an easy and fast ICT tool. See a demo on http://answergarden.ch/demonstration/ See a movie at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iqPae5-Lls Regards Martin

Would you mind if I asked you a few questions...

I teach at an international summer school for 5 weeks every July/August and they kindly let me loose in their computer room provided I have booked it in advance for my class of 14 – 17 year olds.

Due to the international nature of the student demographics, the class members find it interesting to learn about the home countries of their classmates. To this end, I have in the past made use of the Survey Monkey website where the students could make a 10 question survey to find out commonalities and differences between their homelands.

Here's a free lesson plan for you...

The students are paired up, usually with someone with a different L1 to promote the use of English in negotiating the design and questions, and each pair is assigned a different area of daily life to write their survey on. I have used a ‘pull a topic out of the bag’ approach in order to avoid arguments. The topics include: education (always very popular), transportation, free time activities (socialising), film, TV and music, traditions and national holidays, and tourism. Survey Monkey offers the possibility of different question types which cover both closed and open responses and the students are instructed to use a mix of these.

A demonstration survey can be created on the IWB to show the students how to use the site. Seeing as the Olympics were being held during summer school this year, I used this as a topic for the demo survey. The students supplied the questions and were able to see how the survey was built on the Survey Monkey website. A discussion of the different types of responses was also included in this stage.

Here is a very basic example of a survey on education with 5 questions http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8NQQ2F7

After creating their surveys, I collected the web links from the students and shared them with the class in the form of a word document with links which I had opened on each computer before their next computer room lesson. Each student then completed the all of the surveys. Just to add an element of anonymity to the whole proceedings, the students did not know which survey had been written by which students. There is no originating identifier on the surveys.

Finally, the original pairs regrouped and returned to the Survey Monkey website where they clicked on the ‘Analyze Results’ tab to discover the responses. The default view seen by the students when clicking on this button gives them the responses in percentages for all but the open ended questions where they can choose to ‘View responses’ to read each comment. It is possible to view the results in other ways but only if you upgrade to a payable account.

Following the analysis, the pairs prepared a short presentation to report their findings to the class.

My students enjoyed this activity so much that they asked if they could send the surveys to other classes to get a broader range of responses. The Survey Monkey free account allows for 100 responses so with only 70-odd students in the summer school, this was easily doable.

The description above shows how Survey Monkey can be used among students who wish to find out more about each others’ countries but there is no limit on what the surveys can be set on. Both students and teachers alike can quickly and easily devise surveys on any topic. These could range from a self-evaluation to reflect on a student’s own participation and performance in a task, to gathering students’ views on nuclear disarmament as a springboard towards a discussion.  

The Survey Monkey website is available in 15 languages (at the time of writing) so it is also easy to use with lower level students who may feel a little overwhelmed by having to create not only the questions and answers for the survey, but also navigate the site in a different language. The biggest hurdle I found as a teacher was understanding what all the different response types actually meant and how to choose which was the most appropriate for the type of question. I found that it was only really by experimenting and trying different options out that I could end up with a functional, user friendly, and aesthetically pleasing result. However, once mastered, it was simply a matter of showing my students how to use a selection of the response types and advising them not to use the others for the specific task.

Admittedly, Survey Monkey does provide a fairly limited type of activity and it isn’t really something that could be used on a weekly basis but as a student-centred interactive tool, it is worth a look.

The video camera

Something that really revolutionized my English teaching was when I got a new BFF called ”JVC GZ-E15”.  It’s a small and very handy digital video camera. I use it to record my pupils when they read, talk, act and present stuff in English. We watch the films together in small groups or just me and one pupil and give response to the performance. This has really helped my pupils to discover their learning and their development. 

Picture from the JVC website

The camera

The camera is called “JVC GZ-E15” and you can read more about it on the JVC website. 

I really like that I don’t need any tapes to transfer the recordings from the camera to the computer. It really makes it easy.

The program

To view the films you only need Windows media player, VLC media player or something similar. This part is not difficult at all. You simply connect the camera to the computer with a cord or insert the memory card in the computer – and voila! There are the films!

      I use the program called “Windows moviemaker” to edit the films. For now we do not edit the films much. A few times I have cut clips and put together many short clips to a longer film. This is something that I want the pupils to learn and do on their own films.

The teacher

I use the films to give my pupils feedback on their presentations and “feedforward” on their language development.  The films are also a great basis for grades and other assessments. In development dialogues between teacher, pupil and parents the films make a good starting point for discussions about goals in the pupil’s personal development plan.

The pupils

At first about half of my pupils didn’t like the camera at all. They felt uncomfortable and nervous. I let the pupils play with the camera a few times before we started to record their learning. They did music videos and talk shows and stand-up comedy and so on. This actually gave me some really good ideas for future lessons. This was approximately six months ago and now most of them feel so comfortable with the camera that they seem to forget about it. Sometimes the pupils even ask me if they can borrow the camera!

      The pupils use the camera to record themselves when they rehearse their presentations or speeches or other things like that. A few times the pupils have used the camera to record a discussion about a book that they have read, in order to compare their thoughts from one time to another.

      Some pupils have started to record themselves at home when they do their homework. I didn’t think about that to begin with but it’s of course a really great win!

The parents

I wrote a letter where I told the parents about the filming in advanced, but I guess everyone doesn’t read everything we send home from school. Some parents got angry (and scared I think) and wondered why on earth I wanted to record their children. But as it usually is with parents they calmed down when I explained the reasons.

The considerations

Before you start recording your pupils write a letter (or e-mail) to the parents and explain what you are going to do, how you are going to use it and mainly why you are going to do this!

      You need to be prepared for the time issue. Video making takes a lot of time and sometimes a lot of patience. I do – however – promise you that it will get better. When you and the pupils get more comfortable with the technology and the idea of being recorded it will take almost no time at all.

      Sometimes the pupils want to publish their films on YouTube. I like the idea; they are proud of what they have accomplished and want to tell the world about it. And if we lived in the best of worlds it would be natural. Unfortunately we live in a world when it’s not safe to publish videos of kids in the open on the Internet. In the area where I work we are not allowed to publish any pupil featured videos in the public parts of the Internet. I heard about YouTube for schools, maybe that’s an option? Anyone who knows anything about it?

The wish

I wish that I had at least four more cameras so that many pupils could be recorded at the same time. They do handle the camera quite well, digital natives as they are, and it would really be more effective if we could do five recordings at the time.

      I also wish that we had a CMS that worked and where we could publish our films, for our (teacher, pupils, parents) eyes only. We have a CMS today that is more wrong than right for my purposes. I want the pupils to be able to upload and download stuff on their own instead of waiting for the teacher to do it for them.