Self-evaluation: from old-fashioned to a 21st century ESL teacher

This term I had to overcome my old-fashioned ways and adapt to a more 21st century way of learning and teaching. Throughout this course I have become familiar with new tools and resources to help keep nowadays students engaged in the class. Morever, new technologies allow for a greater access to knowledge both in quantitative terms and in terms of location, as one can access almost unlimited information from any place with an Internet connection.

Although I tried to do a great job in my individual assignmets, such as it is the case of the written and audio reviews, I am especially happy about the accomplishments my team made. We have always tried to unify our works and link them in such a way they could actually be part of the design of a  whole course, In fact, the project we feel most proud about is our Wiki, where we have been able to include almost every tool and type of activity that we have seen in class, such as hot potatoes, Kahoot quizes or Voki avatars. We have also linked the Wiki to our Webquest, and have managed to fit everything into a well-designed and carefully described lesson plan. The topic that we have chosen for the creation of our Wiki and Webquest is filming a movie, which is always an engaging activity for teenagers.

I hope you have enjoyed my team's work as much as we did!

A picture (or a video!) is worth a thousand words

Do you know Animoto?  It's a good online tool to create short videos. It can be used with many different purposes, Our suggestion is simple: we created a video that illustrated a list of movies we recommended for the Christmas break, rather than just providing a compilation of names.

Have a look at it!

Let's move around the class!

Students love standing up and moving around the class, so why don't we do it in an orderly way and make an activity out of it?A QR code reading activity can be a good way of motivating students to look for information. You just have to create  QR codes with the infomartion you want yor students to find, print them and hang it on the wall.

We propose an activity to find out about movie curiosities. Check some codes out!

Let's revise with hot potatoes

Hot potates can be very useful to revise the vocabulary and concepts that have been studied. A hot potatoe could also be used as a warm-up activity or to see how much our students know about a given topic. Our Wiki includes a couple of hot potates, including one that goes over filming vocabulary. Check it out!

Make your own poster with Glogster

Posters are always a nice way to present information, as they are visual and straight to the point. In our Wiki, we suggest describing and reviewing a movie using Glogster. Our advice: keep it simple and make it fancy!!

Here you can make your own Glogster.

Have a look at the sample we provided.

Kahoot: an online quiz for 21st century students

Do you know Kahoot? It's a great tool to be used in a 21st century class! It allows you to create online quizes about any topic you wish, and it can be accessed from anyone's cellphone, computer or tablet. Not only is it an engaginng activity, but also a helpful resource which can allow the teacher to revise the target vocabulary in a quick and interactive way.

Of course, our Wiki includes a quiz created with Kahoot so that our students can revise the filming vocabulary. Try it out!

A WebQuest: making the most out of movie making

A WebQuest is a guided learning task with several steps which are meant to be completed by means of using the Internet and several computer programs. A series of links to relevant websites and instructions on which software should be used in each case are made available by the instructor. Our WebQuest expands the topic of our Wiki, movies and filming, and focuses on the three lasts tasks to be completed for the final project of the movie-making course, namely filming,editing and sharing.

The main software needed for the completion of this task was an editing program, such as Moviemaker, and the main website was Youtube, where they could both find video tutorials on how to edit as well as share their final projects, that's to say, their own short film. Once the final result has been posted, all students are encouraged to see their classmates' works, as well as comment on them.

The WebQuest site also includes a teacher's page where other instructors can access the lesson plan and information related to the competences that are being worked on throughout the tasks.

Have a look at it! :)

Voki: a speaking avatar as a virtual teacher

In my previous post I presented our Wiki site, Filmingamovie, which was intended to be used as a learning platform which students could access from their homes. Of course, a virtual class requires a virtual teacher, so we created Anna, an actress who guided students through the site, and provided them with description about each page and instructions about what should be done in each case. Anna was created using Voki, a tool to design speaking avatars, and she looks just like the perfect Hollywood actress and the teacher of anyone's dreams. You find her in our Wiki site.

Filming a movie: a course project for teenage students of English

Undoubtedly, working on something you feel passionate about is the best way of learning. This is why my team and I decided to design a course project for teeange students of English that involved a topic that motivated them: movies! Not only did students learn about movies and vocabulary of this field, but they also had a chance to implement the knowledge they had acquired throughout the course, and create a small piece of art: their own movie!

We also designed a Wiki as an online learning platform where students could go over the contents studied in class, expand their knowledge with extra activities and links, and share their views and creations. You can have a look at it here. Enjoy!

'Enhancing Student Engagement through Online Authentic Materials', a review

Here you can  find a dropbox link  with an audio file. Listen to my review on the article 'Enhancing Student Engagement through Online Authentic' Materials' website: http://www.iallt.org/iallt_journal/enhancing_student_engagement_through_online_authentic_materials.